Comment by marcodiego
Comment by marcodiego 13 hours ago
Entering a multi billion risky market is no easy task even if you have investira and teams with deep knowledge. That's the reason monopolise should be avoided.
Comment by marcodiego 13 hours ago
Entering a multi billion risky market is no easy task even if you have investira and teams with deep knowledge. That's the reason monopolise should be avoided.
This is getting faded out, but this is absolutely right. For very few use cases do you truly need the bleeding edge. So many things do not have such strict requirements, and will meet all necessary requirements on an older node. An ATTiny85 is still an incredibly useful microcontroller even today.
This monopoly is unavoidable due to the limited number of people in the world with the know-how to make these products, with the second constraint being that you need to risk $10B+ and 10+ years with a risk that you fail.
Edit: per link below, seems like you need $100B+ and 10+ years
For reference, TSMC's yearly capital investment budget is about $50B/year (https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2025/03/07/200...)
This business is expensive, making and running fabs is way way more expensive than most anybody thinks. There are very few companies able to do it profitably.
TSMC isn’t a monopoly, they are just better than all their competitors. Nothing forces you to buy TSMC; you can buy Intel, Samsung, SMIC, GlobalFoundries and various others.