"AI has a physical dependency in Taiwan that can be easily destroyed by Chinese missiles, even without an invasion" ?
Arguably false. Why do you think the US has encouraged TSMC foundries, now inside Arizona ? It's obviously to protect against the scenario that China takes Taiwan. In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest. China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
> Why do you think the US has encouraged TSMC foundries, now inside Arizona ? It's obviously to protect against the scenario that China takes Taiwan. In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest.
American business culture works pretty strongly against "give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest."
I think it's most likely those fabs will stagnate and the American MBAs running them will just milk them for short-term profits. Why invest in technology when you can buy back shares? After all, your only goal is number-go-up.
> China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
Not necessarily. Technology isn't so much the machines, it's the know-how. TMSC employees will still need jobs, post invasion, and I'm sure China will pay them very well. Some fraction will go to work for Chinese fabs, and teach them TMSC's tricks and knowledge.
90% of TSMC's capacity is still in Taiwan. A substantial amount of global high end chip capacity is also in South Korea and Japan, which would likely get pulled in.
A war would not wipe out chip production, but the squeeze would be immense for many years.
There are some near ready foundries in the US and in EU, not to mention South Korea. It would take a few years to catch up of course.
What I worry more about is the full lock-in of TSMC production capacity by nvidia/apple/amd/etc for their chips on their latest and greatest silicon process (aka the best in the world). There is 'no space' for performant large RISC-V implementations or other alternative (and it will require several iterations and mistakes will be made)
Tenstorrent managed to secure TSMC manufacturing capacity, I doubt many other RISC-centric fabless companies have any issues aside from aggressive competition.
"AI has a physical dependency in Taiwan that can be easily destroyed by Chinese missiles, even without an invasion" ?
Arguably false. Why do you think the US has encouraged TSMC foundries, now inside Arizona ? It's obviously to protect against the scenario that China takes Taiwan. In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest. China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
That's over-optimistic.
> Why do you think the US has encouraged TSMC foundries, now inside Arizona ? It's obviously to protect against the scenario that China takes Taiwan. In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest.
American business culture works pretty strongly against "give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest."
I think it's most likely those fabs will stagnate and the American MBAs running them will just milk them for short-term profits. Why invest in technology when you can buy back shares? After all, your only goal is number-go-up.
> China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
Not necessarily. Technology isn't so much the machines, it's the know-how. TMSC employees will still need jobs, post invasion, and I'm sure China will pay them very well. Some fraction will go to work for Chinese fabs, and teach them TMSC's tricks and knowledge.
90% of TSMC's capacity is still in Taiwan. A substantial amount of global high end chip capacity is also in South Korea and Japan, which would likely get pulled in.
A war would not wipe out chip production, but the squeeze would be immense for many years.
There are some near ready foundries in the US and in EU, not to mention South Korea. It would take a few years to catch up of course.
What I worry more about is the full lock-in of TSMC production capacity by nvidia/apple/amd/etc for their chips on their latest and greatest silicon process (aka the best in the world). There is 'no space' for performant large RISC-V implementations or other alternative (and it will require several iterations and mistakes will be made)
Tenstorrent managed to secure TSMC manufacturing capacity, I doubt many other RISC-centric fabless companies have any issues aside from aggressive competition.