After multiple reports and of course, surveying various locations in the U.S., Samsung has officially announced that Taylor, Texas[*], is the location of the Korean giant's $17 billion advanced chip manufacturing facility. The company states that the new hub will boost production of various semiconductor solutions that will be found in next-generation solutions, including smartphones.
[...] The Korean tech behemoth says that groundbreaking will begin in the first half of 2022, with operations expected to start in the second half of 2024. Unfortunately, this timeline means that this chip manufacturing hub will not be one of the locations where Samsung will mass produce its 3nm wafers, as a previous report states that mass production of this advanced process will commence in the first half of 2022.
[*] Taylor, Texas on Wikipedia.
Texas To Get Multiple New Fabs as Samsung and TI to Spend $47 Billion on New Facilities
After a year of searching for the right place of its new U.S. fab, Samsung this week announced that it would build a fab near Taylor, Texas. The company will invest $17 billion in the new semiconductor fabrication plant and will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives from local and state authorities. Separately, Texas authorities have announced that Texas Instruments intend to spend $30 billion on new fabs in the state, as well.
[...] The Governor of Texas recently announced the Texas Instruments was planning to build several new 300-mm fabs near Sherman[**]. In total, TI intends to build as many as four wafer fabrication facilities in the region over coming decades and the cumulative investments are expected to total $30 billion as fabs will be eventually upgraded.
Texas Instruments itself [has] yet have to formally announce its investments plans, but the announcement by the governor Greg Abbot indicates that the principal decisions have been made and now TI needs to finalize the details.
[**] Sherman, Texas on Wikipedia.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Friday November 26 2021, @02:08AM (6 children)
any bets on how much actually ends up being spent in Texas, and how much 'tax incentive' money moves out of Texas?
Will there be a factory, at all?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 26 2021, @02:24AM (3 children)
The U.S. wants fabs, and it will get them. I don't know what kind of fabs TI is building though.
That is fortunate if it means a more advanced node than Samsung "3nm".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Acabatag on Friday November 26 2021, @03:34AM (2 children)
What I'm wondering is if that LCD facility in Wisconsin that never got built will eventually become the base for a FAB or some form of actual domestic tech manufacturing. A lot of the money has been spent to site a plant of some sort there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @11:35AM (1 child)
Maybe they'll make it into an office park or something. Mostly, it was a way of extracting money from gullible people in the government who weren't on the hook for the money they were giving away. A fool and his money are soon parted, but a fool and someone else's money are parted faster. I wouldn't be too surprised if they eventually demolish the buildings without ever doing anything useful there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @07:43PM
Useful buildings, no. A useful precedent tho for bypassing environmental, health&safety and tax laws in service of corporate profit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 26 2021, @04:07AM
Well, TI is 'Texas Instruments' after all. I believe that big plant north of Dallas is their headquarters. They started out in Texas, they've been in Texas all along, I expect that their expansions are very real. Samsung, maybe.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:18PM
Username checks out :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @02:29AM (1 child)
Water was precious there to begin with.
Pray for annual hurricane rainstorms - yous will die from either flood or draught.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @02:41AM
Even Tatooine has fabs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday November 26 2021, @03:33AM (2 children)
2 things fabs rely upon:
1) plentiful water. Don't care how much you recycle, you still need water in
2) reliable power. Yeah, about that.
Unless it's somewhere where water is plentiful, and the power isn't subbed to the Texas Power Grid, either
a) Someone thought the risk/reward was worth it
b) Someone got some money.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 26 2021, @04:22AM
I suppose you know that there are few spots in Texas where water is plentiful. The Red River flows strong all year long. Sabine River is seasonal, but pretty reliable. There really isn't much else, IMO. Cities in Texas claim water hundreds of miles away, because water is scarce. Dallas and surrounds are the best situated city in Texas, Houston second best, everyone else sucks hind teat. San Antonio relies on a single aquifer for about half of it's water, if/when that starts drying up, the city will start dying.
https://waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/region/east-texas [waterdatafortexas.org]
https://waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/municipal/dallas [waterdatafortexas.org]
https://waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/statewide [waterdatafortexas.org]
I wouldn't worry too much about power. They'll probably install their own solar, and storage, maybe some wind power as well, possibly even a diesel generator so that they don't entirely rely on the grid. The corporate masters are surely aware of power grid problems in Texas.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 26 2021, @05:05AM
Shutdown of Austin fab during freeze cost Samsung at least $268 million [statesman.com]
I think they are mindful of potential power issues.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @03:34PM (2 children)
maybe someone can enlighten me and tell me if it's possible to make power mosfets for full-H-bridge switching of say ... hmmm... 130 amps a 48 volts with 3nm silicon?
'cause, tho 3nm long lasting mobile phones can save lives i don't see (maybe wrongly?) 3nm process contributing anything to the solid-state energy production challenge the REAL world is faced with ... in short, can belllions dollar 3nm semiconductor fab investment contribute anything to power electronics (switching energy not logic)? it seems we need more inverters, controllers for electric motors/generators, windturbines (ac-dc-dc-ac conversion) and solarpanels (dc-ac) and less "mobile computing".
but hey if 3nm silicon can do high voltage and high amp switching too, kudos!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @08:46PM (1 child)
You see, when you have 3nm process, you can make everything with 3nm precision. If you want to waste that on some giant mosfet, sure. But if some chips are made there, maybe they don't need to utilize that 200nm fab so much anymore, right? and then that can be used to make your mosfets.
You just have to connect more than 2 dots to see that ANY new fab is good for capacity in the entire system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @09:09PM
ok, thanks for reply.
i just hope you cannot get like 10 new old-lame-200nm-mosfet fabs for the price of one 3nm "throw-away-life-style-phone" fab? :)
btw the (NO CARRIER) refers to there being no electricity to "carry" the 5000G new mobile phone network. gonna need juice for those 'em 4k kitty videos downloaded at 100 gigabit wireless speeds 'cause they sure as hell ain't gonna give you blazing fast phone software updates ...