ROUNDUP: What the US Chips Act Actually Does
Plus the first video game ever comes to your Pocket and the state of battery swapping.
The US House of representatives passed the The Chips and Science Act of 2022 that authorizes the spending of $280 billion, some of which which will go to companies to expand and build semiconductor manufacturing plants in the US. It was passed but he US Senate Wednesday and now heads to the President to sign it in to law, likely early next week.
Here’s how it breaks down:
$39 billion will go to semiconductor manufacturing.
$11 billion will go to research and workforce training at semiconductor manufacturing plants.
And $2 billion for older tech used by automakers and military.
That makes up the $52 billion you may hear as allocated to chip making.
Intel, TSMC and GlobalFoundries all have plans to build plants that were contingent on this money. Samsung and MediaTek are expected to benefit as well. The US Department of Commerce has been preparing for the possibility of these subsided and will administer applications and allocations.
$170 billion of the bill will be spent by several federal agencies offer the next five years on research and development in fields like quantum computing, "open-architecture, software-based wireless technologies", AI and precision agriculture. The bill directs the Commerce Department to set up 20 regional technology hubs to foster job growth in tech.
The National Science Foundation gets $20 billion to spur development of critical security technology.
The Department of Energy's Office of Science increases its budget over the next five years to $50 billion to fund development of clean energy, nuclear physics and high-intensity lasers.
And NASA is directed to make bringing people to Mars a priority as well as the Artemis mission to return to the Moon.
Criticisms of the bill include the fact that for chip makers the amount of the subsidies-- $52 billion split among multiple companies over 5 years-- is very small when a single fabrication plant costs hundreds of billions of dollars.
And while for raw materials and equipment, most of the equipment, materials and components will come from elsewhere. Protocols notes that some tools needed for advanced chips come exclusively from the Netherlands and Japan also is a supplier of crucial components needed to make chips. And chip packaging does not seem to be part of the strategy so chips will still need to be flown to packagers and tester sin Asia in many cases. Also the effect of this will not be felt until construction is complete and volume production begins. The first plants to reach that stage will be from TSMC in 2024 and Intel in 2025.
Here are a few more stories of interest this week.
- Battery Swapping Still Seems Niche
- 2 Good Tech Earnings Reports And The Rest Are Bad News
- The First Video Game Comes to Your the Analogue Pocket
- Meta Leads A Campaign Against the Leap Second
- NFL Launches Mobile Streaming Service
- Google Play Adds App permissions Back
- Training AI By Doing
- US Bill to Make Data Caps Illegal
- Interesting Chip Developments From Infineon and AMD
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