Taiwan’s TSMC will make 3-nanometer chips in $12B factory in Arizona

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC announced with President Joe Biden that it will build a $12 billion factory in Arizona where it will build three-nanometer chips.

Biden and TSMC execs such as CEO Morris Chang was on hand for the announcement in Arizona. Both Apple and Nvidia are expected to be the first customers for the chips, which have circuits that are three billionths of a meter apart.

“Chips are the engines that modernize and automate the world, driving human progress,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, in a statement. “The future of humanity is tied to the chip industry. TSMC is the bedrock of the world’s chip industry. From our beginning, NVIDIA has entrusted TSMC as we invented the GPU and accelerated computing, and revolutionized 3D graphics, scientific computing, AI and self-driving cars. Our ongoing work on drug discovery and climate science would not be possible without them. Bringing TSMC’s investment to the United States is a masterstroke and a game-changing development for the industry.”

During the summer, Congress passed a bipartisan bill and Biden signed the Chips and Science Act. Based on the Build Back Better promise, the bill provides $52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor production and research.  

Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, also spoke at the event.

“At AMD, we are all about pushing the envelope in high performance and adaptive computing to solve the world’s most important challenges,” Su said in a statement. “As the leader in semiconductor manufacturing, TSMC enables us to focus on what we do best: designing innovative chips that change the world.  A strong, geographically diverse, and resilient supply chain is essential to the global semiconductor industry. TSMC’s investment and expansion in Arizona is extremely important and mission critical for both the semiconductor industry and our extended ecosystem of partners and customers. AMD expects to be a significant user of the TSMC Arizona fabs and we look forward to building our highest performance chips in the United States.”