The reason TSMC is in Taiwan in the first place is their sand is particularly good for making silicon wafers. You can do it with almost any soil, but Taiwan is particularly well-suited to the task.
Burning everything to the ground and abandoning the island is tantamount to just giving China exactly what they want.
Well, I think you’re wrong about the soil being very special, but my plan was a bad one for a completely different reason. I was supposing they were mostly after the people and the wealth that left China when Tiwan broke away from China during the civil war and many of the richer people moved there, sort of like when all the rich people left Cuba to live in Miami when the communists took over there.
The bigger reason not to abandon Taiwan is that it is a strategic point where china can menace the pacific islands and Guam a little easier. As it is they are pushing around the Philippine fishermen and encroaching into their area, taking over reefs that would belong to the Philippines or other countries and trying to make little base islands and Taiwan would be a better staging area.
The reason TSMC is in Taiwan in the first place is their sand is particularly good for making silicon wafers.
Are you sure this is the case? I’ve never heard of this before and was under the impression that raw materials were largely imported for the manufacturing processes. Is it possible you got mixed up with something else?
Am I sure? No, but I have a recollection of reading that the sand in Taiwan has a higher silicon content and is better suited to making wafers. You can make silicon from just about any dirt on earth, since it’s virtually everywhere, but when you want to make a bunch for manufacturing, it’s more effective to choose an abundant source as your starting point.
Well curiosity got the better of me, and the best sources I could find in ~an hour of researching suggest that they import most of the raw materials. For example, this report cites a Taiwanese source (written in Chinese), claiming:
According to statistics in the second quarter of 2022, the self-sufficiency rate of semiconductor manufacturing materials in Taiwan is 1 percent in front-end manufacturing and 15 percent in back-end manufacturing.
I don’t know what exactly goes into those figures, but this overview of the supply chain for semiconductors suggests that most of the raw silicon comes from not-Taiwan which is then also refined in not-Taiwan before it makes its way to TSMC-and-co.
Three products are used as raw materials to produce wafers in step 1: high-purity silicon, silicon carbide, and germanium. If we look at the trade balance of raw materials per country, we find that Germany is the top net exporter and China the largest net importer (see Figure 7). Germany has this position thanks to high-purity silicon exports, which have the highest trading value of the three raw materials. Although silicon is the second-most abundant element (by mass) on Earth after oxygen, there are only a few deposits that can be used for high-tech applications, mainly quartz deposits (chemical: silicon dioxide). High-quality quartz sands are widespread in Germany, as reported by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR).
A third of global high-purity silicon exports comes from Germany (the German company Wacker Chemie is one of the largest producers worldwide), and more than 70% of German silicon exports goes to China. Although China is one of the world’s major purified industrial silicon producers (7 of the 10 largest polysilicon manufacturers in 2020 were from China), it still imports a sizable amount and is the largest net importer of high-purity silicon. The US also exports a large share of silicon (a quarter of all exports), and Hemlock, based in the US, is one of the largest polysilicon manufacturers.
Of the other raw materials, China exports the largest share, with 35% of global germanium exports and 38% of global silicon carbide exports.
Silicon and other semiconductor raw materials are melted and cast in the form of a large cylinder called an ingot and then sliced into wafers (ASML). Wafers are then used to create the integrated circuits in step 2. By comparing the trade balance of wafers with that of raw materials, we can see that the top net importers of raw materials are also the top net exporters of wafers, confirming that countries like Japan and China import raw materials for the production of wafers.
These wafers are then mostly imported by Taiwan, followed by South Korea (see Figure 9). Trade data also shows that Southeast Asia plays an active role in the semiconductor industry. While more advanced front-end chip production is centered in Taiwan and South Korea, back-end assembly is centered in Southeast Asia.
I know that that’s not Taiwan-specific data but I wasn’t able to find any source saying that Taiwan had a lot of high quality raw silicon to work with.
Looking at the supply chain for this is actually pretty interesting - I had no idea Germany was an important source of raw materials for example o_o
That’s very cool, and I’m happy to be wrong (or at least partially informed). I also didn’t know that Germany was such an important player in silicon, but it just goes to show how important globalization is!
The reason TSMC is in Taiwan in the first place is their sand is particularly good for making silicon wafers. You can do it with almost any soil, but Taiwan is particularly well-suited to the task.
Burning everything to the ground and abandoning the island is tantamount to just giving China exactly what they want.
Well, I think you’re wrong about the soil being very special, but my plan was a bad one for a completely different reason. I was supposing they were mostly after the people and the wealth that left China when Tiwan broke away from China during the civil war and many of the richer people moved there, sort of like when all the rich people left Cuba to live in Miami when the communists took over there.
The bigger reason not to abandon Taiwan is that it is a strategic point where china can menace the pacific islands and Guam a little easier. As it is they are pushing around the Philippine fishermen and encroaching into their area, taking over reefs that would belong to the Philippines or other countries and trying to make little base islands and Taiwan would be a better staging area.
Are you sure this is the case? I’ve never heard of this before and was under the impression that raw materials were largely imported for the manufacturing processes. Is it possible you got mixed up with something else?
Am I sure? No, but I have a recollection of reading that the sand in Taiwan has a higher silicon content and is better suited to making wafers. You can make silicon from just about any dirt on earth, since it’s virtually everywhere, but when you want to make a bunch for manufacturing, it’s more effective to choose an abundant source as your starting point.
Well curiosity got the better of me, and the best sources I could find in ~an hour of researching suggest that they import most of the raw materials. For example, this report cites a Taiwanese source (written in Chinese), claiming:
I don’t know what exactly goes into those figures, but this overview of the supply chain for semiconductors suggests that most of the raw silicon comes from not-Taiwan which is then also refined in not-Taiwan before it makes its way to TSMC-and-co.
I know that that’s not Taiwan-specific data but I wasn’t able to find any source saying that Taiwan had a lot of high quality raw silicon to work with.
Looking at the supply chain for this is actually pretty interesting - I had no idea Germany was an important source of raw materials for example o_o
Thanks for this.
Very interesting for a nerd like me.
I thought about posting the second report to !hardware@lemmy.world but it felt like a borderline fit and it’s from 2023 so I went “eh” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s very cool, and I’m happy to be wrong (or at least partially informed). I also didn’t know that Germany was such an important player in silicon, but it just goes to show how important globalization is!