Texas To Get Multiple New Fabs as Samsung and TI to Spend $47 Billion on New Facilities
by Anton Shilov on November 24, 2021 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Semiconductors
- Samsung
- EUV
- Samsung Foundry
- Texas Instruments
After a year of searching for the right place of its new U.S. fab, Samsung this week announced that it would build a fab near Taylor, Texas. The company will invest $17 billion in the new semiconductor fabrication plant and will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives from local and state authorities. Separately, Texas authorities have announced that Texas Instruments intend to spend $30 billion on new fabs in the state, as well.
Samsung to Spend $17 Billion on New Texas Fab
Samsung yet has to disclose all the details about its fab near Taylor, Texas, but for now the company says that the new fab site will occupy an area of over 5 million square meters and will employ 2,000 workers directly and another 7,000 indirectly. To put the number into context, Samsung's fab near Austin, Texas currently employs about 10,000 of workers.
Samsung will start construction of the new fab in the first half of 2022 and expects it to be operational in the second half of 2024. It usually takes about a year to construct a building for a semiconductor manufacturing facility and then about a year to install and set up all the necessary equipment.
Samsung has not announced which process technologies will be used at its fab near Taylor, Texas, but says it will produce chips for 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and mobile applications, which implies that the fab will gain fairly advanced technologies. In fact, keeping in mind that all of Samsung's nodes thinner than 7 nm rely on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, it is reasonable to expect the new fab to be EUV capable. As a result, Samsung's customers from the U.S. (such as IBM, Nvidia, and Qualcomm) will be able to produce their chips in the U.S. rather than in South Korea, which might allow their developers to address systems used by the U.S. government.
"With greater manufacturing capacity, we will be able to better serve the needs of our customers and contribute to the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain," said Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO, Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division. "In addition to our partners in Texas, we are grateful to the Biden Administration for creating an environment that supports companies like Samsung as we work to expand leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. We also thank the administration and Congress for their bipartisan support to swiftly enact federal incentives for domestic chip production and innovation."
Samsung's new semiconductor production plant will be located 25 kilometers away from the company's fab near Austin, Texas, so the facilities will be able to share infrastructure and resources (such as materials and supplies).
Samsung says that it will spend about $6 billion on construction on the building as well as improvements of the local infrastructure. Tools that will be used by the fab will cost another $11 billion. Meanwhile, to build the new plant Samsung will receive hundreds of millions in incentives from the state, the county, and the city, according to media reports. Some of the packages have not been approved yet.
Texas Instruments to Invest $30 Billion on New U.S. Fabs
Samsung is not the only company to build new fabs in Texas. The Governor of Texas recently announced the Texas Instruments was planning to build several new 300-mm fabs near Sherman. In total, TI intends to build as many as four wafer fabrication facilities in the region over coming decades and the cumulative investments are expected to total $30 billion as fabs will be eventually upgraded.
Texas Instruments itself yet have to formally announce its investments plans, but the announcement by the governor Greg Abbot indicates that the principal decisions have been made and now TI needs to finalize the details.
Sources: Samsung, Austin American-Statesman, Texas.gov
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quorm - Wednesday, November 24, 2021 - link
Seems like the water supply would be a concern, too.Oxford Guy - Thursday, November 25, 2021 - link
This was what I was going to post about.Siphoning all the water from the Great Lakes isn't going to work in the long term, especially given how many states are fighting over it.
mode_13h - Friday, November 26, 2021 - link
> Siphoning all the water from the Great Lakes isn't going to workIs anyone seriously talking about such a thing? Source?
FunBunny2 - Friday, November 26, 2021 - link
"Is anyone seriously talking about such a thing? Source?"yes, just Google it. many stories/reports going back some years. they'll have to do something, a fab requires gazillion gallons of clean water. the Colorado isn't clean, and nearly dried up. there's no meteorological evidence that the Western Drought is about to end. water restrictions, esp. on the Southern Basin, have already been enforced, and next year they get worse. I guess Samsung/Abbott figure they can take it from farmers and families?
mode_13h - Friday, November 26, 2021 - link
> yes, just Google it. many stories/reports going back some years.Are we still talking about Texas, or do you mean like northern plains states?
> they'll have to do something, a fab requires gazillion gallons of clean water. the Colorado isn't clean
The Colorado River? It doesn't even go through Texas! Maybe you mean the Rio Grande? ...but that's still far west of Austin. Austin isn't even in its drainage basin.
I'm looking at a map of the Austin area, and the city seems surrounded by lakes on pretty much all sides. Unless their water levels are historically low, it seems like the fab can probably get enough water.
Billy Bob VanHalen - Friday, November 26, 2021 - link
Issues regarding the "Colorado River" are more of a concern for fabs in the Phoenix\Chandler, Arizona area, though even there most of the fabs' water comes from underground wells and aquifers. There is another river called "Colorado River" that runs through Texas, including Austin, but I don't think its water is the primary source for Texas fabs either.mode_13h - Saturday, November 27, 2021 - link
> Issues regarding the "Colorado River" are more of a concern for fabs> in the Phoenix\Chandler, Arizona area
Wow. Good point. I wonder how much ground water is remaining, and what they do with the waste water.
FunBunny2 - Saturday, November 27, 2021 - link
" I wonder how much ground water is remaining, and what they do with the waste water."go one more page of comments (as I type), and I've linked to a vewy, vewy recent report on aquifer drainage. it isn't pretty. the largest mid-continent is the Ogallala, and it's in bad shape from farmers sucking it dry. the thing is: it and some/many others are ancestral water, which means from millions of years ago (geologically capped) with no possibility of re-charge from rainfall; once it's gone, it's forever.
mode_13h - Sunday, November 28, 2021 - link
> with no possibility of re-charge from rainfall; once it's gone, it's forever.That's an interesting idea. Of course, you couldn't replace at the same rate that it's lost, but I wonder if there would be some ways to channel smaller tributaries into bore holes that feed down into the water table. Obviously, too much of that sort of thing would starve downstream rivers. But, at least for flooding events, downstream residents would appreciate not having rivers breech their levees.
Not speaking specifically of West Texas, but rather some places that use well water to supplement occasionally abundant rainfall, like farther north.
jrbales@outlook.com - Saturday, November 27, 2021 - link
Let Google be your friend. Pull up "Austin, TX" and zoom in. You'll find that in Texas, there is indeed a river called the Colorado. The river has several dams along it that impound large reservoirs, which is probably where they plan to get the water.