GoKawiilApple chipmaker TSMC had already said that it would build a total of eight plants in Arizona, and has now announced an investment boost that could see that number increased to 12.
This could potentially see more chips for Apple devices made in the US, but there are reasons to be skeptical about this possibility …
TSMC’s Arizona chip plants
It’s almost exactly a year to the day since TSMC said that it would be accelerating the construction of its second and third Arizona plants. Apple was slated to be the first customer of that third facility.
Some had expressed skepticism about how meaningful US chip production would be for Apple devices. That’s in part because TSMC deliberately restricts its most advanced processes to fabrication plants in its own home country of Taiwan. It would be impossible to make chips for the latest Apple devices using any of the planned US plants.
That means only chips for older Apple devices could be made, typically those around three generations old. Even there, there was skepticism as the raw chips are only one step in the process. Apple’s chips are really clusters of several different chips brought together in a process known as “packaging,” and the original plan was for US-made chips to be shipped back to Taiwan for this.
This led to one analyst describing the Arizona plant as a “paperweight.” There was brief talk of using a third-party US company to do the packaging, before TSMC said it would create its own chip-packaging facilities in the US.
Since then, the total number of planned US plants had grown to eight.
New investment could see 12 US plants
The Trump administration has now announced that TSMC has agreed to invest an additional $100 billion in US facilities. It claims this will result in a total of 12 Arizona plants – though this includes packaging as well as chipmaking facilities.
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