Chapter 184 TSMC’s Unexpected Disaster
Musk praised Chen Yuanguang on Twitter and portrayed the relationship between the two as very close, as if he wanted to cooperate with Chen Yuanguang in a series of areas.

This gave the capital market unprecedented confidence in Tesla, and its stock price soared by as much as 18% overnight, while the stock prices of companies such as Apple, Nvidia, Intel and TSMC continued to plummet.

Apple's decline was limited because it had fallen too much before, while Nvidia's 15% decline, Intel's 20% decline, and TSMC's nearly 30% decline shocked the entire capital market.

The logic is very simple. Once Musk promotes the cooperation between AMD and LightMetal Technology, AMD equipped with topological semimetal technology will swallow up all the market share originally belonging to Nvidia and Intel.

As a result, TSMC's market share will also suffer a fatal impact.

AMD, which seemed to be on track to win all, surged 30% before the market opened.

"We will actively promote cooperation with Chinese companies on emerging materials. Currently, AMD is conducting research on topological semimetals.

If all goes well, AMD's topological semimetal-based chips are expected to be designed this year and launched on the market early next year."

The words of AMD's president added fuel to the already hot capital market.

No one paid attention to the large amount of uncertainty in her words during the interview. Wall Street hyped up the news that AMD would reach a cooperation with Guangjia Technology.

Not only Wall Street and Americans are concerned about this, but Chinese netizens are as well.

"What's going on? Chinese companies haven't even used topological semimetal technology yet, so why is AMD starting to cooperate first?"

"Huawei's shipments are so small. Obviously, the production of topological semi-metallic chips is limited. If they cooperate with AMD, how long will it take for these extraordinary masters to wait in line?"

"Where's the White House? White House, get out and work. If you don't ban topological semimetals, I'll look down on you!"

"Is Musk here for a visit or to beg for alms? Why do I feel like the tweets he sent afterwards have a saintly flavor?"

The one that attracts the most attention is definitely TSMC. Once American technology companies can cooperate with China on the technology of topological semimetals, it will mean the end of TSMC.

They will slowly and irreversibly lose all high-end markets. This will be a process, but it cannot be reversed.

It’s just like how Nikon was squeezed off the throne of lithography machines back then.

This is absolutely unacceptable to them.

"Chinese companies will use topological semimetals to slowly eat up all market share in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. All chip-related industrial chains will be slowly transferred from China to domestic companies bit by bit, just like other industries."

Today, everyone has realized that whether it is Southeast Asia, India or Mexico, these places have industrial potential and can undertake part of the manufacturing transfer, but they cannot provide such a comprehensive manufacturing industry like China.

Maybe India can do it in the future, but they cannot compete with China in terms of efficiency, and their business environment stability is far inferior to that of China.

"In terms of scale, efficiency and business environment, no third world country can match China.

This is also the secret of the rapid rise of China's manufacturing industry. If American technology companies and capital cooperate with China, they will undoubtedly continue to replicate their past success in the chip field. TSMC invested a full 20 million US dollars in lobbying.

This is ten times what Huawei invested in 19.

TSMC found a very powerful lobbyist, and was able to lobby Charles Schumer, the third-ranking figure in the Democratic Party.

"We will make a decision based on the situation. Whether to allow China's new technology to enter the Federation will be discussed and decided by the congressmen. I have no say."

Schumer's style is to be foolproof. No matter what you say, I am just a rubber stamp and I won't give you definite information.

However, they did not consider whether China was willing to cooperate with them.

With such limited production capacity, what these Chinese companies lack is not orders on the demand side, but production capacity on the production side.

That is why China accepted Nikon's conditions. Domestic mobile phone manufacturers, including Xiaomi, OV, Honor, etc., are all waiting to take over the production capacity of topological semi-metal chips.

It’s not even the turn of American companies.

This is completely the American side's self-conceit, thinking that as long as they agree, China will definitely cooperate with them.

Before Washington could come to a conclusion, China had already spoken out through an interview:
"Considering the limited production capacity, we are organizing domestic semiconductor companies to gradually advance the construction of topological semi-metal chip production lines.

It is expected that the capacity problem will be alleviated within this year.

In the short term, we will give priority to satisfying domestic orders and will not accept chip foundry orders from foreign companies."

To put it bluntly, this amount of profit from OEM is not worth it.

Wouldn't it be better if I could directly package and export finished products with topological semi-metal chips? The profit is far higher than that of simple chip foundry.

China's rebuttal gave TSMC a sigh of relief.

“We still have time, and time is everything.

During this period of time, we need to figure out one thing: what is the limit of topological semimetal as a chip substrate? "TSMC Chairman Liu Deyin feels that they can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

"That's right, our most critical issue now is to figure out the limits of topological semimetals.

I don’t believe this new material can allow the chip area to be stacked without restriction.” Qin Yongpei said.

