Reply to post: Re: Taiwan without TSMC

TSMC and China: Mutually assured destruction now measured in nanometers, not megatons

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Taiwan without TSMC

1. TSMC are already building fabs outside of Taiwan.

As an example, the 5nm plant in Arizona is due to go online in 2024.

2. The equipment that TSMC use for things like 3nm, 5nm etc are not produced by them, they come from outside of Taiwan, such as companies in the Netherlands and Germany.

So TSMC can just buy more of this, to build new fabs.

3. If it was clear that China was going to, or had started invading, there's a good chance all the top engineers and scientists at TSMC would magically vanish from Taiwan, turning up in other friendly nations, such as the USA.

So whilst the loss of the fabs in Taiwan would be a hit, it would only be a temporary one, and the longer China waits, the less impact this would have on the world, as other fabs come on line outside of China's reach.

So if we assumed China did invade, and the Taiwan plants were destroyed, yes that would impact production of the high end chips for a little while, but within 2-3 years we'd be back to normal levels, and all that production would be outside of China's influence.

End result, 3 years or so after the invasion of Taiwan, China still doesn't have advance chips, the rest of the world carries on as normal after a bit of an slump for a year or two with the most advance chips. Chinas economy has crashed, due to the majority of the world imposing massive sanctions on them due to the invasion 3 years earlier.

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