Texas Instruments To Invest $60 Billion To Make Semiconductors In US (cnbc.com) 33
Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares news that Texas Instruments has announced plans to invest more than $60 billion to expand its U.S. manufacturing operations in the United States. From a report: The funds will be used to build or expand seven chip-making facilities in Texas as well as Utah, and will create 60,000 jobs, TI said on Wednesday, calling it the "largest investment in foundational semiconductor manufacturing in U.S. history." The company did not give a timeline for the investment.
Unlike AI chip firms Nvidia and AMD, TI makes analog or foundational chips used in everyday devices such as smartphones, cars and medical devices, giving it a large client base that includes Apple, SpaceX and Ford Motor. The spending pledge follows similar announcements from others in the semiconductor industry, including Micron, which said last week that it would expand its U.S. investment by $30 billion, taking its planned spending to $200 billion. [...]
Like other companies unveiling such spending commitments, TI's announcement includes funds already allocated to facilities that are either under construction or ramping up. It will build two additional plants in Sherman, Texas, based on future demand. "TI is building dependable, low-cost 300 millimeter capacity at scale to deliver the analog and embedded processing chips that are vital for nearly every type of electronic system," said CEO Haviv Ilan.
Unlike AI chip firms Nvidia and AMD, TI makes analog or foundational chips used in everyday devices such as smartphones, cars and medical devices, giving it a large client base that includes Apple, SpaceX and Ford Motor. The spending pledge follows similar announcements from others in the semiconductor industry, including Micron, which said last week that it would expand its U.S. investment by $30 billion, taking its planned spending to $200 billion. [...]
Like other companies unveiling such spending commitments, TI's announcement includes funds already allocated to facilities that are either under construction or ramping up. It will build two additional plants in Sherman, Texas, based on future demand. "TI is building dependable, low-cost 300 millimeter capacity at scale to deliver the analog and embedded processing chips that are vital for nearly every type of electronic system," said CEO Haviv Ilan.
How many of those jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
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I find that the assertion of 60K jobs in seven plants to be failing the smell test. That would be 8,571 people per plant. Mr. Google pants show me that on average a chip plant employed 2,200 for a 24/7/365 operation and that the job curve is skewed to warehousing, custodial, and security, with relatively few making more than 40K, slightly above poverty wages ($32,150 for a family of 4).
My suspicion, with no real evidence other than history, is that the announcement is a targeted effort to please the vanity
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It's TI, not Foxconn. They have been operating second tier fabs in the US for decades.
Re:How many of those jobs (Score:4, Informative)
TI already produces huge amounts of ICs in Texas and have new major units coming online every year for the next decade. They are not a vapor merchant.
Hadn't heard much about TI for a while (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't that the company that was regarded as a law firm with a silicon foundry?
Guess it pays well. I have a friend retired from TI about a decade back. Money, they have.
Re:Hadn't heard much about TI for a while (Score:4, Informative)
If you do any EE work today you'll find that almost all the other chip companies have been bought by either TI or Analog Devices. Onsemi is still around and they now own Fairchild.
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If you do any EE work today you'll find that almost all the other chip companies have been bought by either TI or Analog Devices
Indeed. Between Analog and TI, the bulk of the entire high spec conversion chip market (ADC/DAC) is locked up. Maxim, Linear, Hittite and others were gobbled up by Analog. TI grabbed National, Burr-Brown and others.
Naturally, prices are high, innovation is slow and supply is limited. Garden variety oligopoly.
These devices are critical to every non-trivial sensor and communication system. Military applications are legion. And now basically two companies have it all locked up, yet I don't expect any
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High spec ADC/DAC products are close to the theoretical maximum performance, not a lot of reason to expect "innovation" unless you have new physics.
And prices remain pretty low, there's strong competition between ADI and TI in this area, and lots of lower cost vendors. Monolithic Power Systems ($2B revenue, based in Seattle) will eat their lunch with almost-as-good chips if they try to raise prices very much.
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We might be hitting noise floors near physical limits, but there's plenty of room for innovation -- interfaces, processing, integration, etc. But little incentive for this to happen with so much concentration in the marketplace.
> And prices remain pretty low,
If you want a 12-ENOB 2.5GSPS DAC, you're paying hundreds of dollars; this isn't *extremely* high end, either. Prices haven't really been falling on the high end for several years.
> Monolithic Power Systems
They don't make any "high-spec" SKUs an
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ADI has $9B revenue and ON has $7B, so they're not only "still around" but they've been actively competing in the industry consolidation.
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You might be thinking of NVidia, which has used aggressive tactics to block competitors. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/d... [cbsnews.com]
Texas Instruments, by contrast, has been quietly making the basic, un-flashy chips used in all kinds of electronics from microwave ovens to cars. That's probably why you don't hear much about them, their products are not on store shelves, they are in the products on store shelves. For that reason, they don't have to advertise in places regular people see ads.
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I like their analog stuff: Control ICs for switchmode power supplies, load switches, gate drivers, linear regulators, opamps, comparators, digital logic on the rare occasion I need a gate or two. They have some nice isolator products. I'm not doing anything fancy though.
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Intel Market Cap - $93.74 billion USD
TI Market Cap - $180.20 billion USD
They seem to be well regarded by the stock market
American made! woohoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Next we need to build up a market where the American consumer can afford American prices. Maybe if people didn't have to spend 60-70% of their income on housing they wouldn't buy cheap Chinese goods from Walmart.
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Indeed who do you think they learned it from, and who do you think is demanding cheap, low-quality goods. That's right. It's us.
One nation, under God (money) (Score:1)
Our labor costs are too high for that ever to happen, we'll make goods with high prices and low quality that nobody wants. And employers will try to weasel out of paying for health insurance for the staff by cutting hours to be below the threshold of full time employee. Anyone that doesn't like it, is a communist. If they make too much noise their family will get a visit from ICE, regardless of actual citizenship status.
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TI actually has competitive pricing on ICs. I do electrical engineering of commodity products at work, a lot of our customer base is in the US, and we use a fair amount of TI. They have nice control ICs for switchmode power supplies, for example. Also good for opamps, linear regulators, etc. These are all basic analog building block ICs. I guess they make fancier stuff too, but I never use it.
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Oh absolutely, it's mostly analog and mixed signal in the US. Very high yield and very few human hands that need to touch the product. Reels of components only getting touched when the receiver moves it off a palette. These kind of foundries don't create very many jobs though, almost no entry level jobs. And those components get priced according to what is competitive in the domestic market rather than the global market. With tariffs and shipping delays on imported components, the domestic stuff tends to cr
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Chinese manufactures can make both cheap and expensive goods.
In a sense American manufactures can really only do one. They struggle to keep the costs below what can be imported, and that's even when the American company doesn't have the same shipping overhead.
Wait, *creating* 60,000 jobs? (Score:3)
Who let this story through the usual doom-and-gloom filters?
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Born in the USA (Score:1)
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Those are just the 300mm fabs, they cite "15 global," probably on the same page you found that list on.
Wikipedia has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
which also lists Maine, Japan (2), Germany, and China (formerly SMIC). And more in TX and Utah than that (in the 150-200mm wafer size range)
investment theater (Score:2)
"yes we were already doing most of that that, but .. uh .. now we're doing that for you, Mr Trump! Here's a nice press release for you, your favorite kind of release! Please be nice to us!"
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They've identified a goal of 95% internal manufacturing by 2030, so I agree. But timing can have a lot of value...
60 billion guess leaving was bad (Score:1)