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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

> TSMC is the center of the universe for chip fab. AMD, NVidia, Qualcomm, and Apple all rely on their manufacturing. Doesn't this create a systemic risk especially with Taiwan's ties to China?

It does, and that's not only TSMC, or even fabs as such.

Taiwan is a source for a many single vendor semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and consumables. Taiwan going down means the semiconductor industry as such, globally, going down for a few years at least.

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What kind of equipment are we talking here?

First thing that comes to mind are lithography machines, but for the very high-end ASML is the only game in town currently afaik. And they are sitting in the Netherlands (working with Zeiss in Germany). For larger feature sizes there are vendors too.

Equipment, some low profile stuff like coaters, wafer preparation, and cleaning. Packaging equipment, and consumables. Some AMHS. Gas, and chemical handling equipment. Some resist makers.

Clean room material markers, few makers of vacuum grade plastics, FOUP, film, and other carriers.

That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it? You still have Global foundries, Samsung and the off chance, Intel opening their fabs.

All GloFO, Sam, and Japanese all use at least in some part something from Taiwanese makers. If for example, the only one maker of particular brand of proprietary resist stripper does go down, I don't know if somebody would even be able to reverse engineer it to know how it works, let alone reproduce it.

They will have to go back few generations in the resist tech to resume production with non TW suppliers.

And like that with many, many other parts of the ecosystem. It's only a tip of the iceberg.

If for example, the only one maker of particular brand of proprietary resist stripper

Is this an abstract example, or is this actually the case?

unless you prepare for such eventuality before helping it happen.

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