Which part of this do you not understand? TSMC makes the bulk majority of GPUs and CPUs. Outside of Intel, there is no real competitor for their hardware. TSMC has all the related hardware IP. Apple, Nvidia, and AMD could cease to exist and TSMC could continue producing what they're already producing until the end of time.

They don't bother to make their "own hardware" because it IS their hardware, and they can charge AMD/Apple/Nvidia anything they want for what they're producing. Nvidia/AMD/Apple no longer have the Fabs to produce their own shit, and Intel, a COMPETITOR, is the only other game left in town with the infrastructure remaining to compete with TSMC.

YOU claimed:



TSMC does not need to "replace" any "big player". There are only two big players on the CPU/GPU market. TSMC and Intel. Everyone else is outsourcing their production to TSMC. Meaning without Intel, TSMC has a monopoly.

Do you understand now, or is there something that remains unclear? Your claim that TSMC would need to develop the drivers and software to make the hardware work properly is silly nonsense. The bloatware of Nvidia/AMD/Apple is far less than optimal, and hiring people to make their own drivers and software is FAR cheaper, like TENS OF BILLIONS cheaper that what it would cost AMD/Nvidia/Apple to rebuild their own, intentionally gutted, hardware manufacturing.

Edit: For years Intel had to prop up AMD. For years Microsoft had to prop up Apple. Both companies risked being broken up if they did otherwise. Now, AMD, Apple, AND NVidia are just floosies for Taiwan.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Feb 2 2025 02:31am

Engineering and manufacturing are not the same thing. The fabless companies like Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and Apple mostly do the former, while TSMC exclusively does the latter.

Yes, TSMC probably has the top secret blueprints of the current-gen Nvidia GPUs and the snapdragon CPUs somewhere in their vault and could go rogue on its business partners and start selling this IP as their own - but that would be a one-and-done since TSMC has no expertise in creating or improving chip designs, they couldn't come up with an RTX 6000 series of their own. And that's not even talking about their lack of personnel or experience in the retail side of things, marketing, logistics, negotiating with OEMs, providing software and customer support, and so on and forth.

And there's of course also a geostrategic dimension to all of this. The only reason the US has any interest in Taiwan is the importance of their chip foundries. If Taiwan no longer produced chips for American companies, the US would drop the country like a hot potato and they'd be singing the praises of glorious leader Xi Xinping within 18 months.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 2 2025 05:26pm

IMO, they should of allowed china to have these advanced lithography machines.
I want cheap Chinese graphics cards.