A few days ago, the US media reported that TSMC stated that advanced technology factories in the United States are facing a shortage of technical engineers. Although this is the reality of US chip manufacturing, it also shows that TSMC’s enthusiasm for building factories in the United States is rapidly cooling down.
The three major U.S. chip giants, including Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm, went to Washington to meet with Biden earlier. They all hoped that the U.S. would relax restrictions on chip supply to China. Micron, Western Digital, AMD, etc. have also fallen into losses. Among them, Western Digital has decided to sell itself to Japan's Kioxia, which caused a huge shock to the US chip industry.
The three giants of Microchip said that if the United States does not relax the restrictions on the supply of chips to China, then the American chips will not be sold to anyone. After all, China is the world’s largest chip purchaser. In 2022, China will purchase nearly 70% of the world’s chips. If the supply continues to be restricted , then the performance of the U.S. chip industry is bound to decline further. Due to the performance dilemma faced by the U.S. chip industry, nearly 300,000 employees have been laid off since the end of 2022.
Among them, Intel even insisted that if the United States does not relax the restrictions on chip supply to China, then Intel’s $100 billion chip factory in Ohio, the United States, will not need to continue to advance. Intel’s remarks caused a big wave. After all, this is the revival of the US chip plan. Brilliant important step.
Intel is so urgent because it has the largest loss. The loss in the first quarter of this year was as high as 2.7 billion US dollars, and it has suffered losses for three consecutive quarters. Intel expressed the hope of improving its performance in the Chinese market at the performance conference. In order to sell in the Chinese market More chips, Intel even customized the latest 13th-generation Core processors for the Chinese market. These processors have increased cache and improved performance, but lowered prices. Intel is doing this to win the support of Chinese consumers.
After Intel stated that it may suspend the $100 billion chip factory in the United States, TSMC also stated that the mass production process of its 5nm and 3nm factories in the United States may also be delayed. The reason is that the United States lacks enough chip manufacturing technology engineers.
In October 2022, TSMC suddenly accelerated the mass production process of the 5nm factory in the United States. At that time, TSMC did face the problem of lack of technical engineers in the United States when recruiting employees in the United States. When it was unable to recruit enough technical engineers for chip manufacturing, TSMC went to the United States. The 300 technical backbones can only work on the production line in person, and because the recruited American workers are unwilling to go to work 24 hours a day, these 300 technical backbones have to do it in person. What makes the technical backbones even more dissatisfied is that their income is actually lower than that of American workers. to be low.
However, the most important reason is probably TSMC’s dissatisfaction with the United States. TSMC went to the United States to set up a factory and thought that the cost of chip manufacturing would only increase by 50%. In the face of huge cost increases, the U.S. chip industry is unwilling to bear it, and even asks TSMC to further reduce prices. At the same time, the United States originally agreed to give TSMC a generous chip subsidy, but in the end it only gave TSMC 10%, and the subsidy share is even smaller than that of Samsung. Under the circumstances, TSMC is naturally disheartened.
On the other hand, TSMC began to shift its focus back to the Asian market, and took the lead in mass producing 3nm technology in Taiwan, China. Zhang Zhongmou, who has recently retired for a long time, attended TSMC's official occasion for the first time, and expressed independent research and development at the opening ceremony of TSMC's global R&D center in Taiwan, China. It is the life of TSMC. TSMC's R&D investment has reached 5.5 billion US dollars, surpassing Samsung and Intel, and TSMC is planning to accelerate the expansion of production capacity in mainland China and Japan, and even plans to set up factories in Europe. All this shows that TSMC is quietly staying away from In the United States, it can be said that TSMC has regretted setting up a factory in the United States.
Intel's own chip manufacturing process has lagged behind TSMC and Samsung. If Intel's $100 billion chip factory is suspended and TSMC's advanced process factory in the United States is further postponed, the dream of reshaping the brilliant chip industry in the United States will come to naught. The competitive advantage of American chips will be further weakened.