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Apple reports fourth quarter results

(www.apple.com)
176 points mfiguiere | 1 comments | 30 Oct 25 20:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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oxqbldpxo ◴[30 Oct 25 21:15 UTC] No.45765471[source]▶
All these companies depend on TSMC for their life.
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nomilk ◴[30 Oct 25 21:38 UTC] No.45765677[source]▶
Had to look up what TSMC meant (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable?

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colechristensen ◴[30 Oct 25 21:45 UTC] No.45765755[source]▶
>What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable?

Onshore TSMC fabs followed by Intel fabs.

Properly motivated, I think Intel and Apple could do a lot relatively quickly.

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1. throwaway31131 ◴[01 Nov 25 03:34 UTC] No.45779052[source]▶
TSMC in Taiwan has a significant share of the wafers produced by the world every month. If those wafers were not produced the global economy would suffer badly.

It takes years to bring a fab online. Fab 21 in Arizona took 5 years to enter mass production from ground breaking. Some believe it could be done in two but that’s yet to be demonstrated. Then there are the wafers themselves. The total time it takes to process one wafer at the single nm scale is around 100 days.

So realistically, even if one makes up their mind to make a fab fast, you’re looking at 3 years before you have your first sellable wafer.