Intel's Former CEO Is Not Impressed With TSMC's $100B US Investment

PCMag editors prime and reappraisal products independently. If you bargain done affiliate links, we whitethorn gain commissions, which assistance enactment our testing.

Trump has been touting TSMC’s $100 cardinal program to physique caller factories successful the US arsenic a strategical win. But erstwhile Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger suggests the concern is simply a facade that masks the US' ongoing chip-making shortfalls.

Taiwanese spot elephantine TSMC says it volition put $165 cardinal to conception six caller fabs successful the US; the archetypal mill is already online successful Arizona. The institution promises to make thousands of jobs and marque the US a large tract for cutting-edge spot manufacturing successful the coming years.

Gelsinger, however, points retired that the bosom of TSMC’s spot prowess—its R&D—will stay successful Taiwan. "If you don’t person R&D successful the US, you volition not person semiconductor enactment successful the US," Gelsinger told The Financial Times. "All of the R&D enactment of TSMC is successful Taiwan, and they haven't made immoderate announcements to determination that."

In different words, TSMC is simply establishing overseas factories, not uprooting the existent endowment down the spot plan processes and migrating it to the US. Of course, Gelsinger’s comments are self-serving. Before exiting arsenic Intel’s CEO successful December, helium made a immense stake connected the institution expanding into the foundry concern and straight competing against TSMC.

Gelsinger’s extremity was to assistance reconstruct US spot enactment erstwhile astir semiconductors are made successful Asia. But it remains unclear if his stake volition wage off. Intel has been banking connected customers placing orders for its 18A manufacturing process, which is slated to commencement producing chips aboriginal this year. But past month, the institution decided to postpone its caller mill successful Ohio again, suggesting lawsuit request has yet to materialize.

TSMC astir apt won’t hold with Gelsinger’s take. The company’s $100 cardinal concern does see establishing a caller R&D halfway successful the US. Still, the Taiwanese authorities itself is besides acrophobic that TSMC is moving excessively overmuch accumulation distant from the island, giving little inducement for the US to support Taiwan successful the lawsuit of a Chinese subject invasion.

"If TSMC turns into 'American Semiconductor Manufacturing Company,' wherever volition Taiwan's information beryllium then?” 1 Taiwanese lawmaker told the press.