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I'm aware of their position; The info in this dump is probably worth little not nothing, but, the interesting conversation to me is whether even if someone did

I'm aware of their position; The info in this dump is probably worth little not nothing, but, the interesting conversation to me is whether even if someone did get some of their secret sauce, could they really build another TSMC, or even something similar?

bluGill 3y ago
Sure, given a billion dollar budget, few years to work, and a legal environment that lets them use those stolen secrets. It can't be done cheap, overnight, or where the legal environment doesn't allow it. Really only China, while plenty of places have smart engineers, the rest cannot get the rest together (and if they tried it would kill their economy). Note that TSMC depends on other companies for various parts. Without those they need even more money and time to duplicate it all. There is nothing they are doing that you can't hire engineers to duplicate. They figured it out, so anyone could. However it isn't easy, we could be talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.
- kortilla 3y ago
  A billion dollars is not enough. The cutting edge tech for euv lithography isn’t even TSMCs. TSMC does not have secrets that put them ahead. It’s all about the culture of operations efficiency and just being first to invest in actually implementing cutting edge tech.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    The lithography is one of the technologies needed that if they can't get can bump this up to a lot more than a billion dollar. It can still be duplicated, but it will take more time and $$$.
adfhaidfonio 3y ago
Hell no. ASML is the only company that sells certain equipment needed for photolithography. These machines are physically large and sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. Their export is regulated by multiple governments and international treaties. There are intelligence agencies tracking every single one of those machines and ensuring they don't fall into the wrong hands. This is just one fatal flaw with the plan.

bluGill 3y ago

Sure, given a billion dollar budget, few years to work, and a legal environment that lets them use those stolen secrets. It can't be done cheap, overnight, or where the legal environment doesn't allow it. Really only China, while plenty of places have smart engineers, the rest cannot get the rest together (and if they tried it would kill their economy). Note that TSMC depends on other companies for various parts. Without those they need even more money and time to duplicate it all. There is nothing they are doing that you can't hire engineers to duplicate. They figured it out, so anyone could. However it isn't easy, we could be talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.

kortilla 3y ago
A billion dollars is not enough. The cutting edge tech for euv lithography isn’t even TSMCs. TSMC does not have secrets that put them ahead. It’s all about the culture of operations efficiency and just being first to invest in actually implementing cutting edge tech.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The lithography is one of the technologies needed that if they can't get can bump this up to a lot more than a billion dollar. It can still be duplicated, but it will take more time and $$$.

adfhaidfonio 3y ago

Hell no. ASML is the only company that sells certain equipment needed for photolithography. These machines are physically large and sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. Their export is regulated by multiple governments and international treaties. There are intelligence agencies tracking every single one of those machines and ensuring they don't fall into the wrong hands. This is just one fatal flaw with the plan.