If they “can’t make the chips fast enough” being TSMC’s second highest volume customer behind Apple and probably second in priority, what chance does Microsoft have getting enough of TSMCs capacity?
Why aren't any other companies entering this space? TSMC's growth and profits are immense, it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors.
Also, the current situation is geopolitical insanity. It feels like China and the U.S. are on a path to war in the next decade or so. China is itching to retake Taiwan... and if you thought the U.S. fought a lot of wars over oil, there's NO WAY we wouldn't go to war to prevent all the world's most important semiconductors falling exclusively under PROC control. It's the 21st century, we would have no choice. I know that TSMC is diversifying and building fabs in the U.S. and Germany, and hopefully that will reduce the risk of war. But it's just nuts that this is even a risk. How does one company control so much of the global market?
The sooner Intel spins out the fab side into its own entity the better positioned it will be to pick up the business that TSMC doesn't have capacity for.
People will overlook a lot, if the product is compelling enough and the sales guys can keep a straight face while promising not to peek.
Apple and Microsoft are trillion dollar companies ( both nearing $3 trillion market caps ). They can afford it. Heck they have the balance sheet to acquire both tsmc and samsung if either were up for sale.
I thought Apple was moving towards being a full-stack company. Where all the hardware and software is developed in-house. If anyone has the resources, it is apple.
Having a modern chip fab binds an insane amount of capital, and makes you much more vulnerable in case of market turbulences. This is exactly a reason why there exist people who like to claim that Intel should spin off their fabs.
TSMC is so dominant because they have very, very, deep institutional knowledge. Even if you have billions to invest it's not easy to create that, and definitely impossible to do it short term.
There's only 3 companies left chasing smaller nodes. Everyone else has given up and are focusing on revenue from high volume parts in older processes.
I get the impression it's mostly physics guys.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/435/
TLDR: Math is not. :-)
I almost went to get a CE degree because I find it all so fascinating but ultimately I'm glad I didn't.
the serious system architects, designers, and fab managers are doing just fine, software or not. the dudes in Phoenix who are getting pushed through 2-year degrees to help run a clean room are probably making 65k.
This is the crazy thing. Such fundamental important technology but salaries generally suck. Much more money in cat memes and influencer channels.
In fact for a small project in an elective he programmed a computer vision system that was far ahead of anything me or my peers had made at the time in our CS program. He had pretty much zero programming experience.
I must admit he's a particularly smart person but it was crazy that I went on to make more money than him. His work is way more complicated than mine as far as I can tell.
More importantly, the new chip production lines are dependent on hyper-specialized EUV lithography systems that only company is able to manufacture (ASML). ASML has their own limits to production too.
GlobalFoundries' Fab 1 can do 1 nm, and its Fab 8 is capable of doing 14 nm:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GlobalFoundries&o...
ASML are solving a small subset of physics problems: how to project extremely small features. TSMC are solving many more physics problems: how to structure layers of doped silicon into transistors, how to structure those transistors into logic gates, and those logic gates into functional blocks. This is why silicon process is not just a matter of capital investment, and why nobody is going to show up overnight with 10 billion dollars and change things. It’s not that TSMC are the only ones with a big bag of cash to give ASML.
ASML's machines are very impressive, but they're just one piece of that puzzle. And ASML themselves rely on collaborators like Zeiss.
This idea that it's all just capital and others are reluctant to invest otherwise they could duplicate TSMC simply false.
Just few years ago was four companies doing the bleeding edge: Intel, GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC. Intel was the best. First Global Foundries could not keep up. Then Intel fumbled ant TSMC became the best. Samsung is the only one keeping up with TSMC but they come slightly behind. Intel tries to catch up the two. No companies have "exited" they just can't compete.
The bleeding edge semiconductor node design is like doing Apollo moon program every 4-5 years. Only one can be the best.
There are? INTC and Samsung?
>falling exclusively under PROC control
It wouldnt fall under PROC control.
It would be destroyed.
The market could only bear if they are willing to pay a lot more in the name of diversification. Otherwise most would simply have trouble keeping up.
We really need some basic FAQ on HN for hardware technology related topic.
Taiwan (unlike Ukraine) is far too critical to the world economy.
Take Taiwan. You can’t “retake” something you never had.
Because it would take over a decade to build a comparable chip fab and thats assuming you had unlimited cash to throw at it.
You'd be spending billions with zero revenue for a decade and no guarantees it'll be anything as close to as good as TSMC's setup. Try finding someone willing to invest in that and it becomes clear why theres not more chip fabs out there.
IMO, MAD (mutually assured destruction - if a nuclear power start a war with another nuclear power, both will probably end up destroyed by nukes) makes the prospects of that highly unlikely.
they are literally having discussions in San Fran right now to reduce the likelihood of that happening. And it sounds like China is quite open to discussion, and the US as well.
They are building navy fleet like no other.
Still harassing neighbors ( eg. Philippines).
Nothing changed. They just want a bigger advantage.
Looking at their balance sheet: plenty.
TSMC is all about pay to play. Apple is first in line because they’re willing to pay to be first in line. I have no doubt Microsoft can justify spending the money they save not buying nvidia into getting some priority access from TSMC.
Also keep in mind Apple is now on 3nm so there’s likely spare 5nm.
It’s very likely they knew something like this was coming, as they’ve been doing FPGAs for more than a decade now.
> So it really brings together many of the things that Intel is doing as an IDM, now bringing it together in a heterogeneous environment where we’re taking TSMC dies. We’re going to be using other foundries in the industry, we’re standardizing that with UCIe. So I really see ourself as the front end of this multi-chip chiplet world doing so in the Intel way, standardizing it for the industry’s participation with UCIE, and then just winning a better technology.
Azure Maia is TSMC N5, I think.
Nvidia H200 and H100 are TSMC 4N.