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Comment by permo-w | Hacker News Reader

is TSMC not currently building a plant in the US? and ASML are Dutch, so they're not at risk. I’m not saying that China taking Taiwan wouldn't be a massive strategic boon, but I don't think it would be "having the world by the balls" by any means

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I suggest reading this before getting too excited about shiny new manufacturing plants that will require years to stand up.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/wha...

TSMC has not committed to a US plant that applies their most advanced technology. Currently, they are going to produce chips with larger slower features, some generations behind their state of the art -- that's commercially very useful, and a good idea, but in no way replaces the state of the art chips that they produce in Taiwan. Alas.

I think the last 6 years have shown how shakey electronics supply chains are. One factory in the US isn't going to come close to avoiding chaos.

A knowledge economy depends on information. TSMC will keep key knowledge within Taiwan as part of their Silicon Shield[1].

Look closely at a business you know well and notice how much the profits depend upon information in people's heads.

Everything runs on a combination of money (capitalist profits) and non-money gains (other gains that people really care about).

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsmc+silicon+shield

do you not think that if China invaded Taiwan, the top minds there would just leave and go elsewhere? the machines they use are built in the Netherlands. I know it's not quite as simple as that, but I don't think it'd be the end of the world like people are saying. I think worse would be the precedent it would set.

Other companies have the same EUV machines. TSMC also made the good decision in hindsight to make an early bet on those machines.

We know TSMC is dominant - the real knowledge of how they are doing that is in the heads of people working at TSMC. Or maybe better to say that something is missing from the competitors? Process? Management? Everything?

Cadence and Synopsys are US companies that need to know many of the technical parameters of TSMC processes. They might know more.

Intel's Tick–tock model has lost it's tick. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model

well then the question remains to be: where do the loyalties of TSMC lie, and where do the loyalties of its employees lie?

I think it's three at this point? With the first one coming online this year.

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