| TSMC shares deep history with ASML via Philips (Philips was the first investor in TSMC, and ASML was started off as a Philips spin off). Most of today's advanced litho (EUV) was actually funded/developed in American labs (Berkeley lab etc). The US was ahead in litho for awhile...but GCA folded and ASML acquired Cymer (based in San Diego, develops light sources for EUV) and SVG. TSMC has a couple of advantages: 1) Focus exclusively on manufacturing, not design, 2) Large volume customers/products (Apple, AMD, NVIDIA etc), but especially Apple/iPhone. The process technology /manufacturing is tightly coupled to design specs. This provides a faster manufacturing learning curve. -Intel screwed up by missing mobile / pushing out EUV adoption. Since they also design their own chips, they compete with any potential foundry customers in several markets (ex: data center), which is why they haven't been able to grow their foundry services division that much. TSMC is friendly with everyone and does one thing: manufacture chips in the fab. Intel is attempting to catch up now by placing several orders for the next version of EUV, High NA EUV. They've also stated that with their planned process innovations ("RibbonFET" and "PowerVIA"), they will have a better process than TSMC at the 18A node (1.8 nm). -For Samsung, their core business is more memory/displays. Memory lags logic in process technology innovation. On the logic side, Samsung has made the leap to Gate-all-around transistors (next evolution of transistor, succeeding FinFET) before Intel/TSMC but seems to be facing yield problems. TSMC is the top dog now, but things are going to get interesting as we go <3, 2 nm... |