TSMC Is Building A Second Fab In Arizona

TSMC, the Taiwan-based semiconductor manufacturer, recently provided an update regarding its status in Arizona, US. With the first fab set to begin production of the N4 process by 2024, it is now making plans to construct a second fab that will start production of the 3nm process by 2026.

TSMC says that the construction of the second fab will also provide jobs for more than 10000 construction workers, along with an additional 10000 high-paying high-tech jobs, 4500 of which will be direct jobs from the company itself. In total, the semiconductor company will also be investing around US$40 billion (~RM176 billion), making it the most significant foreign direct investment in the state’s history.

“When complete, TSMC Arizona aims to be the greenest semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States producing the most advanced semiconductor process technology in the country, enabling next-generation high-performance and low-power computing products for years to come,” Dr. Mark Liu, TSMC Chairman, said. “We are thankful for the continued collaboration that has brought us here and is pleased to work with our partners in the United States to serve as a base for semiconductor innovation.”

Once completed, both of TSMC’s fabs will be able to manufacture over 600000 wafers per year, with an estimated end-product value of more than US$40 billion (~RM176 billion). The first fab itself, which went into construction back in 2020, will have a production capacity of 240000 wafers a year and is where not only the N4 process will be conducted, but also N4P and N4X.

The announcement marks a shift in the global manufacturing supply chain, due in no small part to the ongoing economic conflict between the US and China. Because of sanctions and restrictions put in place by both economic powerhouses, tech giants and manufacturers have had little or no choice but to shift their factories and manufacturing plants out of the latter country, TSMC being one such entity.

Of course, TSMC isn’t the only manufacturer and chipmaker to establish a presence in the US. Last year, Samsung announced that it would be opening a new semiconductor plant in the state of Texas, to the tune of US$17 billion (~RM75 billion).

Intel 7nm Meteor Lake CPU Architecture Confirmed; Tape-In Begins Second Quarter 2021, Launch In 2023

Pat Gelsinger, CEO at Intel, announced the chipmaker’s next-generation CPU architecture, Meteor Lake, during yesterday’s livestream. The future lineup will be based on the same Intel 7nm CPU architecture that was initially reported as “broken” back in July last year.

As per the announcement, Meteor Lake will utilise the x86 architecture and tile design, as well as multiple manufacturing processors made from Intel’s Foveros packaging technology. On a side note, Meteor Lake will not be the only CPU to be based on the 7nm process node; on the datacentre spectrum, Intel’s “Granite Rapids” datacentre processors will also be based on the 7nm architecture.

As to when we can see Meteor Lake CPUs, Intel says that the earliest 7nm architecture will be made available to the masses is sometime in 2023, but the tape-in for it is set to be completed within the second quarter of this year. In the mean time, the chipmaker already has plans to launch Raptor Lake, its 13th generation CPU lineup and successor to the upcoming 12th generation Alder Lake lineup, before the arrival of what is clearly set to be its 14th generation of CPUs.

While details for Meteor Lake are scarce, we can at least draw upon certain expectations based on what is expected to the debut with Alder Lake; as per earlier reports, the new lineup is expected to be one of the first to support the PCIe 5.0 interface, as well as the upcoming DDR5 memory standard. Further, it is also the first CPU to truly be based on Intel’s 10nm Enhanced SuperFIN process node.

AirAsia Hit With The Highest Number Of Complaints In Second Half Of 2020

The Malaysian Aviation Commission (MAVCOM) said that AirAsia recorded the highest number of complaints (196) in the second half of last year (2H20). Malaysia Airlines (MAS) came in second (105) and AirAsia X third (57), the commission revealed in its biannual consumer report.

Unsurprisingly, the number one type of complaints MAVCOM received in 2H20 was related to the processing of refunds – 35.1% of all total complaints. AirAsia and AirAsia X took the lion’s share of those complaints with 75.8%, while MAS got 12.1% and Malindo Air 10.1%.

“All airlines had a reduction in the number of complaints in 2H20 except for AirAsia, AirAsia X and Firefly,” MAVCOM noted. AirAsia X also received a staggeringly high number of registered complaints (8,948) per million passengers. In comparison, that figure was just 477 for Malaysia Airlines and 208 for Malindo Air.

Ticket refunds have been a particularly thorny issue for AirAsia. Last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic raged, AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes urged customers to accept store credit instead of refunds, noting at the time that over 80% of them already did so. He warned that refunds might take a long while to process due to the overwhelming number of requests.

According to The Star, both MAVCOM and MATTA (Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents) have publicly said that airlines should provide full refunds for flights cancelled because of COVID-19 restrictions.