Posted on 09/17/2023 8:19:35 PM PDT by FarCenter
...
The DoD may need a decade to build a reliable domestic supply chain, according to Mike Burns, managing partner of tech investment firm Murray Hill Group. The issue is how fast U.S.-based Intel can catch up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which makes Altera and Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other chips that the DoD uses in weapons systems like the F-35 fighter jet, missiles and command-and-control gear, he said.
“Maybe that’s a three-year effort,” he told EE Times. “I’m just saying that it’s many years.”
To be sure, TSMC more than tripled its overall investment in Phoenix, Ariz., to about $40 billion in December to make way for a second U.S. chip facility that’s set to start production at the 3-nm node in 2026. While Apple and AMD aim to buy chips from TSMC’s Arizona site, the fab isn’t likely to be a DoD supplier, Burns said.
“I don’t think TSMC would do that,” he said. “If you’ve seen their stance on American engineers, they don’t seem very pleased with them.”
TSMC has often said it aims to keep its most advanced production technology in Taiwan, where the world’s largest foundry makes more than 90% of its chips. The company last year began rolling out its first 3-nm chips in Taiwan—years ahead of the U.S.
TSMC has encountered a culture clash with some of the engineers it hired in the U.S. to work at the Arizona site. That challenge and TSMC’s focus on serving large customers like Apple and AMD will make Intel’s smaller foundry service a more likely fit as a DoD supplier, Burns noted.
“That will be up to Intel,” he said. “Intel Foundry Services can make application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that are one or two generations behind the process at TSMC. Maybe that makes up the difference.”
Years ago, Intel bought FPGA supplier Altera, which uses TSMC to make the programmable chips that are easily modified yet lag the performance of ASICs. The DoD is forced to rely on FPGAs because it can’t find a large foundry like TSMC or Samsung to make custom ASICs for its weapons systems.
The competition from commercial customers like Apple and AMD for foundry wafers has diminished the purchasing power of small buyers like the DoD. Even U.S.-based GlobalFoundries will have difficulty supplying chips to the DoD, Burns said.
“GlobalFoundries has a ton of commercial customers pushing for volume. We never know with an increase in military wafers: How long will that last? Usually they’re high cost, low volume, and they’re unpredictable in volume.”
The U.S. military relies on legacy, or older, chip architectures that aren’t widely available and often must be made in small, dedicated batches, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, told EE Times.
“When chip shortages occur, companies that make these chips can make more money building chips for appliances and cars,” he said. “If the DoD used more state-of-the-art chips with commercial architectures and adapted them through packaging or software, the U.S. military would be able to tap into the scale of commercial production and be less vulnerable to chip supply disruptions.”
Everything is in low supply
They got plenty of “cow chips” at the Pentagon.
Why don’t we just buy more from China?
Oh, never mind. I guess “Just-in-Time” isn’t exactly the smartest way to run a military supply system, so that is EXACTLY what the bean heads did to the West.
Maybe FedGov shouldn’t have run off the chip foundries or the chip foundry investors that wanted to build here with absurd regulations and then claimed that it wasn’t a problem as we could always get more from Taiwan or our friends in China...
Pelosi has a sweet refrigerator. Can we get a couple Russians?
“The U.S. military relies on legacy, or older, chip architectures that aren’t widely available and often must be made in small, dedicated batches, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, told EE Times.”
Ass-clowns like Blinken and Von Lederhosen think that using commercial chips for dishwashers etc. is a liability.
A Regime led by such morons cannot last !
Also makes the point that a gigantic “GDP” of services and bullsh!t is not capable of supporting military industrial production.
“3-nm”
Sounds like a minuscule issue...
To be fair, the military wasn’t ordering JIT and the current problem is that after COVID, the stockpiles they had are low and there’s no more coming in. DoD is having to compete with exploding demand for chips in the civilian sector, especially now that WfH is a real thing.
I’m glad we don’t announce all of our military deficiencies to the world. Everybody here just keep it to yourselves, okay?
It *is* a liability. We’ve been finding backdoors in appliance chips from China of late. Imagine how much fun that’s going to be if we have to go to war against China or one of the Chinese client states.
Having a vehicle or aircraft with a hackable chip beats not having an operable vehicle or aircraft all.
This article says that our military at least was into Just-in-Time (until the dingbats figured out their idiocy during the Ukraine War)...and that is one of the main reasons that I was against our involvement in the war from Day 1. The IDIOTS running our military are, well, ABSOLUTE IDIOTS.
(and don’t even get me started regarding our ‘precision weapons’ using GPS, as if that system cannot be jammed by Russia - LOL)
Basically, no country EVER should to go into war when Leftists are in charge of the military.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/us/politics/military-weapons-ukraine-war.html
Which makes one wonder - what sort of planning have they been doing the past 10 years?
The Pentagon seems incompetent.
I thought we didn't have factories to build advanced chips... Taiwan has that market cornered?
The garbage people that rule America were happy with outsourcing to stick it to regular Americans as they went our jobs overseas. They need to be tried for treason.
Part of the problem is Qualifying the parts. These chips have lives dependent upon their functionality at battlefield conditions. Then we have technologies growing and budgets cutting
Open architecture specifications mean the DoD is NO Longer dependent upon WindowsXP and Intel architecture like it was. WinXP cancellation cost the govt dearly.
No surprise here, we’ve been giving everyone Ukraine so the Chinese commies can kick our ass. How bright we are.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.