TSMC, Intel and other top chipmakers slow Japan, Malaysia expansions
11 comments
·March 29, 2025mjevans
icegreentea2
The CHIPS act did include specific funding for mature (>= 28nm) nodes. It definitely wasn't the bulk of the funding but it was there.
Initial estimates were that about a quarter of funding would go to supporting legacy/mature nodes, and at least 2 billion (of the initial 39 billion) was directly earmarked for legacy/mature nodes.
mjevans
I don't offhand recall that being news headlines; but that might just be the bias of news reporting / filtering.
Animats
> lackluster demand for older chips and tariff uncertainties ... numerous chip suppliers shift their investment strategies to "wait and see" mode.
That's coming up in other investment areas. The Wall Street Journal has been screaming about this for weeks. Nobody can figure out where to build capital-intensive projects because the rules change every few days.
betaby
I would imagine rules are not changing every day in Japan, yet still there are investments slowdown.
lovich
These companies do business with the US and the US is threatening anyone who doesn’t do as they’re told, including how they act outside the US. The rules very much are changing everyday for everybody
numpad0
It's just not safe to make moves while a chart this absurd and detached[1] is trying to synchronize with the reality
1: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/cyd4lm85h...
pjc50
What is that chart of? Not labeled on the vertical axis other than $. $ of what?
9283409232
Trump thinks that this will cause people to determine that only the US is where they should build but it doesn't work like that. You still need supply chains with other countries even if you want to domesticate production. Political unrest is also bad for business. My head of R&D being snatched up by the FBI or ICE because they said mean things about Elon Musk is bad for my company. Everything going on right now is just telling companies to sit on a pile of cash and wait it out.
One of the areas I'd really hoped the US semiconductor investment act passed a few years ago would focus on are the 'jelly bean' chips / components.
By this point those need to be bog standard, RELIABLE TO SOURCE, commodity components. Like screws, staples, washers and semi-processed materials like rock-board, rolls or spools of metal / thread / cloth etc.
There should be more than one manufacturer, and geographic diversity within a country and among allies to mitigate risk factors like natural disasters and (may we never have to worry about it) attacks by enemies.
It's not just the shiny new leading edge and RnD; the full stack needs to be robust and provide competition to keep everything healthy. That's what a regulated market should offer, value from existing players, and when that fails either helping new entrants compete and see success in the market, or standing up a new government business to sell off (recoup investments, though I'd prefer it took profits and _all profits_ were deducted from the citizen tax base) after it's established.