[civilitty]

TSMC doesn’t have a real monopoly, they’re just a few years ahead of everyone else in integrating ASML’s latest tech. Samsung and Intel aren’t very far behind. The more money TSMC charges the more incentive the others have to catch up but they can only move so fast. GlobalFoundries and STMicroelectronics seem stuck in the double digits.

It makes a big difference to a few competitive customers so TSMC gets paid well for that first mover advantage, but yeah it’s not well secured monopoly.

[dathinab]

thinking that TSMC is "just" integrating ASML tech is a common but big misconception

ASML tech is a tool, one essential for new better chips but not sufficient

You also need to have a lot of know how about how to best use the tool, integrate it in workflows etc. where TSMC seems to be somehow ahead of Intel.

Additionally the custom tooling in the steps leading up to the use of ASML tooling are also hugely important and TSMC is quite a bit ahead of intel with that. It turned out having multiple different customers with different needs which all collaborate with TSMC to optimize the tools in their workflows.