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This Month


The Geopolitics of TSMC


Yole CEO: TSMC Builds a Leading-edge Fab in Europe? It’s ‘Nonsense’

What’s at stake? China’s Communist Party clearly isn’t giving up on its long-term goal to absorb Taiwan into China. When, if ever, Beijing might pull the trigger is anybody’s guess. Taiwanese companies tend to downplay the possibility, but those reassurances haven’t assuaged the world’s fear that it might happen. In no small part, that’s because Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s success in chip production has made Taiwan economically and politically critical to the whole world.    

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TSMC Shifts West, Dodging Geopolitical Headwinds

TSMC Shifts West, Dodging Geopolitical Headwinds

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
Rising economic nationalism is causing fissures in the global semiconductor supply chain. The rifts are threatening the IC market at a time of rapid growth, when it most needs to retain the collaborative and unified structure that has driven its expansion over several decades. As economic powers like China, the EU, and the United States move to militarize the global electronics supply chain to achieve their geopolitical objectives, companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. are caught in the fray. How TSMC and its competitors respond to these geopolitical pressures will determine whether the industry will continue to grow unhindered or enter a phase of extreme uncertainty and uneven product development.

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Chipmakers Created Mayhem; Now They Want a Bailout

By Bolaji Ojo

Look in the mirror, semiconductor executives. The culprit behind the nightmarish shortages and supply insecurities jeopardizing the market expansion is staring right back at you. Do not blame China, Japan, the E.U., or the United States. Their governments have stepped in because the stakes are huge, but they didn’t cause this mess. The catalyst was you.

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TSMC Adds 'Intellectual Supply Chain' With U.S. Fab

Ojo Yoshida Podcast

Photo: Arijit Raychowdhury, EE prof. at Georgia Tech (left), and Bolaji Ojo (center) and Junko Yoshida ( right)

By Junko Yoshida and Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
Does a premier U.S. engineering school like Georgia Tech need a TSMC chip fab in Arizona?

Absolutely. Not for strengthening the physical supply chain but for creating an “intellectual supply chain,” says Arijit Raychowdhury, a Georgia Tech EE professor.

Decades into the practice of going fab-lite or fabless, the U.S. semiconductor industry has lost its mojo. No longer can the industry effectively connect advanced chip architecture and production capabilities with academia, labs, and IP in its own country. At stake — more than national pride — is the future of the engineering workforce.

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TSMC’s Geopolitical Balancing Act

By Chris Miller

What’s at stake?
Leaders of some of the world’s largest economies want TSMC to diversify its production locations. The only problem: They all think the Taiwanese semiconductor foundry should open shop in their own countries. While TSMC’s position is unique — and uniquely uncomfortable — chip industry executives increasingly are finding that geopolitics has been added to the calculus of business decision-making.

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