Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
According to a statement from President Biden, the preliminary agreement between Samsung and the Department of Commerce will bring the Korean firm's advanced semiconductor manufacturing and research and development to Texas.
The deal will result in over $40 billion in investment from Samsung, cementing Texas' role in the advanced semiconductor industry and creating at least 21,500 jobs. There will also be up to $40 million in CHIPS funding used to train and develop the local workforce.
"The return of leading-edge chip manufacturing to America is a major new chapter in our semiconductor industry," said White House National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Samsung's CHIPS money will help support two new chip production facilities, a research center and a packaging facility for 2.5D packaging at its new site in Taylor, Texas. The first of the new fabs will start making 2nm chips in 2026, according to a senior US official. The second fab will also make chips based on 2nm and 4nm process nodes
The money will also allow Samsung to expand its semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas, about 20 miles from the Taylor site.
[...] This marks the third large allocation of CHIPS money over the last month. In March, Intel became the biggest beneficiary to date, receiving up to $8.5 billion in direct funding and up to $11 billion in low-interest loans. Team Blue plans to spend $100 billion on constructing new manufacturing plants and expanding existing locations across the US over the next few years.
Earlier this month, the US Commerce Department said it had reached a preliminary agreement with TSMC to award it up to $6.6 billion in grants and $5 billion in loans, money that will be used by the company to build a third manufacturing plant in Arizona. TSMC is also making 2nm chips, at its Arizona factory, but they're not set to go into production until 2028. Unlike Samsung, the Taiwanese company has no plans to bring advanced packaging facilities to the US.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Thursday April 18, @02:22PM (2 children)
Domestic. If we piss off Korea the tech disappears. No different than if the plant was in kr. Unless we go all communist and seize the plant.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @03:59PM
The bit flag on the promised investment and jobs will be American. Sounds to me more like Samsung is being paid at least $6.6 billion and maybe a lot more (including quid pro quo) to participate in this bit of theater. Once the bribe money stops flowing where will Samsung and these other companies be?
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday April 18, @11:08PM
That is the most unlikely scenario and could be said of any multinational.
I think this sounds good, good for the US economy, good for highly skilled jobs there and good for chip production security. Sounds like it’s costing a bit but in the long term it probably will pay itself off and more through taxes, investment by Samsung in Texas, spin-off companies (skilled former tech workers starting businesses), etc.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday April 18, @03:26PM (1 child)
This is one of those innumeracy moments where the real story is hidden by refusing to do math.
As a capex this seems mildly high but not utterly ridiculous. $40B/21500 jobs means each job requires $1.8M in capital investment. Cheap by nuclear power plant standards, expensive by McDonalds standards, meh.
I don't understand the CHIPS news. CHIPS is Clearing House Interbank Payments System and people who don't know anything about business finance think that Paypal is the biggest money transfer company out there, but CHIPS is like Paypal but specifically for business international investment, exactly like this situation. So I guess the claim of $40M from CHIPS means the first payment has already gone thru and they're already starting to hire based upon it? Cool I guess? Presumably there's $40B-$40M or about $39.960B still on the way? Now if your CHIPS payment goes through that's literally money in the bank like getting a Paypal transfer but better because CHIPS actually has customer service (and everyone involved has lots of lawyers). Anyone can wave some claim of "yeah yeah billions and billions of dollars" and that means very little but a CHIPS transfer completed means "game on" this is for real now.
Looking at the 21500 claim this seems survivable in TX. Just at U of T in Austin, according to their website, they have 1541 EE students right now, and "most of the jobs" are likely not EE, and "most of the jobs" will likely be transplants or not-new-grads so I think they can hire 21K people in TX without any issue. Trying to open a semiconductor fab in Wyoming or North Dakota would be ambitious but TX has enough people to do it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, @07:04PM
It's not potato based junk food, the old TV show, or the Clearing House Interbank Payments System either. Folks, this is the new 2022 version of CHIPS, here:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4346 [congress.gov]
...and continues for ~40 screen0-fulls of fine print.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, @03:41PM (17 children)
That money should been used to develop chips under a public works program, but this puts more money into the crooks' pockets, and we will continue to reelect them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @04:01PM (15 children)
Because the US government has shown even a little competence in designing chips? Not to mention the NSA effect.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, @09:19PM (14 children)
Whatever issue the government has is our problem. It's up to us to fix it and elect competent people instead of whining about the government. Public works is far better than multi-billion dollar handouts to giant corporations that won't stop demanding more. And where's all the talk about your national "debt" now? Oh well, what's another 6.4 billion more? nothing to see here, right?
For further reference, ask yourself, whatever happened to that Foxconn deal in Wisconsin? Are they even gonna put in some grain silos? Or a warehouse to store government cheese?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @09:50PM (13 children)
In the meantime, let's keep them away from the chips, k?
