Detailed article on the complexity of the chip deign process and the semiconductor supply chain. Specifically, how the company TSMC in Taiwan is probably the world’s most important chip company.
I’ve been living in Taiwan for 3+ years, and am baffled that I never pay attention to…
The last paragraph is a pretty good summary, but it doesn’t do justice for the detail in the rest of the article.
The cutting edge semiconductor chip manufacturing is (and was) done in Taiwan by TSMC. The island has acquired strategic significance, with partners all over the world depending on them. The chips they make are essentials to any of today’s and future hardware: (flying) electrical cars, space ships, servers, 5G, machine to discover new drugs or vaccines, and any military equipments.
Update 13 May 2021: Bloomberg has an in-depth article on the complexity of the chip manufacturing process. It also covers the dynamics of the industry.
… it takes years to build semiconductor fabrication facilities and billions of dollars—and even then the economics are so brutal that you can lose out if your manufacturing expertise is a fraction behind the competition…
Manufacturing a chip typically takes more than three months and involves giant factories, dust-free rooms, multi-million-dollar machines, molten tin and lasers. The end goal is to transform wafers of silicon—an element extracted from plain sand—into a network of billions of tiny switches called transistors that form the basis of the circuitry that will eventually give a phone, computer, car, washing machine or satellite crucial capabilities
This is why countries face such difficulty in achieving semiconductor self sufficiency. China has called chip independence a top national priority in its latest five-year plan, while U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed to build a secure American supply chain by reviving domestic manufacturing.
– The Chip Shortage Keeps Getting Worse. Why Can’t We Just Make More?