Taiwan drought could drastically cutback TSMC production

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GiGaBiTe said:
Taiwan is an island in the middle of the China Sea, how the hell do they run out of water??

With all of the important infrastructure on the island, you'd think they'd have at least a few desalination plants.
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On it’s own, TSMC’s Taiwan facilities use over 150,000 TONS of water per day. Then there’s all the other chip manufacturers in the country. Not to mention the fact that Taiwan actually counted on the typhoon season to fill reservoirs for use during the dry season. And, well, no storms made landfall last year. On top of that, overall rainfall across the country is only 49% of the mean of the last two decades. With demand for chips only going up (substantially) year-over-year that means a constant exponential increase of demand for water. Taiwan has desalination plants, but they’re not able to keep up with everything on their own.

For an additional fun fact: In 2019, TSMC used 58 million tons of water.
 
Derangel said:
On it’s own, TSMC’s Taiwan facilities use over 150,000 TONS of water per day. Then there’s all the other chip manufacturers in the country. Not to mention the fact that Taiwan actually counted on the typhoon season to fill reservoirs for use during the dry season. And, well, no storms made landfall last year. On top of that, overall rainfall across the country is only 49% of the mean of the last two decades. With demand for chips only going up (substantially) year-over-year that means a constant exponential increase of demand for water. Taiwan has desalination plants, but they’re not able to keep up with everything on their own.

For an additional fun fact: In 2019, TSMC used 58 million tons of water.
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time to build some chip plants elsewhere and hedge.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Taiwan is an island in the middle of the China Sea, how the hell do they run out of water??

With all of the important infrastructure on the island, you'd think they'd have at least a few desalination plants.
Click to expand...
They probably need fresh water to operate, which is why I'm concerned they're running out of drinking water. I remember this being the reason why Intel made CPU's in either Ireland or Scotland. If TSMC had to operate desalination plants then that would cut into their profits. Gotta think of the rich peoples 5th yacht. They need that 5th yacht to support their 5th wife's boyfriend.
 
DukenukemX said:
They probably need fresh water to operate, which is why I'm concerned they're running out of drinking water. I remember this being the reason why Intel made CPU's in either Ireland or Scotland. If TSMC had to operate desalination plants then that would cut into their profits. Gotta think of the rich peoples 5th yacht. They need that 5th yacht to support their 5th wife's boyfriend.
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don't knock that 5th boyfriend. Someday I hope to be that boyfriend.
 
"TSMC said it needed 156,000 tonnes of water per day, even though it reuses more than 85% of it."

They should go waterless urinals like we have :eek:
 
So, when they build a fab here and suck up all the drinking water.
Can't they just reuse 85% of thier urine? Spacesuit work anyhow...
 
DukenukemX said:
So uhh... are the people in Taiwan fine? Are they dying of thirst while we use the water to make computer chips?
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Oh boy I'm not sure you want to know where the energy comes to ship them here either.

I mean seriously though what is the point of having health or water if your economy isn't working right ? :)

Joking but ya seriously... hopefully they aren't trucking water for chips while people are suffering next door. Intel has 14nm chips for sale still.
 
SecretStash said:
I was wondering about that. If water is so important why Arizona? Might have more desert than any other state
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Arizona has been trying to get a pipeline to the Great Lakes for years. https://www.startribune.com/the-gre...stricken-areas-eye-the-great-lakes/483743681/
After living there, this is a dumb thing to do. First, more Cali expats moved there and planted lawns instead of the natural look of the desert, sucking up water for lawn care. DON'T MOVE TO A DESERT THEN! Second, with the whole Southwest and adding these chip plants would drain the Great Lakes real fast. With todays tech, there should be a faster, better way to desalinate ocean water.
There next move will be on the Colorado River, you watch.
 
SnowBeast said:
Arizona has been trying to get a pipeline to the Great Lakes for years. https://www.startribune.com/the-gre...stricken-areas-eye-the-great-lakes/483743681/
After living there, this is a dumb thing to do. First, more Cali expats moved there and planted lawns instead of the natural look of the desert, sucking up water for lawn care. DON'T MOVE TO A DESERT THEN! Second, with the whole Southwest and adding these chip plants would drain the Great Lakes real fast. With todays tech, there should be a faster, better way to desalinate ocean water.
There next move will be on the Colorado River, you watch.
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They can’t, the US and Canada have some pretty extensive treaties on water usage on the Great Lakes.
 
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SnowBeast said:
Arizona has been trying to get a pipeline to the Great Lakes for years. https://www.startribune.com/the-gre...stricken-areas-eye-the-great-lakes/483743681/
After living there, this is a dumb thing to do. First, more Cali expats moved there and planted lawns instead of the natural look of the desert, sucking up water for lawn care. DON'T MOVE TO A DESERT THEN! Second, with the whole Southwest and adding these chip plants would drain the Great Lakes real fast. With todays tech, there should be a faster, better way to desalinate ocean water.
There next move will be on the Colorado River, you watch.
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Arizona can fuck off.
 
