Does anyone have any insight on how they make it economically viable?
US salaries are astronomically high compared to the rest of the world. In the tech sector that's doubly so. Everything is incredibly expensive there. Is this basically a small facility to keep some politicians happy?
Or is it used to provide some supply military gear at 50x the price?
Will it get shut down in a few years once everyone forgets about it?
Intel has a fab a few miles away, and setting aside Intel's challenges, they're producing chips just fine. Semiconductor production is massively automated and the wafers are ludicrously high revenue/margin products. This isn't like using US labor to stitch t-shirts.
semi manufacturing is highly automated, and not much of the cost is labor.
Just print more money, it's a matter of national security. If the US is in a distrustful state, it's a good investment for the government, military or non-military (e.g. global trade getting more expensive for various reasons).
This is the culmination of years of work, not months, as the article suggests. I prefer the actual press release.
This is incredible news!
I never thought this would happen, or that if it did, we'd be a few generations behind.
Now let's onshore or friendshore everything else we need! Rare earths, mid-tier processors, chemical precursors, pharmaceuticals, steel, robotics/mechatronics, solar, drones, ...
Why even stop there? Kill the Jones Act, get back to building naval drones and ships of all kinds, ...
It is a few generations behind: Blackwell is still on N4, which is an N5 variant. Meanwhile TSMC has been shipping N3 family processes in large volume products (Apple) for more than 2 years already, and is starting to ramp the next major node family (N2) for Apple et al. next year.
NVIDIA has often lagged on process, since they drive such large dies, but having the first major project demo wafer on N4 now is literally 2 generations behind Taiwan.
It's a couple process generations behind, but Blackwell is literally nvidia's most current generation. They don't ship N3 until the next generation.
When was the last time current gen, competitive GPUs were fabbed outside Asia?
If only Kim Il Sung were still alive to hear you
So "This is the vision of President Trump of reindustrialization" but it's been in the works for "a few short years"?
Well yeah, but the current administration hates the prior administration and loves having its ass kissed.
If they credited Biden, they would get their funding pulled, and possibly some ICE folks to black bag employees on their way in to let the courts sort out later.
Or they blow hot air up Trump's butt and make him feel like a big man and they get more funding without getting harrassed.
Obvious choice to make.
Wow. This is a big deal. I had placed a bet that this will never work out and the folks on the ground thought the same too. This probably is going to be the lasting legacy of Biden administration.
Background: The CHIPS and Science Act, which is the key legislation behind the major incentives and on-shoring of semiconductor manufacturing in general and this achievement specifically, was signed into law by Biden on August 9, 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act
Meanwhile the rest of the world:
"Wow...great. Moved from one unstable part of the planet to another..."
What other options are there for Nvidia? EU as a whole is largely non-viable due to the schizophrenic nature of EU regulations. AI development has been made de-facto illegal in EU, auto industry is being ran to the ground, so there are hardly any customers for GPU's. Now mainland China certainly would be an interesting option, but State Department would throw a shitfit.
> due to the schizophrenic nature of EU regulations.
You mean like having to read the new tariffs you're subjected to every monday?
Most of the monopolies in the GPU supply chain (ASML, Zeiss etc.) are European companies. The “EU has no AI” narrative is mostly pushed by VCs so they can keep raising funds from European investors.
> the schizophrenic nature of EU regulations
Wait until you hear about US regulations. Are tariffs on or off again in the last five minutes?