TSMC R&D chief: There’s light at the end of the chip shortage

This is absolutely the lens we need to view the Ukranian crisis through. It's actually quite surprising that Europe has acted so strongly and unanimously in their condemnation of Russia given that they really need Russian gas to heat their homes. Sure, they haven't literally turned off the gas because they can't, but they've done everything but. It's up to Russia at this point but they absolutely can turn off that gas, and it has been suggested that they were limiting exports for the last 6 months to make sure Europe didn't have any stockpiles to weather an event like this.

I think recent events send a message to China that Western countries are perfectly willing to act against their own interests purely to punish a country that steps out of line. The whole of western Europe will suffer to punish Russia in this conflict, but the conflict has taken a situation where countries were semi-committed and made them fully committed. Germany's stance now, would've been unthinkable 1 month ago. It highlights how easy it is to push countries away.

I wonder if TSMC has a self-destruct button. I do not think they want CCP to take over those fabs. Agree, this is a worst case scenario, and we need to get at least one TSMC fab in the US.

Oh, I think part of this rapid coming together of companies and governments to imposes sanctions on Russia is as much about China -> Taiwan as it is about Russia -> Ukraine.

There are a variety of parallels in histories here. None of them exact except the clear desire subsume them. And while nothing about these situations is simple, part of the message were seeing may be aimed at China, as if to say "this is what will happen to you too".

That might not seem like a lot, but China's stability and economy as a whole is much more reliant on global commerce that Russia.

European countries know that a huge fraction of their energy comes from Russian sources, and Russia can turn that off, but the implied message right now is "we are willing to deal with those consequences" if/when Russia goes down that path. (Though economically, on top of the other sanctions, that would hurt them a lot too)

So part of the implied message to China is also that of, "Yes we know we rely on you for much, but we relied on Russia for a piece of basic, essential, fundamental infrastructure and were willing to let it go.".

Tell me about it. I have invested in a new business (anyone want a fully custom PC case? heh), and now I have to stock up on food and seriously consider how to live with long mass blackouts, as well as prepare for mobilization to fight Russian invaders if they succeed in Ukraine. Eh, I'm already suicidal, so that would be a better way to go, I guess.

China is certainly watching very closely the Ukraine situation and will factor it into a attack/not attack decision.

It turns out, unless this has been debunked, that Ukraine supplies neon for lasers for... chip production. So perhaps the TSMC chief is a bit premature anyway, regardless of China. Of course there's a lead time in production.

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/ukraine-war-flashes-ne...

I wonder why nobody is talking about the possibility of Taiwan joining China willingly - not tomorrow of course, but let's say a decade from now. People are ignoring the fact that they are ethnically Chinese - both in the ancestral sense, and that a lot of Taiwanese professionals are PrC born educated and raised.

The rise of the Chinese economy means that I think there exist a set of concessions - both economic and governmental - that the CCP could make towards Taiwan which would win them over. I'm not an analyst or anything, but look where China was a decade or two ago - it's difficult to extrapolate where they'll be a decade or two in the future.

Thanks to Russia what used to be told as irrational, unimaginable or paranoid thoughts are now a real possibility.

Sometimes it takes a real shock for people to learn what Andrew Grove has told us repeatedly and yet most if not all still ignores it. I guess that has something to do with his experience having escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20.

Only the Paranoid Survive

I'm not so sure that they will do an invasion. A trade blockade seems likely to me.

China being China, and thus economically more savvy then Russia, I guess the will keep Taiwan's industry running under new management. Assuming Taiwan isn't scuttling before the new management arrives. But then I also thought Putin would be smarter than starting a war everybody saw coming miles away and risk forging the west together in a way I haven't seen since the cold war. There seems to be a reason why I'm not earning my living with political or strategic analysis.

The old processes still exist and are cheap^H^H^H^H^H quite affordable, but only because the cost was amortized long ago and now the equipment is just milked for profit until quality control becomes too difficult. Building them anew is possible, but takes significant investment and time. Which about sums up the issue: many important items in semiconductor engineering have inelastic supply.

Fabs depend on reliable deals with industry customers years ahead, and during Covid they got badly burned on that front by car makers, and now the money flood is unleashed again on the market, but the market can't provide (yet).

ASML is still selling (and ofc maintaining) older generation machines. They also refurbishing the generations before that and still giving them customized upgrades for example for making radio frequency chips, LEDs. So yes, these processes still exist and are also out of capacity.

At first this was strange to me: why all fabs out of capacity from low to mid to high... But I guess it is similar to a housing market, where for example rich people want to live in bigger houses but overall price is roughly per square meter impacting the entire market. There must also be some chips who are okay with every resolution as long as they can book a slot somewhere. I can also imagine some chips even though they don't require the latest fabs do have much more value than AMD CPU/GPU.

Depends on what you understand under "shortage". Before Covid, GPUs were expensive, sure. They also had longer lead times, you did get them so, even as a consumer. And if you were somewhat flexible with the actual GPU, you didn't face a lot of issues.

Industrial supply, say for automotive, was never at risk. Now, industrial supply is lacking. That is a shortage. Crypto is only increasing overall demand and driving prices up for consumers.

That shortage, it seems according to industry experts, will be over.

Given his position within the company, I'd say that his personal opinion holds quite a bit of weight.

That's from now or from the beginning of that construction?