TSMC To Build Advanced Semiconductor Factory In Arizona

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract manufacturer of silicon chips, is set to announce plans to build an advanced chip factory in Arizona (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) as U.S. concerns grow about dependence on Asia for the critical technology. The plans come as the Trump administration has sought to jump-start development of new chip factories in the U.S. due to rising fears about the U.S.'s heavy reliance on Taiwan, China and South Korea to produce microelectronics and other key technologies.

TSMC is expected to announce the plans as soon as Friday after making the decision at a board meeting on Tuesday in Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter. The factory could be producing chips by the end of 2023 at the earliest, they said, adding that both the State and Commerce Departments are involved in the plans. TSMC's new plant would make chips branded as having 5-nanometer transistors, the tiniest, fastest and most power-efficient ones manufactured today, according to a person familiar with the plans. TSMC just started rolling out 5-nanometer chips for customers to test at a factory in Taiwan in recent months. It is unclear how much TSMC has budgeted or if it would get financial incentives from the U.S. to build. A factory capable of making the most advanced chips would almost certainly cost more than $10 billion, according to industry executives.

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Apple will likely begin selling Macs with its own processors in 2021

This news report from Bloomberg cites sources close to Apple who say that Apple is on track to introduce Macs running in-house CPUs and GPUs in 2021. The chips the company is developing are codenamed Kalamata.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Apple’s partner for iPhone and iPad processors, will build the new Mac chips, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private product plans. The components will be based on a 5-nanometer production technique, the same size Apple will use in the next iPhones and iPad Pros, one of the people said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment, as did Intel and TSMC.

Apple developing multiple Mac chips may be a clue that Apple may not just be thinking about a single new Mac laptop based on in-house silicon but an entire line. It's not clear from this whether these will be additive to the current, Intel-based lineup or whether Apple will began replacing Macs in its current lineup with computers built with these chips in mind. The report does say that one of the chips Apple is developing will be "much faster" than those used in the iPhone or iPad, though they will not yet be sufficient to replace the fastest Intel chips in the MacBook Pro or Mac Pro. Like those iPhone and iPad chips, though, these Mac chips would be built using a 5-nanometer production technique, and they would be made by TSMC.

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