Texas To Get Multiple New Fabs as Samsung and TI to Spend $47 Billion on New Facilities
by Anton Shilov on November 24, 2021 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Semiconductors
- Samsung
- EUV
- Samsung Foundry
- Texas Instruments
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.
Samsung to Spend $17 Billion on New Texas Fab
Samsung yet has to disclose all the details about its fab near Taylor, Texas, but for now the company says that the new fab site will occupy an area of over 5 million square meters and will employ 2,000 workers directly and another 7,000 indirectly. To put the number into context, Samsung's fab near Austin, Texas currently employs about 10,000 of workers.
Samsung will start construction of the new fab in the first half of 2022 and expects it to be operational in the second half of 2024. It usually takes about a year to construct a building for a semiconductor manufacturing facility and then about a year to install and set up all the necessary equipment.
Samsung has not announced which process technologies will be used at its fab near Taylor, Texas, but says it will produce chips for 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and mobile applications, which implies that the fab will gain fairly advanced technologies. In fact, keeping in mind that all of Samsung's nodes thinner than 7 nm rely on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, it is reasonable to expect the new fab to be EUV capable. As a result, Samsung's customers from the U.S. (such as IBM, Nvidia, and Qualcomm) will be able to produce their chips in the U.S. rather than in South Korea, which might allow their developers to address systems used by the U.S. government.
"With greater manufacturing capacity, we will be able to better serve the needs of our customers and contribute to the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain," said Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO, Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division. "In addition to our partners in Texas, we are grateful to the Biden Administration for creating an environment that supports companies like Samsung as we work to expand leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. We also thank the administration and Congress for their bipartisan support to swiftly enact federal incentives for domestic chip production and innovation."
Samsung's new semiconductor production plant will be located 25 kilometers away from the company's fab near Austin, Texas, so the facilities will be able to share infrastructure and resources (such as materials and supplies).
Samsung says that it will spend about $6 billion on construction on the building as well as improvements of the local infrastructure. Tools that will be used by the fab will cost another $11 billion. Meanwhile, to build the new plant Samsung will receive hundreds of millions in incentives from the state, the county, and the city, according to media reports. Some of the packages have not been approved yet.
Texas Instruments to Invest $30 Billion on New U.S. Fabs
Samsung is not the only company to build new fabs in Texas. 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 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.
Sources: Samsung, Austin American-Statesman, Texas.gov
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Oxford Guy - Monday, November 29, 2021 - link
All posts promoting Texas need to be deleted as well, such as the one that claims people should go there for the ‘good schools’. That’s a highly subjective claim.My pointing out of Wikipedia’s ranking of Texas as 50th in the nation in recent times in educational attainment is factual. What’s far more political is censoring that information and leaving only promotional claims.
Oxford Guy - Monday, November 29, 2021 - link
It’s also impossible to put political facts into your article about how this fab’s site was chosen (‘incentives’) without talking about politics.Are fabs now going to be delivered by stork in a bundle — because no one is allowed to talk about the facts of tech life?
FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 2, 2021 - link
"not a politics blog"the choice of siting had absolutely nothing to do with the taxpayer funded sweeteners provided, without voters' approval?? no politics in such siting decisions??
Oxford Guy - Saturday, December 4, 2021 - link
It is with voter approval, though. Doublethink is par for the course. Politicians are elected via the palatability of their lies, consistent (rather than selective) truth-telling being extremely unpalatable. I coined an 'Internet law' that states if you haven't been banned from a forum it's because you've not said anything new there. That's humanity in a nutshell — knee-jerk resistance to new information. I didn't get that insight all by myself. I remember a lecture from a sociology prof about what happened to the first dentist who used anesthesia in his practice. Repackage known information (hindsight bias is pleasant) and you'll do fine politically — so long as you look the part. Try something new and be prepared for pitchforks and hounds.'We oppose government subsidies. We think big government should be eliminated, which means low taxes and low regulation.'
They get the low regulation part right but not the low taxes bit. Every cost is a tax, including environmental degradation. They certainly don't oppose government subsidies. This 'fiscal conservatism' really means a combination of pure ignorance (doublethink and distraction that politicians are masters of — plus lack of understanding of the basics of economics) plus hypocrisy (government subsidies being fine as long as they seem to be benefiting me rather than those other undeserving people over there).
For voters who don't agree, there are LRADs. So, consent is manufactured in a variety of ways.
mode_13h - Saturday, December 4, 2021 - link
> if you haven't been banned from a forum it's because you've not said anything new there.A lot of people get banned from forums without contributing anything of value. Sure, institutions tend to have a bias against revolutionary ideas, but that doesn't mean every idea they oppose has merit or thinker they ostracize isn't truly a crackpot.
Oxford Guy - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Occam's Razor isn't always correct either. Nonetheless, heuristic statements can be useful.mode_13h - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Occam's razor is useful only as an investigative tool. It has no explanatory power.That analogy is not informative, nor was it necessary.
Oxford Guy - Monday, December 27, 2021 - link
Translation: You didn't understand it.mode_13h - Saturday, December 4, 2021 - link
> 'We oppose government subsidies. ... low taxes and low regulation.'A point seemingly lost on many is that tax breaks == subsidies. They both have the same effect on government budgets, yet somehow tax breaks are more acceptable.
FunBunny2 - Monday, December 6, 2021 - link
"yet somehow tax breaks are more acceptable."ummmmmm but doesn't the high income/wealth class benefit bunches more from tax breaks than the hoi poloi??? I mean, isn't the Damn Gummint supposed to stay out of our lives?