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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

AMD relies on geopolitically dicey Taiwanese fabs. Why is nobody else worried about this? Berkshire divested all TSMC investments a few years ago so at least they're worried.

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Those same "geopolitically dicey Taiwanese fabs" are used by almost every major chip company in the world, including Intel which uses TSMC to manufacture its Panther Lake graphics tile and all the tiles in Arrow Lake except the base tile. Nvidia, Apple and Qualcomm are just as dependent on Taiwanese fabs as AMD.

TSMC dominates world wide with 80% of the general chip market and nearly 100% in some specific markets.

Due to Trump policies (and geopolitical realities), they are building or helping to build fabs in the US and elsewhere. It's takes years to build a fab.

This reminded me to check about ESMC (joint venture between TSMC and Bosch, Infinion and NXP, but mostly TSMC) since I haven't heard about it in a while. Seems they are on schedule which somewhat surprises me.

if openAI starts making their own jalapeno chips, maybe intel gets a comeback printing the jalapeno chips for openAI? because a new worry for intel and AMD is going to be when openAI and anthropic just design all their own hardware, and dont need any of the "historical expertise" those companies have. so then the only value is "who has the physical value that can make these designs".

so intel took the hit now, AMD might take the hit later as they're kinda...... mostly a software company, that contracts to hardware companies.

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