Biden ships $6.6B to Arizona center, touting major steps forward in U.S. chip manufacturing

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday announced a $6.6 billion grant to Taiwan’s largest chipmaker to produce semiconductors in the southwestern U.S. state of Arizona, including a third factory that will give the foreign tech giant a presence in the state. investment reached US$65 billion.

Biden said the move was aimed at boosting the U.S. chip manufacturing industry, which has been sluggish for decades.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), based on an island claimed by China, claims Accounting for more than half of the global market Chip manufacturing share.

Biden said the new factory will put the United States on track to produce 20% of the world’s cutting-edge semiconductors by 2030.

“I am determined to turn this around, and thanks to my CHIP and Science Act – a key part of my Invest in America agenda – semiconductor manufacturing and jobs are making a comeback,” Biden said in a statement.

Andy Wang, dean of the College of Engineering at Northern Arizona University, said U.S. production of this U.S.-origin technology has declined dramatically in recent decades.

“As a country, we used to produce 40 percent of the microchips for the world,” he told VOA. “Right now, our production is less than 10%.”

A single semiconductor transistor is smaller than a grain of sand. But billions of people, neatly brought together, can connect to the world via mobile phones, control sophisticated weapons of war and satellites orbiting the Earth, and one day even drive cars.

The huge value of these tiny chips has fueled fierce competition between the United States and China.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has taken a number of measures to hinder China’s efforts to build its own chip industry. These include export controls and new rules to prevent “countries of foreign concern” (allegedly including China, Iran, North Korea and Russia) from benefiting from CHIPS and Science Act funds.

While analysts are divided over whether Taiwan’s dominance of this key industry makes it more or less vulnerable to Chinese aggression, they agree that it gives Taiwan an important global status.

“The role, if any, that Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing capabilities play in deterrence is debatable,” said David Sacks. An analyst focusing on Sino-U.S. relations At the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is no dispute about how damaging an attack on Taiwan would be on the global economy.”

Biden did not mention U.S. adversaries in his statement, but he noted the impact of Monday’s announcement, saying it “represents the broader story of semiconductor manufacturing that is made in the United States and is strongly supported by America’s leading technology companies to produce products.” “We rely on it every day. “

VOA met with engineers in the new technology hub state who said the legislation addresses a key weakness in U.S. chip manufacturing.

“We’re just entering the cycle of the last 15 to 20 years where innovation has slowed,” said Todd Achilles, who teaches innovation, strategy and policy analysis at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s all about financial performance, investor spending and stock buybacks. We’ve lost the power of innovation. And the CHIPS Act — combining that with the CHIPS Act — is a great way to restore that Chance.”

The White House said the new investment could create 25,000 construction and manufacturing jobs. Academics say they are producing workers quickly, but the U.S. is still short of talent.

“Our College of Engineering is the largest in the nation, with more than 33,000 enrolled students, yet we still hear from companies in the semiconductor industry that they are unable to obtain the talent they need in a timely manner,” said Associate Dean Zachary Holman Zachary Holman, Arizona State University’s Research and Innovation Award, told VOA.

As U.S. industry continues to keep pace, it’s racing against a technology trend known as a “t”: The number of transistors in a computer chip doubles roughly every two years. So as computing power increases, cutting-edge chips get smaller.

TSMC broke ground in 2022 on a factory to produce the smallest chips currently available, measuring 3 nanometers, just wider than a strand of DNA.

Reporter Levi Stallings contributed to this report in Flagstaff, Arizona.