More Apple chips are set to be made in the US as TSMC said it is busy accelerating the construction of its second and third Arizona plants, fulfilling a promise made back in March.
The chipmaker is bringing more advanced processes to the US earlier than initially expected, allowing it to make chips for more recent Apple products …
‘Made in America’ Apple chips
Apple first announced its plan for ‘Made in America’ chips back in 2022, with the news hailed as one of the success stories of the US CHIPS Act. The initiative will see a series of TSMC chipmaking plants built in Arizona, with some of the production reserved for Apple chips.
TSMC deliberately limits its most advanced chipmaking capabilities to its home territory of Taiwan, meaning its US plants can only make chips for older Apple devices. However, the company recently promised to accelerate the pace of development, meaning it will eventually be making chips for products around three generations old, rather than the previous 4-5 years.
The chipmaker broke ground on its third US plant back in April, with Apple CEO Tim Cook expressing his pride at being the first customer for the facility. We also recently got a rare glimpse inside the first Arizona plant.
TSMC accelerating construction of US plants
Nikkea Asia reports the company announcing accelerated construction of the next two plants.
TSMC says it is speeding up construction of its second and third plants in Arizona “by several quarters” to meet robust demand from U.S.-based customers for smartphone and AI computing chips […]
“After completion, around 30% of our 2-nanometer and more advanced [chip] capacity will be located in Arizona, creating an independent, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing cluster in the U.S.,” TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei told investors and reporters in an earnings conference on Thursday.
There had initially been some skepticism about how meaningful US chip production really was, 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. Two such facilities are now in the works.
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