As I understand it from my time at AMD, TSMC provides what is essentially an SDK for specifying how to use their process for a given node. Clients translate (co

As I understand it from my time at AMD, TSMC provides what is essentially an SDK for specifying how to use their process for a given node. Clients translate (compile) their higher level specifications into this framework for fabrication, and own responsibility for characterizing (testing) the resulting silicon. This separation of responsibilities presents TSMC with a difficult reverse engineering challenge if they were interested in violating their NDA.