Why are we so dependent on Taiwan for microchips? Why couldn’t these be manufactured elsewhere, in addition to Taiwan?
In: 1601
The problem isn’t semiconductors in general but the highest technology factories. There are dozens of fabs located worldwide that can build prior generation technologies. The main issue is that there are probably only three companies today that can make very high end products like the latest CPUs – Samsung, TSMC and Intel. Intel is falling behind the curve a bit and Samsung isn’t as focused on CPUs. TSMC is pretty much the only game in town for the latest AMD and perhaps soon to be Intel CPUs and the latest GPUs (likely). Unfortunately without CPUs, the other chips (even though much higher volumes) aren’t too useful.
These high end factories takes dozens of collaborations across the industry, multi-year partnerships with customers, a stable well trained workforce and tens of billions of dollars to get to work. No other company (at the moment) can duplicate this without many years (think decades!) of development and investment. TSMC has been in the business for nearly 40 years and their investment isn’t going to be duplicated any time soon.
Even if other companies decide to invest in current gen technologies (unlikely), it would be useless for companies who are designing for the next generation technology. It is even less likely that any customer would bet their next gen products on a company that doesn’t have a solid track record.
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