How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?
As the CHIPS Act turns one, semiconductor firms have mixed feelings
AMERICAN CHIPMAKERS account for a third of global semiconductor sales. They design the world’s most sophisticated microprocessors, which power smartphones, data centres and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence (AI) models. But neither the American firms nor their Asian contract manufacturers make any such leading-edge chips in America. Given chips’ centrality to modern economies—and, in the age of AI, to war-fighting—that worries policymakers in Washington. Their answer was the CHIPS Act, a $50bn package of subsidies, tax credits and other sweeteners to bring advanced chipmaking back to America, which President Joe Biden signed into law on August 9th 2022.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Let the chips rise where they may ”
From the August 12th 2023 edition
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