Acer has some tough words for the U.S. government and its plans to expand domestic semiconductor production to better compete with entrenched global players. Acer founder Stan Shih said in a recent interview with Yahoo Taiwan that the U.S. is too far behind its Asian counterparts, particularly Taiwan, when it comes to producing sufficient quantities of chips that go in everything from smartphones to servers to self-driving automobiles to military hardware.
According to Shih, the U.S. didn't do itself any favors by outsourcing much of its semiconductor production decades ago. The supply chain necessary to sustain a consistent flow of chips heavily favors Asia, and there will be a significant lag in getting those operations fully entrenched stateside.
More importantly, Liu added that there is a shortage of workers qualified to staff its Fab 21 production lines. "We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility." These staffing setbacks come even though TSMC flew Taiwan-based engineers to Arizona to help train new hires.
Intel is one of the many companies taking advantage of the subsidies available from the CHIPS Act and is constructing the Silicon Heartland campus in Ohio. This will be the company's first all-new domestic fab site in decades. "The establishment of the Silicon Heartland is testament to the power of government incentives to unlock private investment, create thousands of high-paying jobs, and benefit U.S. economic and national security," said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in September 2022.
