Enjoy not buying any chips next time there is a supply chain hiccup. If COVID didn't teach you this lesson, I don't think you're teachable.

If you're making a product one of the considerations you make is how robust your supply chain is. If you fail to make that consideration you will get eaten by the organizations that do, on a long enough timescale.

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azlev 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

COVID was a 2 year period in a century. It's way cheaper to assume this risk than pay a premium all the time.

The main issue here is political.

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crote 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Two issues there.

First, high-end chips have essentially a single global market. Compared to the value of the product, transport cost is negligible. If a TSMC Taiwan factory has an oopsie, all its customers are going to be buying from your local US plant - so you are still ending up having to deal with the effects of a significantly higher demand. AMD unable to ship? Expect Intel to go out of stock rather quickly as well.

Second, the chip manufacturing supply chain. Having a local chip factory is nice and all, but where is that factory getting its supplies and equipment from? Most of it does not come from the US, so during another COVID your local chip factory might still be forced to shut down. This also applies downstream: what use is a fancy high-end CPU if you can't find anyone locally to produce all the trivial parts you need to support it? Who is going to manufacture those trivial-yet-essential $0.05 connectors and $0.001 capacitors or resistors? That has all been outsourced to Asia decades ago.

A single US plant isn't going to do anything for your supply chain robustness. You're going to have to rethink the entire chain and each step is going to be 20% more expensive, so better prepare for a doubling or tripling of the final product price.

Local factories are nice for the defense industry, where the confidentiality needs due to national security might warrant the premium. But regular consumer chips? You'll be paying a huge premium just so a politician can get a couple of favorable headlines, often without there actually being a significant impact to the local economy.

	▲	fc417fc802 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Manufacturing of the trivial items can be brought online in a reasonable timeframe. The lead time on a modern process node on the other hand is measured in years, and that's when you already know what you're doing. China still hasn't achieved state of the art even after everything they've invested over the past 20 years or so. > You'll be paying a huge premium just so a politician can get a couple of favorable headlines You're paying a premium to reduce the cross section of risk that your local economy is exposed to. The cost savings of globalization do not come without their own downsides.