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Had to look up what TSMC meant (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable?
by nomilk 1y ago
Had to look up what TSMC meant (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).
What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable?
- madeofpalk 1y agohttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more-than-500-billion-usd-in-the-us-over-the-next-four-years/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more... > The fund’s expansion includes a multibillion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Apple is the largest customer at this state-of-the-art facility, which employs more than 2,000 workers to manufacture the chips in the United States. Mass production of Apple chips began last month.
- colechristensen 1y ago>What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable? Onshore TSMC fabs followed by Intel fabs. Properly motivated, I think Intel and Apple could do a lot relatively quickly.
- 45764986 1y agoThe supply chain for this simply does not exist.
- throwaway31131 1y agoTSMC in Taiwan has a significant share of the wafers produced by the world every month. If those wafers were not produced the global economy would suffer badly. It takes years to bring a fab online. Fab 21 in Arizona took 5 years to enter mass production from ground breaking. Some believe it could be done in two but that’s yet to be demonstrated. Then there are the wafers themselves. The total time it takes to process one wafer at the single nm scale is around 100 days. So realistically, even if one makes up their mind to make a fab fast, you’re looking at 3 years before you have your first sellable wafer.
- 45764986 1y agoIf a war rendered TSMC unavailable it would crash the global economy. There is no next best option.
- astrange 1y agoSamsung, Intel, SMIC are not incredibly far behind. TSMC is the best because we (the US and its customers) trust them more than its competitors and so fund its R&D and license them more exclusive technologies.
- dontlaugh 1y agoSMIC in particular have made very quick progress. They’d probably match TSMC first in such a scenario.
- ta9000 1y agoIn case of a war, SMIC would likely also be unavailable.
- dontlaugh 1y agoUnavailable to whom exactly?
- astrange 1y agoNo they haven't, they're just trying to show off by running older processes with high failure rates very hard to make it look like they can keep up. We're not giving them EUV and they can't reinvent it, so they're stuck.
- martinald 1y agoThere's an amazing book on Apple in China all about this issue (and more). It's a great read and I'd highly recommend if you're interested. Also Chip Wars is really good. I may be confusing which one is which because I read them back to back, but they overlap!
- nomilk 1y agoThanks! I've added both to my reading list