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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mode_13h - Tuesday, November 30, 2021 - link
> I'd like to see a grid that DOESN'T struggle under weather deemed completely impossible.It *wasn't* deemed completely impossible. In fact, it has actually happened before, after which Texas was advised to winterize their grid, which they didn't do.
Also, you realize that much of the country has weather like that every year, and its grid stays up?
Let's hope lessons have been learned.
FunBunny2 - Monday, December 6, 2021 - link
"Also, you realize that much of the country has weather like that every year, and its grid stays up?"being a business-friendly sort of state, and where the wealthy have plenty of Generac, etc., power available, TX gummint makes the same calculation wrt durability as the fab owners do: is the financial loss of lost power greater (amortized/discounted) greater than the cost of replacement power (ditto)? since those impacted by grid failure are largely of the poorer classes, and the wealthy classes don't care, then there's no reason to invest in grid durability. welcome to laissez faire Darwinism.
the usually cold states, north of the Mason-Dixon line, have snowy, cold winters as a matter of course. there/here such weather is a multiple times per season event. not so much in TX.
Alistair - Thursday, November 25, 2021 - link
Texas and Florida are massive and everyone is trying to move there. California and New York are the states everyone is trying to move away from. When I see comments like "why Texas" I kind of laugh. Have you been there? It is perpetual boom town.Alistair - Thursday, November 25, 2021 - link
As long as they keep the cost of living down and the politicians are sane, it will keep on booming.--- "Texas is the second most-populated state with over 29 million people, behind California. ... Texas is growing at a rate like California never did… and that is setting a standard where Texas might surpass California in 20 to 30 years rather than 50" ---
mode_13h - Friday, November 26, 2021 - link
(a couple replies about Texas politics were deleted.)Oxford Guy - Monday, November 29, 2021 - link
Wikipedia has an article about the educational attainment stats for the 50 states.I have tried now two times to point out that the data that ranked Texas last (high school graduate percentage as I recall) points to the challenge in terms of the lasting effects of an undereducated population.
For unknown reason(s) the posts are being censored. Anyone can read the ranking history on Wikipedia. It’s a matter of basic factual historical record.
There is no credible justification for deleting the posts. I thought this place was supposed to be fact-based rather than propagandistic.
That this censorship began after I strongly criticized Mode for using ad hominems constantly doesn’t seem to be coincidental. It seems like retaliation.
mode_13h - Tuesday, November 30, 2021 - link
> That this censorship began after I strongly criticized ModeLOL. It has nothing to do with you & me, and probably everything to do with the subject matter of the article.
mode_13h - Thursday, November 25, 2021 - link
Much of Florida will have routine flooding problems, in our lifetimes. They also have lots of hurricanes there.I wouldn't put New York on the same level as California. Probably taxes and regulations are heavier than Texas, but it's a big state and probably doesn't have nearly the amount of issues that you'd face in California.
mode_13h - Friday, November 26, 2021 - link
Wow, there's some major censorship in this thread. Several posts I thought weren't particularly off-topic have been deleted.I don't think any ToS or forum policies were violated, at least in the ones I recall. Not a good precedent, Anandtech.
Ryan Smith - Saturday, November 27, 2021 - link
We're a computer technology site, not a politics blog. If you want to argue politics, I encourage you to go somewhere else.