Hacker News Reader

Comment by tim-tday | Hacker News Reader

Sneak preview of the TSMC shortage that will sweep the world in 2027 when China takes Taiwan and the TSMC scuttles their chip fabs on the island.

I don’t know the hedge to position against this but I’m pretty sure China will make good on its promise.

View on HN

There is no "promise".

The 2027 date was a guideline for their military to be "ready", which they may not be either. That is a far cry from the decision to actually make a move. They will only do that if they're certain it will work out for them, and as things stand, it is very risky for Xi.

I'm not sure how true it is or not but I heard that TSMC has the ability to remotely destroy all of their main fab equipment in the event the Chinese are invading Taiwan.

This is correct: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-21/asml-tsmc...

The most advanced ASML machines also cost something like $300-400M each and I am willing to bet if configured wrong can heavily damage themselves and the building they are in.

You don't need to physically destroy anything. All you need to do is zero-fill the storage devices in the facility and walk away. The tools are worthless without parameters/recipes/configuration. Reinventing this stuff is harder than acquiring an EUV tool.

Isn't it fairly likely that espionage would have already got to that kind of data?

I wonder if the destruction would actually go ahead.

What's worse, China having a monopoly on production, or the entire world being set back by X years?

In this scenario X is a two-digit number, right?

I don't think X is a two-digit number. TSMC might be slightly ahead of Intel, maybe a few years ahead of Samsung. People forget that the original ChatGPT models were powered by the A100, a chip manufactured by Samsung, which was Sota just a few years ago.

On top TSMC has fabs and personnel with expertise in other places. After all this threat isn't new.

Alternatively, China could make progress fabricating and exporting its own chips and designing its own GPUs. The entire chip sector could go the way of solar panels and EVs with prices dropping and margins collapsing to near zero.

Yup, they're also like 5-10 years out from their own lithography machines as well. China wanted Taiwan before TSMC was a thing, by the time they take Taiwan back they won't need TSMC.

> I don’t know the hedge to position against this

Buy in-demand fab output today, even at a premium price and even if you can't install or power it all, expecting shortages tomorrow. Which is pretty much the way the tech economy is already working.

So no, no hedge. NVIDIA's customers already beat you to it.

I'm about 100% positive America would consider that an act of war and respond accordingly.

It feels like America is already planning to gin up its own wars in its own hemisphere.

I have heard about that since I was a child

Reply on news.ycombinator.com