On Monday, Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC briefly joined the small club of companies worth more than $1 trillion. Over the past nearly four decades, TSMC has become one of the most important companies in the world — a leader in chip manufacturing that powers most of the world’s electronics.
Thanks to the artificial intelligence revolution, TSMC is facing a huge wave of demand for processors needed to train and run AI programs works closely with NVIDIA TSMC was recently the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of about $3.3 trillion. TSMC also supplies chips to competitors NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and AMD. The most famous the company’s client is Applewhich orders iPhone chips for MacBooks. The demand for TSMC chips is such that production is booked for many years.
«We have created a research line for technologies that will enable advanced artificial intelligence devices, circuits, and systems for decades to come», — TSMC says.
Taiwan, where the company is based, is one of the most important links in the semiconductor supply chain and a crucial country for the global economy. However, China considers the island its territory and does not rule out the use of force to take control of it. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said at a congressional hearing in May that the consequences of China’s invasion of Taiwan and seizure of TSMC would be «absolutely devastating».
«The United States now buys 92% of its advanced chips from TSMC in Taiwan,» the minister said.
Under pressure, TSMC wants to diversify production to protect itself from the conflict. It is building two fabs in the United States and announced plans for a third in April, with a total investment in Arizona of up to $65 billion. But last year, its US projects faced obstacles that the company attributed to a lack of human resources, as chip manufacturing requires highly specialized skills.
This year, TSMC also launched an $8.6 billion fab in Japan. The project is crucial for the country as it competes with the United States and Europe in attracting chipmakers with huge subsidies. Thanks to the support of the Japanese government, TSMC announced a second fab to produce more advanced chips. The firm is also planning a new fab in Germany, its first in Europe.
Geopolitics isn’t the only thing on the minds of TSMC and Taiwan’s chip industry. The island is also prone to natural disasters. It is located on the «Ring of Fire», an arc of intense seismic activity along the Pacific Rim, and, like neighboring Japan, has a long history of catastrophic earthquakes. TSMC was one of the companies that halted production due to earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 points in April this year, the strongest in decades in Taiwan. The company says that the earthquake’s impact was minimal. TSMC has invested in seismic resistance features at its facilities.
Source: Techxplore