Here’s how China gets in the way of Taiwanese Tmsc on chips
What Really Happens in the Chip War. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
What do a telephone, a car, an airplane or even the Ariane rocket have in common?
Inventions of the last century that are full of chips and semiconductors, those little pieces that in a few months have become the new black gold.
To understand this global shortage, which according to various estimates should last “until the end of 2022”, it is necessary to understand how far these chips have traveled from our phones to their manufacturing plants.
Whether they are produced in Uncle Sam's country or in Europe, they are largely (a lot) produced in Asia. Tsmc is therefore the undisputed champion of semiconductor manufacturing in the world, producing for the largest companies such as Apple or Intel. But the Taiwanese company is at the center of a geopolitical conflict which is nothing more than a trade war with China .
A conflict that has direct repercussions in Europe.
The automotive group Stellantis , born from the merger of Peugeot-Citroen with Fiat-Chrysler, was unable to produce 190,000 vehicles due to a lack of parts in the first quarter of this year 2021 alone. According to several analysts, the shortage is due to a sudden increase in demand for semiconductors and computer chips, mainly due to the pandemic. In fact, the large-scale implementation of teleworking has forced millions of people to equip themselves with computers, thus greatly increasing the demand. Asian production failed to keep up.
Faced with this deficiency, all the players in the industry are making the same observation.
Europe depends on Asia for its supply of semiconductors and China is in good weather and bad weather. To make matters worse for the European situation, the blockade of the Suez Canal by the Evergreen ship has further prolonged the delivery times of the precious semiconductors, which were stuck in the Egyptian canal.
A factory costs at least 3 to 4 billion and to obtain a European company at Tsmc level, an endowment of 50 to 60 billion would be needed.
Well, the problem does not come directly from Tsmc but from Chinese intermediaries, who are blocking them. A true act of trade war waged by Beijing on Taiwan.
To get out of the current crisis, Europe too does not remain impassive, and in Brussels many actions are being taken to solve this problem of supply, and in fact, of dependence.
Thierry Breton, the European commissioner in charge of internal trade, has also met in recent weeks with several large companies, European and American specialized in the production of chips, such as Tsmc and Samsung in Asia. But the requests of the French commissioner have not found an echo across the Atlantic and few companies are able to invest the sums requested in the old continent.
Because beyond the initial investment, the technological backwardness towards Asian companies is enormous. Tsmc is preparing 2nm chips, as well as Samsung. Europe now has the knowledge to produce 28nm chips. A prehistoric piece in the history of computing that will never find a buyer on the market.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-la-cina-intralcia-la-taiwanese-tmsc-sui-chip/ on Mon, 17 May 2021 09:55:37 +0000.