3 ms·

Compare the number of players with leading edge fabs then and now though.

• kken 5y ago
  There were no players without fabs back then.
• cogman10 5y ago
  Yup, the major change has been the capital to get new fabs off the ground has become unimaginable. TSMC is practically the only game in town for chip manufactures ATM, everyone else that will fab 3rd party designs is way behind. GlobalFoundries state of the art, for example, is a 12nm process. TSMC sits at 5nm, about 4 generations ahead.
  • duped 5y ago
    There are trillions of dollars in capital floating around looking for a better place to park it than treasuries. Major infrastructural projects like semi fabs should be a no brainer - the risk is not that high due to evergrowing demand and the trust that governments won't let an Intel or TSMC fail. Even just look at the VC landscape - there was $621 billion spent in venture capital globally last year, which is one of the worst ways to invest your cash. Point being there's plenty of capital out there for giant projects like building fabs, I just don't think it's sexy enough yet or the financiers haven't taken a deep enough look while governments are expected to make the first moves.
  • vondro 5y ago
    Samsung is not that much behind, recent nVidia GPUs and Qualcomm CPUs are manufactured by Samsung (8N and 4nm, whatever those mean anyway). While density and perf/watt is worse than TSMC, it's THE competitor for TSMC.