There have been rumors about the desire of the head of OpenAI to organize chip production in the Middle East to more effectively solve the problem of the shortage of computing accelerators. Now The Wall Street Journal clarifies that Samsung Electronics and TSMC are already negotiating with the UAE authorities. The total cost of the enterprises that can be built in this country can reach $100 billion.
Image source: Samsung Electronics
TSMC’s top management is said to have even visited the UAE for talks on the matter. The Taiwanese company is considering building a modern manufacturing facility in the UAE comparable in size to those in Taiwan. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics has also sent delegates to the UAE for similar talks. The UAE authorities are willing to subsidize the construction of chip manufacturing plants through investment companies they control in order to keep TSMC’s or Samsung’s profits at an acceptable level. Foreign facilities would be more expensive for both companies to build, so this difference needs to be covered by subsidies to offset the difference in expenses.
Another problem is access to reserves of highly purified industrial water. The UAE gets most of its water from the sea using desalination, but chip production requires the use of very pure water, and its extraction will also cost a pretty penny when launching chip production in the UAE. However, there will be no problems with cheap energy resources, since the climate allows for the extraction of a lot of electricity through solar panels, and there is an abundance of hydrocarbon fuel in the region.
According to rumors, the interests of the UAE government in potential projects with TSMC and Samsung will be represented by a subsidiary of the same Mubadala, which is the main investor in GlobalFoundries, founded in 2009 after the separation of production assets from AMD. At first, Mubadala had plans to build a GlobalFoundries plant in the UAE, but they were not destined to come true. Later, Arab investors literally “gave up” in the face of the need to spend significant amounts on mastering 7-nm technology, and GlobalFoundries had to abandon its launch in serial production. One way or another, Mubadala manages a portfolio of assets totaling $300 billion, so it could partially finance the construction of a complex of enterprises worth $100 billion if there was political will.
The project could also run into a shortage of qualified personnel to organize advanced chip production in the UAE, but the example of the American TSMC enterprise in Arizona already shows that the company can import the necessary specialists from Taiwan until local ones are trained.
Another issue that inevitably arises in light of the US controls on technology exports to the Middle East concerns the need for TSMC and Samsung to obtain the appropriate export licenses if they are ready to begin equipping their UAE facilities with US-made technology. US National Security Council officials told the WSJ that they have been working with the UAE government on advanced technology for the past two years, and the partnership is moving in the right direction. The sources noted that without the US government’s blessing, TSMC and Samsung will not be able to begin building factories in the UAE, as the US government is wary of the leakage of advanced technology and products to China.
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Source: 3dnews.ru
