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Comment by qppo | Hacker News Reader

> TMSC will make us suffer due to monopoly

The fears have less to do with TSMC the company and more the fact it's a pawn in the geopolitical chess game between the US (and her pacific allies) and China.

The issues with supply chains through Taiwan have little to do with whether gamers are buying their CPUs from AMD or Intel, but the fact that a critical piece of infrastructure in the Western economy is very precariously located, and in the event of war or political strife is not going to be able to be mobilized for domestic (or even friendly-allied) production.

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I agree with you. But I think it's a "can't-see-the-forest-for-the-tree symptom" that is possibly due to the typical HN demographics. It has been a decade or longer that the US relies on China manufacturing for industrial infrastructure that is as (or even more) critical as wafers. It doesn't help fix the problem by simply singling out semiconductors and keeping every other industry locked in China as-is.

All of those have second sources.

5nm silicon is, literally, the only thing that only one company can make.

It would have to be quite a long war where the military couldn’t rely on existing equipment and inventories of chips for a while. It’s not like most military equipment uses the latest CPUs anyway.

And if a war did drag on for years there would be opportunity to switch suppliers and manufacturers or build new infrastructure.

Who said anything about any wars? There are rumors abound about TSMC infrastructure being booby-trapped due to national security concerns. As soon as China reaches 14-28nm and is able to sustain internal needs using home grown foundries an "accident" in TSMC facilities could put mainland in a position of silicon leader for at least half a decade.

Why half a decade? They just have to buy new equipment. The know-how remains.

Some industries take decades to establish, you don't have 5-year stock of CPUs and you will probably be left high and dry if the supply is cut off by a natural disaster or something.

Where do you even get people with the knowledge required to run the 5nm fabs, there night be none at all on thr continent.

And moreover, is going to be instantly destroyed and unrepairable.

Sounds like US screw up to prevent a monopoly which is being broken by an outsider, now complaining that there are no western alternatives to the outsider.

Anyway, the machinery that TSMC is using is produced in Netherlands AFAIK. US should be fine, there's a lot of capital available to buy the machinery, recruit the talent and build the Fabs if it comes to TSMC not being reliable partner at some point.

Critical technologies like optical proximity correction are fab proprietary

That's why your recruit the talent too.

Even if TSMC is western comany, monopoly on bleeding edge process is bad for world. I wish no more fabs (TSMC, Samsung, Intel) drop out from the race.

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