SecretStash said:
I was wondering about that. If water is so important why Arizona? Might have more desert than any other state
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4 millions gallon of water a day do sound like a lot (and I imagine a lot) for Phoenix, but Phoenix-area golf clubs were using 80 millions a days in 2010, cotton farmings is in the hundreds of millions in Arizona, it is probably a very nice density of business for that amount of water that a city like Phoenix will have an easy decision spending to make it happen.
 
Krenum said:
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Why? You like higher priced CPU/GPUs?

westrock2000 said:
"TSMC said it needed 156,000 tonnes of water per day, even though it reuses more than 85% of it."

They should go waterless urinals like we have :eek:
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You don't want to see some of their urinals/toilets... Squatty hole with no TP!
toast0 said:
They're building one in Arizona; hope there's enough water for them and Arizona Iced Teas.
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I don't think there is any water in Arizona Iced Teas - just sugar.
 
sfsuphysics said:
It's all the ex Cali residents who introduced lawns to Arizona... somehow I doubt that. I mean Las Vegas is living proof of American stupidity in general by throwing so much energy and water at a desert, I'm sure lawns existed long before "the great migration" of Californian's went there.

That said, it's not exactly new for cities to funnel water from one location to another because said secondary location are where all the people live. I mean the San Francisco Bay area gets it's water from near Yosemite, although in that case it's water that would eventually come here anyways, it's just it would get wasted when it gets dumped into the SF Bay and by proxy the Pacific ocean.
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I spent a week in Arizona in 1988 to go hiking on a school trip and I remember the lawns appearing then.
 
1_rick said:
I spent a week in Arizona in 1988 to go hiking on a school trip and I remember the lawns appearing then.
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I spent a few days in the Arizona camping, I remember there being nothing but cactus as far as the eye can see :D :D :D (seriously I did... too)
 
Derangel said:
For an additional fun fact: In 2019, TSMC used 58 million tons of water.
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I thought the hard part was purifying the water, not actually acquiring it. What is stopping them from recycling water?
 
sfsuphysics said:
I spent a few days in the Arizona camping, I remember there being nothing but cactus as far as the eye can see :D :D :D (seriously I did... too)
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Guess you found the boring part of the desert. We were in more of a prairie/ hills area; it was pretty nice.
 
If something majorly disruptive ever happens in Taiwan, we are screwed. That relatively small island makes a lot of tech gear.
 
M76 said:
I thought the hard part was purifying the water, not actually acquiring it. What is stopping them from recycling water?
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They do recycle water. They still used that much water even with recycling in place.
 
its BS the Taiwanese gov is putting out to keep production low as possible and demand for said production high. im not buying it for one second. massive amount of international gov pressure is being put on taiwan and TSMC especially because of the auto chip shortage.. and suddenly theres a new bottleneck ("mother nature" nonetheless). too convenient.

IM NOT BUYING IT
 
I've always lived by the motto: expect the worst, and all your surprises will be pleasant ones.

I've been pleasured precious little these past few months.
 
nealx01 said:
its BS the Taiwanese gov is putting out to keep production low as possible and demand for said production high. im not buying it for one second. massive amount of international gov pressure is being put on taiwan and TSMC especially because of the auto chip shortage.. and suddenly theres a new bottleneck ("mother nature" nonetheless). too convenient.

IM NOT BUYING IT
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International governments can be mad about the auto chip shortage all they want. Poor planning on their part doesn't mean they can push someone else around because it came back to bite them in the ass. We've already had several incidents of tech product shortages due to everyone putting their eggs in the proverbial single basket, like the time in 2011 with the Thailand flooding that single handedly destroyed the hard drive supply chain for the better part of a year. Nobody learned from it then, and probably won't learn from it now.
 
[Spectre] said:
$20 is $20
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Lakados said:
People are desperate $20 can go a long way
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GiGaBiTe said:
International governments can be mad about the auto chip shortage all they want. Poor planning on their part doesn't mean they can push someone else around because it came back to bite them in the ass. We've already had several incidents of tech product shortages due to everyone putting their eggs in the proverbial single basket, like the time in 2011 with the Thailand flooding that single handedly destroyed the hard drive supply chain for the better part of a year. Nobody learned from it then, and probably won't learn from it now.
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I remember that well, and HDDs started to double and then triple in cost what they were earlier that summer.
It look years for costs and pricing to return to normal, and by that point SSDs were starting to become mainstream.
 
DukenukemX said:
They probably need fresh water to operate, which is why I'm concerned they're running out of drinking water. I remember this being the reason why Intel made CPU's in either Ireland or Scotland. If TSMC had to operate desalination plants then that would cut into their profits. Gotta think of the rich peoples 5th yacht. They need that 5th yacht to support their 5th wife's boyfriend.
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Want to see an engineer scream in terror? Tell them they have to use salt water for something as finicky as a semiconductor plant.
Salt water in general is one of the seven levels of engineering hell. Followed by sulfur.

The entire industry screwed the pooch by relying soo much on TMSC. Should have had fabs elsewhere long before now.
 
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