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Poll: Half of Taiwan fears TSMC becoming US-SMC

I think 18A has a decent chance of success in part because the development and ramp are both conducted in the US, with a 1 hour timezone difference half the year, and a 3 hour plane ride separating AZ from OR.

I think TSMC wisely refuses to even try to ramp a new technology first in Arizona. They always ramp in Taiwan, close by the leading fab.

This is to say: Taiwan citizens shouldn't worry until the lead fab is in the US, rather than Taiwan; a seemingly impossible eventually. US will always be N-1 behind Taiwan, or more. The US is a technology colony of Taiwan, even if the orange man gets restless.
 
If they run Nvidia they won’t make 30K, likely not even 25K and more likely less than 20K depending on how much volume as the flow is suboptimal for the scale and EUV in Fab21

Nvidia die (largest monolithic die in the world) consumes wafers so the wafer count is much different than Apple, QCOM, AVGO, Intel. Apple sells more chips though, 5-6X what Nvidia does. Either way TSMC AZ will be over capacity if the "buy USA" trend is real.
 
Intel has pretty big die as well their EMR single die is like 754mm2 Intel 7 monolithic Silicon with 34 Cores Cache and IMC.
GNR is ~600mm2 Intel 3 Silicon as well.
Intel is second only to Nvidia in regards to doing large monolithic die.

True, but Intel also does chiplets. AMD was first to chiplets, do they even do monolithic dies? Maybe for mid range chips? The cloud companies are doing monolithic chips but nothing the size of Nvidia or Intel but they are closing the gap.
 
True, but Intel also does chiplets. AMD was first to chiplets, do they even do monolithic dies?
For mobile yes some SKUs like the AI HX 370(I hate the name so cringe) around 230mm2 on N4P also for chiplet Intel did Mobile CPU and PCH on same package In 2013.
pl21802490-haswell_mobile_intel_i5_laptop_processors_core_i5_4210u_4th_generation_3m_cache_2_7...jpg
 
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View attachment 3681

Experts say the Trump-era push for onshore manufacturing reshaped TSMC’s strategy, while its core R&D and cutting-edge nodes remain in Taiwan.

by Emre Çıtak September 23, 2025 in Tech

A recent poll indicates half of Taiwanese respondents believe Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is becoming a U.S.-focused entity following substantial investments in the United States, a move initiated under pressure from the Trump administration.

Concerns in Taiwan regarding the company’s trajectory have grown since TSMC committed to investments reported to be in the “hundreds of billions” of dollars to establish major operations on U.S. soil. The perception of the company shifting away from its home base was intensified by earlier rumors that the United States government was considering acquiring a stake in TSMC. A poll conducted by the newspaper UDN has now quantified this sentiment, revealing that 50% of the Taiwanese public surveyed is concerned about TSMC evolving into what is being called “TSMC of the United States” or “US-SMC.” The publication noted that some scholars and experts believe this transformation may already be underway, stating that the strategic deployment by the U.S. toward the chipmaker has presented challenges to Taiwan’s domestic semiconductor industry.

Academics have weighed in on the strategic motivations behind the U.S. push. A professor at National Chengchi University, a prominent political science school in Taiwan, stated that the Trump administration’s objective is to have TSMC produce not only cutting-edge nodes but also advanced packaging technologies within the United States. This expert also articulated that TSMC’s presence is a key national asset that significantly elevates Taiwan’s geopolitical importance to the U.S., particularly in the context of evolving relations between Taiwan and China. The professor suggested that without the chip giant’s critical role, Taiwan’s strategic value to the United States would be dramatically reduced. The shift of some operations to the U.S. is seen as part of a larger strategic aspiration beyond immediate geopolitical concerns.

................................................................

Elena Poughia – Managing Director

Elena Poughia


Elena is the MD of Dataconomy, one of the top 10 AI magazines & educational platforms in the world with 1.5 million readers a month, and the founder of Data Natives, Europe’s largest data science & AI conference, taking place annually in Berlin. Elena is an advocate of data privacy and AI ethics, has served in expert groups at the EU level, worked for the EIC (European Innovation Council), and has been speaking at conferences regularly on these topics. She mentors startups for Vision Health Pioneers, tech2impact, African Tech Vision, Applied Data Incubator, WeWork Labs, and others.

She speaks at key tech conferences such as Web Summit, 4YFN, Tech BBQ, SXSW, MWC, has keynoted corporate events for IBM, SAP, and Google & lectured on the topic of AI for Business Consultants at universities such as CBS, Hyper Island, Esade, to name a few. She was profiled as a change-maker Woman of the Year in 2020 by CNN and profiled by Handlessblatt in 2018 as an emerging entrepreneur.

https://dataconomy.com/2025/09/23/poll-half-of-taiwan-fears-tsmc-becoming-us-smc/

Original source:
2025-09-22 00:00 United Daily News/Reporter Lan Junda/Taipei Report
https://udn.com/news/story/8625/9020144
This article is stupid. There's no fear when TSMC invests in two fabs in China. China constantly threatens to invade Taiwan and annex the island, yet the article is comparing that to TACO's tariff threats?!

Every company reaches a stage where they need to expand globally.

