Cutting edge fabs are expensive and risky, which is why most chip companies are fabless, and they should be a state project because of the risk and expense. I’ve seen estimates of $15-$20 billion dollars to setup a new 3nm fab.

Intel, TSMC, and Samsung are the 3 companies left which run cutting edge fabs. Intel missed on a couple generations, and they are sinking. Samsung is lagging, so it remains to be seen how long they’re in the game.

TSMC figured out the new tech and Intel didn’t. TSMC picked the correct horse, and Intel didn’t. It’s my understanding Intel couldn’t switch to the TSMC process if they wanted to. The two are different enough to be incompatible.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i read that the american workers were too entitled to take the abuse from their taiwanese task masters so they imported their own compliant workers.

[–] wurzelgummidge@lemmy.ml -1 points 17 hours ago

too entitled to take the abuse

too entitled to learn from people who are clearly smarter then they are

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

true story