>I’ve been living in Taiwan for 3+ years, and am baffled that I never pay attention to semiconductors.
I can't imagine how baffled he's going to be when he discovers Taiwan considers itself part of China.
The DPP has won the last 2 elections, so it is fair to say that more Taiwanese believe Taiwan is an independent nation than not.
The reason that ROC still de jure claims 20th century territory (including Mongolia) is because redrawing the borders would upset the status quo and signal independence to PRC which is a red line for missile attack. In every practical way, the Taiwan province has been streamlined away and the ROC _is_ Taiwan.
China, not the CCP. They view themselves as the rightful leadership party.
This is very historical though. When polled on whether Taiwan would want to become part of China, remain independent, or become part of the US (!), the majority wants US Statehood.
I'll go look up sources and cite them in just a bit.
Edit: Wikipedia cites https://web.archive.org/web/20090326142909/http://www.tvbs.c...
>Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People's Republic of China. It is the lofty duty of the entire Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan, to accomplish the great task of reunifying the motherland.
I haven't worked for Samsung in ~7 years, but last I recall they were aggressively pursing all manner of value optimization angles. They also have an existing presence in the US, whereas TSMC is going to be about 5 years out on their US factory. Keeping American workers around to inject ideas into your manufacturing process can be invaluable if you have typically been operating the business like a Borg cube (i.e. relentless standardization throughout, potentially at the cost of more complex value-add proposals).
Happened again and again. In free markets, of course. Even if they may trend to, only controlled markets reach monopoly.
I think one thing TSMC does better than intel is they have a more long term view. They aren't as concerned about hitting next quarters earnings. Their single biggest shareholder is the government of Taiwan. One of their board members a is Taiwanese minister, So I think the government wants to make sure TSMC is around for the long term. They also provide a lot of jobs in Taiwan. If have ever been to Hsinchu you could see how many jobs the semi industry provides. Everything from engineers to more blue color workers.
From the following link:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/TSMC-and-Google-...
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is working with Google and other U.S. tech giants to develop a new way of making semiconductors more powerful.
It seems they're getting some help (how much?) from companies like Google, AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, etc when it comes to chip packaging.
Does it really? What kind of exclusive capabilities would humanity meaningfully lose if we regressed back to 14nm? Ray tracing?
More realistic title is lack of foresight allowed Taiwan to monopolize leading fab production for next 5-10 years. A mistake every major party is rapidly correcting. TSMC is one US sanction or one Chinese glitterbomb away from being irrelevant. Long term money is on Samsung.
