TSMC had promised to make a $40 billion investment in its US chip production plant. The investment represents the largest ever foreign investment in Arizona and one of the largest in US history.
Micron said it might spend up to $100 billion over the next 20 years to expand its US facilities, including a $15 billion memory chip plant in its home base of Boise, ID.
Industry analysts say the CHIPS Act is having its desired effect — the largest semiconductor designers and makers are investing in the US. By 2030, research firm IDC expects that 30% of the leading edge chip techology will be produced in the US, Western Europe, and Japan.
“Today, the semiconductor supply chain is concentrated in Asia,” said Mario Morales, a group vice president at IDC. “In fact, 100% of the global leading-edge chip capacity — 5nm and below — is only available in Taiwan and Korea. This will change dramatically by the end of the decade as leading-edge manufacturing is reestablished in the western hemisphere and in Japan.”
The latest round of CHIPS Act funding will support Micron’s construction of the first two fabs of a planned four-building “megafab” focused on leading-edge DRAM chip production. Each fab will have 600,000 square feet of cleanrooms, totaling 2.4 million square feet across the four facilities — the largest amount of cleanroom space ever announced in the US and the size of nearly 40 football fields.
The CHIPS Act’s purpose was to strengthen American supply chain resilience after the pandemic and counter China’s rising share of the market. The US share of global semiconductor fabrication capacity has fallen from about 36% in 1990 to about 10% in 2020, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Meanwhile, China’s share of chip manufacturing has grown nearly 50% over the past two years and now comprises about 18% of the world’s supply.
