Supply shortages are the excuse du jour, but so long as TSMC has the kingmaking node I expect it to become expensive. Very expensive. Expensive enough to move margin from the king their node made right back to TSMC.
Right. If AMD and Intel both got out of the fab business, on account of it being low margin, then TSMC would promptly yoink their collective margin, because if you choose the king you get to charge for the privilege. Fortunately Intel decided to compete instead.
See also: AMD and NVidia, and whichever other pairs rely on leading-edge nodes.
Well, the higher the price, the more incentive other companies have to catch up and compete with them. (Or take a more flexible portion of the market by price.)
Chip fabrication is a difficult market, with barriers to entry only similar to stuff dominated by governments, but there is still a little bit of competition there.
That depends on if someone else gets in. AMD or Intel could if they wanted to - without the expertise it will be hard, but a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it. Hire a few TMSC people.
Or it could be someone completely new. The problem is hard, but solvable.
TMSC does have incentive to keep prices low enough that that doesn't happen. They also have other incentives to treat good customers well (though who the good customers are is an open question)
I am not an expert, but I thought it was more like a few expensive decades than years. Intel is already in this business and they have only been able to fall farther behind TSM even given billions in investment.
>a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it.
I haven't kept up much in the last couple of years, but back when I did, I was under the impression that AMD couldn't actually afford to do this. I know their condition has improved with the good fortunes of Zen, but is it enough that they could get back into semiconductor fabrication?
Sure, but it's not not a price hike on the leading node. Technically you are correct, the leading node price hikes will happen separately, behind closed doors, but it makes sense to talk about them here. There won't be a HN post about the non-public price hikes because, well, they aren't public.
