[CitizenKane]

Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet and they're all located in Taiwan. They account for all new chips for all new Apple products, all new AMD products, most new Nvidia products, etc. Most companies design the the chips, but then outsource the manufacturing of them to TSMC as building a fab has astronomical upfront costs.

TSMC has acquired a lead in this area through a number of different methods. One of the main things is that they focus deeply on manufacturing. Another is that they work 24 hours a day in R&D, running 3 shifts so they basically have the lights on all the time. And as mentioned above, the upfront costs are incredibly high with a fab costing on the order of 20+ billion dollars to construct.

Intel is attempting to catch up, but it will likely be another 3 to 5 years before they are able to do so. Honestly just having R&D up and going all the time is probably a huge advantage for TSMC and probably a big reason behind their success. Regardless, suffice to say basically all cutting edge product shipments would cease in a matter of months if TSMC fabs were destroyed.

[toephu2]

Actually TSMC has 2 fabs in Mainland China (a 12" fab and an 8" fab), and one in the USA (8" fab) [1].

[1] https://www.tsmc.com/english/aboutTSMC/TSMC_Fabs

[CitizenKane]

They do, but they don't produce any of their leading edge chips in mainland China, just as they won't be in the USA either. Looking at the wording of my post I should have made the leading edge part more clear. My mistake there!

[marcosdumay]

Multi-shift R&D is a weird proposition. Is it for best using machinery?

[biztos]

According to this, it has something to do with the movement of the wafers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35667282

It also has to do with competitive boasting: theirs goes to eleven.

[jmartrican]

> Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet and they're all located in Taiwan.

What about Samsung? I thought they also made leading edge.

[CitizenKane]

They're close, but I believe they're not doing any 3nm manufacturing at the moment but I could be wrong about that.

[drozycki]

NVIDIA, Apple, AMD, Qualcomm exclusively use TSMC for their best chips. Even Samsung prefers to use TSMC-fabbed Qualcomm SoCs over their in-house design and manufacturing for their flagship phones.

[tester756]

>Intel is attempting to catch up, but it will likely be another 3 to 5 years before they are able to do so

According to them they will do it in next 12 months.

[greggsy]

Sounds like hopeful words for investors

[throwaway2037]

> Currently TSMC has the only leading edge chip fabrications plants (fabs) on the planet

No, Samsung has some in South Korea also.

[koromak]

What happens if a war with Taiwan does break out? Who's poised to pick up the slack?

[makeitdouble]

Perhaps Korea or Japan, but in practice nobody, and that's partly by design.

Taiwan being the core producer of the super high end chips is guaranteing them that if a war ever happens, they won't be left as sacrifice to the opponent while the rest of the world goes business as usual.

They critically need to be a strategic and non replaceable producer.

[tommoor]

Literally no-one – the majority of high-tech consumer electronics would stop being produced as soon as existing chips run out.

[tedivm]

This is part of the reason why you're hearing posts about TSMC expanding out of Taiwan. As it stands today it would be a fairly large economic hit to have advanced processors stop production. Building out redundancy seems to be a top priority.

It's also worth noting that in the event of a war the US is very, very likely to bomb the shit out of the TSMC plants.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semi...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/

[a_wild_dandan]

If that happens, you won't care. You'll be concerned with your personal safety.

[hnthrowaway0328]

It's very unpredictable. It might spill to the whole East Asia and then who knows.

[cyrillite]

Where can someone dig into the data on this?