TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

TSMC is also likely saving their best tech for where they can control it the best and shop it around the best. The US has lots of high tech customers (Apple, Qualcomm, AMD even Intel) who are willing to pay top price for supply. Add in the US and their heavy national security needs/desire/politics and of course the energy and money is obvious for good fabs in the US.

England has some semiconductor industry and so does Germany, but less of it is top-spec tech from cash rich companies. Obviously “Europe” still cares about national security but is the money and politics comparable to the US military industrial complex?

is TSMC doing anything innovative themselves? I thought they just purchase the machines or at least specs from ASML, a Dutch company. So the "best tech" is designed in EU anyway.

If it was that simple loads of companies would be smashing out 5nm chips...

The machines from ASML are just tools (very precise and high-tech tools, but still tools) for one step in the semiconductor fabbing process. They don't come with a manual describing the entire process, but are more like a software library: useless without a lot of infrastructure and process know-how and other tooling around them.

That's why TSMC still has a significant process advantage to other manufacturers, even though all of them are customers of ASML and able to afford the most advanced EUV lithography scanners.

if they are "just tools", why doesn't TSMC just build them themselves?

I'm not hearing any major challenges here that couldn't be overcome in the EU, considering the EU is capable of building some of the machines which are state of the art. yeah, you need capital and workforce and a bunch of other things. those aren't really blockers though. I think maybe there is no point, since it would cost more than TSMC, so better just buy the chips. at least until now, when there is a chip shortage and you regret not having a foundry. by the same logic there is no point to manufacture a lot of things in EU (or US) because it's cheaper to get them from China.

not saying it's simple. there are big companies in EU like Siemens that I bet are capable of doing it, if it makes sense economically. I guess so far it didn't. probably the reason was that it's cheaper to get the chips from Asia, same as it's cheaper to make iphones in Asia, etc.

Intel isn't capable yet and they are pouring money and have all the incentives to get leading edge node...

You think Siemens which has none of those will be capable to churn out leading edge fabs just like that?

Lets face it, it's not a simple task.

Why would you do something like that if you don't need to?

The fact that someone is willing to build these machines for you is a good thing.

> if they are "just tools", why doesn't TSMC just build them themselves?

If TSMC isn’t doing anything special why doesn’t the EU just build fabs then?

> I'm not hearing any major challenges here that couldn't be overcome in the EU, considering the EU is capable of building some of the machines which are state of the art.

So why don’t they do it?

Well then why isn't the tech executed in EU? If it was about being in Asia, then why are they bringing it to the US?