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日本Yee haw! Some good old American Silicon – Apple to buy chips for TSMC’s new Arizona brand
While Taiwan has been the semiconductor capital of the world, the West has invested a lot in having a reliable and sustained supply of chips for all types of industries. However, with the political situation between China and Taiwan being what it is, it makes sense for manufacturing plants to be built close to home. This is how we get an Intel plant in Italy and a TSMC plant in Arizona, which will use the latest technologies for the ever-expanding market.
Now, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple has confirmed that the company is going to be one of the first customers to buy chips from this new plant. This is a very swift development, as the company is becoming more independent, designing its own chips which are then to be manufactured by TSMC.
The plant will produce 4nm chips, which will fit nicely inside the new iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. TSMC is already producing most of Apple’s SoCs, all the way in Taiwan, but as the company tries to move manufacturing to the States, they are building not one but two fabrication plants in Arizona.
The first one will open in 2024, while the second one has a date of 2026. The first plant’s capacity can manufacture 20000 wafers per month, one-third of which is reserved by Apple. This leaves the rest for other companies to swallow up. Also, TSMC is looking at the future with these plants, as they will be able to move to make 3nm chips in the future.
As for what you can do now, you can certainly take a look at the M2-powered MacBook laptops, which are total beasts when it comes to pound-for-pound performance.
Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022): Full Specs / In-depth Review
Apple MacBook Pro 13 (M2, 2022): Full Specs / In-depth Review
