Wesley Hilliard
A in-person visit to a TSMC plant has granted rare insight into the company that's responsible for the trillions of transistors running the world's processors, including Apple's.
TSMC is a highly secretive company churning out one of the world's most valuable assets — semiconductors. Apple is one of its many customers which needs parts for its proprietary Apple Silicon.
The report is sourced from Virginia Heffernan, writing for Wired, who was able to visit a TSMC plant in person. The journey to the fab was documented along with the visit itself, and we've pulled some interesting information from the story.
According to Heffernan, one of TSMC's 13 foundries carves and etches a quintillion transistors for Apple. The specific fab for this is Fab 18 in Tainan.
TSMC is a popular company to work for, with its 20,000 technicians that make up only one-third of the workforce. The starting salary for an engineer is equivalent to about $5,400 per month — in a place where rent is about $450 for a one-bedroom.
Heffernan met with TSMC chairman Mark Liu during her visit. They discussed the company and why religion is a common aspect among employees.
"We are doing atomic constructions," Liu told Heffernan. "I tell my engineers, 'Think like an atomic-sized person.'"
He also cited a passage from Proverbs: "It's the glory of God to conceal matter. But to search out the matter is the glory of men."
Heffernan noted that TSMC engineers view American engineers as "babies" who are mentally unequipped to run a state-of-the-art fab. This was in response to Americans reacting to the plant's conditions during an overseas training session, referring to them as "sweatshops."
TSMC is expected to open a plant in Arizona after investing $40 billion into bringing fabrication stateside. Once operational, Apple will be among its initial customers for US-made chips.
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14 Comments
"A in-person visit" should be "An in-person visit".
"$450 for a one-bedroom." should be "$450 for a one-bedroom apartment."
On the subject of the matter, the comment that American engineers regard TSMC's working conditions as "sweatshop", we in the UK would have the same comment about US work and pay - long hours and little annual paid holiday. Then the average European would think the same about us in the UK. It appears there is a hierarchy. It is probably best to be a worker in Spain or France where the hours are short, they have siestas, 6 weeks+ annual paid holiday, a high statutory minimum wage, early retirement and very generous pensions. If you are the owner of a business, the opposite is true. Working conditions in Taiwan are like those in the UK 100 years ago and the US is somewhere in between.
I saw a term the other day that I had not previously seen— “computational lithography.”
It made me realize there’s a LOT more to fabbing these chips than what happens inside the fab.
Such an odd little collection of take-always from what should be a deep technical dive.
I’ll say this again, the talent that work in those super high tech facilities are highly desired and well paid. Companies in Europe and the US will love to recruit them and offer them citizenship. It is naive to assume they are underpaid. They own nice homes and drive expensive cars. As with every other manufacturer, there’s crunch time and these facilities offer boarding so they don’t have to drive hours from work to home.
A high tech facility will not risk hiring someone who has no experience around sensitive equipment.