Toyota has a factory in Texas, where's the fear for the Japanese?
Volkswagen also has a factory in the US, where's the fear for the Germans?

Google operates offices and hardware engineering hubs in Taiwan, a f'cking hardware engineering hub! Where's the fear for the Americans?
 
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I think the reason TSMC started expanding globally was because of Taiwan's limited land area, water resources, and electricity.
Even if we ignore political ties, I think they would have expanded overseas in various ways.
Do not forget people! I saw some interview with one of the TSMC top people, who had returned back to academia in Taiwan after his retirement at TSMC a few years ago, if I remember well. In that interview he mentioned also that TSMC was running into the problem of finding enough good people on Taiwan, both in R&D and running Fabs.

So, moving off the rather small island of Taiwan and it's finite capacity with resources, also people, will open up many opportunities for TSMC I believe. Especially also regarding enlarging their pool of good people to work at their company. Perhaps TSMC should/could start recruiting in India, and perhaps in 10 years or so, they can start some (Giga-like)-Fab site somewhere in India, with all those people from India that would like to return to India and help their country entering more seriously the Semi Fab industrial capacity? India would love to have more access to and playing a larger role in the "oil of the 21st century", we are just 25% into this century, so lot's of stuff will happen the coming decades, also because of geopolical shifts..........
 
Do not forget people! I saw some interview with one of the TSMC top people, who had returned back to academia in Taiwan after his retirement at TSMC a few years ago, if I remember well. In that interview he mentioned also that TSMC was running into the problem of finding enough good people on Taiwan, both in R&D and running Fabs.

So, moving off the rather small island of Taiwan and it's finite capacity with resources, also people, will open up many opportunities for TSMC I believe. Especially also regarding enlarging their pool of good people to work at their company. Perhaps TSMC should/could start recruiting in India, and perhaps in 10 years or so, they can start some (Giga-like)-Fab site somewhere in India, with all those people from India that would like to return to India and help their country entering more seriously the Semi Fab industrial capacity? India would love to have more access to and playing a larger role in the "oil of the 21st century", we are just 25% into this century, so lot's of stuff will happen the coming decades, also because of geopolical shifts..........
India has fare share of problems tbh and the most India is doing is assembly
 
India has fare share of problems tbh and the most India is doing is assembly
Perhaps the US has also their own fare share of problems, some call the situation in the US internally a hybrid civil war of novel proportions...........

Be careful to underestimate the brigthness of India's people (ask your top US boards why they appointed some of those CEO's from India, Microsoft. Google), and India is the largest nation on earth, peoplewise.........
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/population-by-country.htm

Your comment sounds somewhat like INTEL's management (for too long) about their leadership status in SEMI, and how "backward" others were.........Never a good sign when someone starts talking demeaning about others, especially potential competitors......
 
Perhaps the US has also their own fare share of problems, some call the situation in the US internally a hybrid civil war of novel proportions...........

Be careful to underestimate the brigthness of India's people (ask your top US boards why they appointed some of those CEO's from India, Microsoft. Google), and India is the largest nation on earth, peoplewise.........
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/population-by-country.htm

Your comment sounds somewhat like INTEL's management (for too long) about their leadership status in SEMI, and how "backward" others were.........Never a good sign when someone starts talking demeaning about others, especially potential competitors......
I was not talking about talent problems but more about the corruption and QoL.
 
Do not forget people! I saw some interview with one of the TSMC top people, who had returned back to academia in Taiwan after his retirement at TSMC a few years ago, if I remember well. In that interview he mentioned also that TSMC was running into the problem of finding enough good people on Taiwan, both in R&D and running Fabs.

So, moving off the rather small island of Taiwan and it's finite capacity with resources, also people, will open up many opportunities for TSMC I believe. Especially also regarding enlarging their pool of good people to work at their company. Perhaps TSMC should/could start recruiting in India, and perhaps in 10 years or so, they can start some (Giga-like)-Fab site somewhere in India, with all those people from India that would like to return to India and help their country entering more seriously the Semi Fab industrial capacity? India would love to have more access to and playing a larger role in the "oil of the 21st century", we are just 25% into this century, so lot's of stuff will happen the coming decades, also because of geopolical shifts..........
There are fundamental infrastructure like land. One needs thousands of acres for a giga fab, good solid infrastructure ( power, water, roads, etc. ). You need a location that supports the infrastructure ecosystem like air, transportation of chemicals etc.... Of course there is labor both skilled for running the fab and skilled to build the place. For the China and Japan fab's you generally don't hear the bad press of Fab21's recent issues.

People willing to do manufacturing, repeated detailed oriented hard work for long hours. This is both building the fabs as well as working! Taiwan is a small Island and running out of all of the listed. The cost and resources are still better than than any Western Country but politics and supply chain is slowing changing that.

I bet if there was no COVID nor onshoring I doubt the US or German fab every happened. If there was a different leader in China and they had taken a slight different trajectory likely all of TSMC's expansion would have gone to the mainland.

No reason to expect the German or US fab to every match the cost and efficiency of the Taiwan or Asian fabs in general. Sounds racist but Western Culture whether you are Asian, Indian or European isn't one that likes manufacturing.
 
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