Semiconductor Fab Challenges

it's 20b for intel, for everyone else it's 20b+cost of major stake in intel this kind of buisness is hard and can only be done by a corporation of smart, knowledgeable and experienced individuals, it took a few decades for tsmc to get into a position of advantage in silicon manufacturing

Samsung technology is used mainly for memories. Why? No idea. In any case, people would have to migrate their workflows which would take time, and then manufacture there. This would cause huge delays / price spikesThere are other chip manufactures in the world too if people are willing to buy outdated technology (like 10 years in the past)Also intel is investing a lot in manufacturing technology, it plans to be better than TSMC by 2025 iirc. Will it happen? No idea, but they are worki

Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet and they're all located in Taiwan. They account for all new chips for all new Apple products, all new AMD products, most new Nvidia products, etc. Most companies design the the chips, but then outsource the manufacturing of them to TSMC as building a fab has astronomical upfront costs.TSMC has acquired a lead in this area through a number of different methods. One of the main things is that they focus

There are very few companies that actually own fabs for mass production in the United States. AMD use to own fabs but they sold them quite some time ago.By virtue of being one of the five companies (while also being the largest) you’re going to easily get the money.As for why, fabs are a tremendous resource for a specialized economy and will easily become a national security risk due to how wide spread they are in the military and to sell advanced products.There’s also a de globalizatio

Exact same things is happening with TSMC's $40 Billion plant in AZ. [1][1] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/tsmc-delays-40bn-...

I don't think it's a mistake. It's more that they don't have a choice. There are very few (maybe even only one?) foundries in the world with advanced processes. Building a foundry is not trivial. For how long has Intel stuck with 14nm now? The Dutch ASML lithography machine is one of the most advanced machines in the world, and it's pretty much the only one of its kind. China has been investing heavily in domestic foundries for years now, but it takes time.

There are three companies (TSMC, Samsung and Intel) that compete at the top end of chip fabrication in the whole world. One of them (Intel) didn't make chips for anyone but themselves until about 4 months ago. Preparing a semiconductor for a given companies fab process takes time. You cant just call them up and ask for however many units of your design. Its a months to year long process of your engineers working with their engineers to optimize your circuit design to work best with their me

Yup, we don't need Intel, we need fabs.

There are a lot of times where I'd say a business should be allowed to fail - but this is a poor choice to do so.* You can't just spin up leading edge semiconductor manufacturing on a dime. It takes decades and hundreds of billions to reach where companies like Intel and TSMC are now. It's so hard that it's essentially impossible for new entrants to catch up.* The US has a strong interest in having local manufacturing, that no other power could take away in a time where

Latest fab costs around $20 billion. You need to manufacture in volume and take huge risks. The know-how inside fab companies goes far beyond patents and IP. Chinese are trying to get into the game with great effort, but they are still struggling at least 2 generations behind.Until just recently there were 4 players in the hidh end game GF, Intel, TSMC and Samsung. GF (Used to be part of AMD) quit the game in the middle of their 7nm effort because they could not keep up and changed their fo