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

Geopolitically this makes a lot of sense. Will be interesting to see how China reacts as it moves forward.

If Intel is serious this time about letting third parties into their fabs then it could be quite the reversal of fortune. However, as I've said in the past Intel is most likely to do this with "alternate" process streams, in order to not expose their full capabilities to competitors.

High hopes but low expectations. Real estate in AZ could be a good investment though.

As a first pass, wouldn't this be good for China? TSMC was strategic for Taiwan, as a military takeover of Taiwan (where the plants will likely be damaged or scuttled) would be economically damaging for the US. That might be a bit different if the US has enough high-the fabs internally.

I'd love to hear better analysis; I'm not confident of my understanding here.

Politically it would be ideal to keep everything in Taiwan as this greatly increases the stakes for a potential war.

However there is a pressing shortage of electricity in Taiwan. Just yesterday there had been a major blackout as one of the coal fired power stations suddenly went off the grid. I'm sure TSMC has been given priority supply but they are cutting it extremely close. Taiwan is just not a good place to have more fabs right now.

The shortage is unlikely to get better in the long term, with existing nuclear power stations nearing the end of their service life and the replacement stuck in political limbo. And there are already plans to move all 28nm+ process to China so they could better utilize the resources in Taiwan for the more profitable products.

https://amp.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3131823/why-has-t...

I read the main problem at the moment for fabs in Taiwan is water shortages.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-ta...