I'll note that the great majority of the people not talking about national debt now weren't talking about it then.
I was interested enough to search [jsonline.com]? TL;DR: the deal has been heavily modified/curbed and not much of anything is going on at the site. Foxconn still made like a bandit. And nobody involved either on the US or Foxconn sides is still around to get blamed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, @11:17PM (12 children)
You could have just said it ain't gonna happen until people change their tribal voting habits. But "in the meantime", they, and you, will still complain about the government
We can blame the present administration in Wisconsin for not declaring the contract null and void and taking the land back, since it was given under false pretenses, plain old fraud
All corporate handouts like this should be public works projects instead, with real public oversight
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 19, @03:53AM (11 children)
I could have said a lot of things. But why would I say those things? My take is small improvements are possible, perfect voters are not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19, @04:49AM (10 children)
Your "perfect voter" shtick doesn't fly. Nobody said anything about perfection, we only need a majority. If they got their shit together, the non-voters alone could pull it off, rout out the Party, and reduce reelection rates to zero. And if you call the present direction an "improvement", oh wait, you probably do, the banks are getting richer every second, giving you a social woody
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 19, @01:43PM (8 children)
Then don't use that shtick. "until people change their tribal voting habits" is way too perfect for this world. And perhaps in the future you should read my posts rather than stick words in my mouth. It was quite clear that I didn't take the present direction of throwing money at companies for their own profit to be an improvement. But you would have to read those posts first before figuring that out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20, @05:10AM (7 children)
It's your shtick, not mine. I mentioned nothing about "perfect" anything.
Too "perfect" for your world, yes. Humans have to power to choose, in theory anyway
And your denial of what you post has already been hashed out, you can run that ant mill by yourself
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20, @05:24AM
That talk sounds familiar. Good to know you're not Max Azzarello.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 20, @12:06PM (4 children)
You didn't explicitly. But implicitly you did - a majority had to have the right attitudes and feelings. Well, we don't have that. So what's plan B?
Infrastructure. [soylentnews.org] You don't even need to make that infrastructure society-wide in order for it to work for you and like-minded people, or to be a demonstration of the virtue of your arguments!
Actually building valuable infrastructure is hard so I understand if you're not interested. But if you want to walk that talk, there you go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20, @08:58PM (3 children)
Wrong again, that's just you putting words in my mouth. Expecting better is not asking for perfect.
There's no "plan" at all. Everything is up to all of you
No, your tribal politics and corrupt economic systems just make it that way. Put that aside and everything becomes quite trivial, everybody will focus on what is important to the project
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 21, @07:49PM (2 children)
You should have written something else then, if you didn't want to be understood that way.
Good thing I thought of a better way than merely "expecting better".
Repeat after me: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Tribal politics and corrupt economic systems are what we have. Make it work. Don't waste my time with expectations we can't meet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21, @10:38PM (1 child)
No, you just need to shed your biases and learn how to read.
That only means you're not willing to make even the feeblest effort, not while you benefit from your tribal politics and corrupt economic systems.
The whole point, from the very beginning, is that you shouldn't blame your government for anything, it is only a reflection of the choices you make. That is just plain fundamental.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 22, @12:01AM
Way past you on that. Read my previous posts for details.
In other words, you still don't get it. This isn't about blame or expectations that can't be met. It's about making systems that work.
Consider this situation. A large portion of the resources of the US civilization have been handed over to a small elite to do "chips". The elite doesn't know what it's doing nor have an interest in doing this well. And we don't even have a demonstration that this effort will do anything positive. Even if we were to start with your perfect tribe-free, corruption-free world, this sort of scheme would rapidly create tribalism and corruption. That's why I wrote "In the meantime, let's keep them away from the chips, k?"
There are sensible steps we can take right now that don't require such perfection. Laws that are applied equally. Keeping government out of opportunities for corruption and tribalism-creation. Creating a powerful economy that doesn't bother with pretexts for subsidizing economic activity that should happen naturally - tribal, corrupt, or not.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 20, @12:07PM
You're in that world too as you've already acknowledged with your lack of a majority of said perfect people. As I have said before, if your model of society requires perfect people, then you're doing it wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 20, @02:18PM
As an aside, note the descriptive power of "social wood" in action. One can construct so many interesting combos and puns off of it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Friday April 19, @01:19PM
Public works programs can work, but I doubt that a highly specific field such as producing a chip fabrication plant is going to be a good place for that. Incentivizing domestic chip production from outside entities is what they're doing right now. Footing the bill entirely for domestic chip production would probably cost a ton more and would need to have the right people motivated to do so. Not an easy thing, I would guess.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"