TSMC, a key supplier for Apple and the maker of its iPhone and Mac chips, is reportedly ready to triple its investment into a new Arizona plant. But that plant won't be responsible for building Apple's very best chips.
With the Arizona plant set to cost TSMC around $40 billion following the increase, it's now reported that the company doesn't plan to build chips capable of powering Apple's very best iPhone or Mac devices. Instead, it will always be one step behind its Taiwanese plants.
Always one step behind
The news comes via an anonymous source speaking with the Financial Times with 9to5Mac picking it up. According to that source, "TSMC’s US presence will continue to follow the principle of N minus 1,” meaning that "any U.S. fab would be one technology generation behind the most advanced in production in Taiwan."
That would mean that even if TSMC is building 3nm chips for Apple's iPhones and Macs, or indeed any other future devices, the Arizona plant won't be doing it. Instead, that'll fall to existing facilities located in Taiwan, as is already the case.
Instead, it appears that TSMC will be using its Arizona factory to provide less high-0profile chips, possibly those that find their way into the Apple TV, Apple Watch, and AirPods.
The same FT report notes that this approach won't help Apple diversify its supply chain any further because, in reality, the company will still be beholden to the same factories and countries that were already in play before the building of a factory on U.S. soil.
This backs up a previous report which notes that the Arizona plant wouldn't have the raw capacity to be able to build enough chips to satisfy Apple's iPhone and Mac demand, even if it was to build its latest and greatest chips.