He is the vice president in charge of production and R&D. He has worked at TSMC for nearly 28 years and is responsible for improving the yield from 7nm to nm.

Even for silicon-based chips, the computing power of the chip can be improved by increasing the chip area so that more transistors can be stacked on the chip.

Whether it is Intel or AMD, their high-end platform CPUs are larger than their low-end platform CPUs. For example, AMD's Threadripper is twice the size of an ordinary CPU.

For server chips used by enterprises, the area is even larger.

The same is true for GPUs. For example, NVIDIA's H100 graphics card, which is specifically designed for AI, has a chip area of ​​800 square millimeters, while an ordinary GPU only has two or three hundred square millimeters.

Therefore, the silicon-based chip can also increase the chip area, but it has several problems. That is, due to heat dissipation and signal transmission speed, its area is limited.

After exceeding the area limit, the marginal effect increases sharply, and even adding transistors will not only not increase computing power, but will reduce it.

Another thing is the yield rate. If the chip area is larger, the yield rate will go down.

This is also why enterprise-level chips are more expensive. Qin Yongpei does not believe that topological semimetals have no limits.

They got the Ark 100, which is four times the size of Qualcomm's and has even better heat dissipation than chips made with a 3nm process. In their opinion, this is the advantage brought by the material.

But this does not mean that it can infinitely expand the chip area to improve computing power, because this violates the principles of physics.

Therefore, understanding the limits of topological semimetal chips means that they can make accurate judgments on whether they can catch up in the silicon-based chip manufacturing process.

"I don't believe it either."

"But what if its maximum area is measured in square meters?

What will we do then?”

If the limit of topological semimetals is square meters, this is what they are most worried about. If the limit is too large, it means there is no limit.

Just like the theoretical process limit of silicon-based chips is 1nm. When your process technology is still in microns, you don’t have to worry about this at all because you can’t reach that limit.

"Surrender to the Chinese. There is no other way. Let us join the camp of topological semimetals." Liu Deyin said with a wry smile.

They knew that it was impossible for them to surrender.

The federal government may allow it, but 4V certainly won't.

Before TSMC could catch its breath and be happy for a few days, news came from the Federation. In the name of safety, the Federation asked TSMC to relocate all production lines below 7nm to the Federation.

If they don't obey, the federal government will prevent federal companies from cooperating with TSMC, including Apple, Nvidia, and Intel, which are on the restricted list.

Because in the federal strategic plan, 4v will soon be used as a testing ground, and TSMC must move out before that.

In the end, regardless of whether they won or lost, they transferred away 4v's most important assets.

TSMC was given a choice between two options: if it relocated, it would receive huge subsidies; if it did not, it would lose all its orders.

"The Federation is trying to force us to death!" Qin Yongpei felt like he was going crazy, "First they don't allow us to do OEM for Chinese companies, and now they don't allow us to do OEM for federal companies.

If TSMC loses its two largest markets, will it survive? "

Liu Deyin said: "Doesn't this leave a way out?"

"Is this a road? This is a dead end. I can see the end of moving there. It will be dismembered, and the production lines and engineering teams will be taken over by companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments, and IBM.

The consequences of our previous decision to build a factory in Federal are now before our eyes. We invested more than 400 billion US dollars in the factory, but there has been no movement in five years. If it were 4V, it would have been in operation for two years.

Qin Yongpei didn't believe such nonsense. After going to the federation, they couldn't bear the rising costs alone.

The costs are not just human costs; costs in all areas of the federal government will also increase.

In order to adapt to the federal environment, we don’t even know how much environmental tax we will have to pay.

"We are at the mercy of others, can we resist?

Do we have room to resist? "Liu Deyin was not so angry because he knew that anger was meaningless.

“It’s clear now that the Federation is forcing us to move there. Can we resist?

China can resist, but does 4V have the qualifications? We dare not even speak out against it, for it violates the principle of fair trade.

Lao Qin, forget it, don't be too persistent, this is not something we can decide, just wait for the news, there will be news in half a month."

The measures taken by the federal government against TSMC are far more severe than the outside world imagined, and the capital market expects that it will cause a global chip shortage in the short term.

Because only TSMC and Samsung can manufacture 3nm, Intel's 3nm died before it was even born.

Although the 4V media tried their best to create an atmosphere that this was a good thing, the islanders didn't believe it at all.

Because anyone with a brain knows that this is not a good thing.

TSMC is almost the only industry in the 4V sector that deserves attention from both sides. Its existence can reduce the risk of war to a certain extent.

After it was moved away, the ballast was gone and the ship was at risk of capsizing at any time.

Chinese netizens were just watching the show and mocking it online:

“Sure enough, dogs and friends are different. The attitude of the Federation towards ASML is seduction, trying every means to buy you with money.

If you come, I will give you billions, and you will boss TSMC around. If you don’t come, you will die.

So being a dog doesn’t end well.”

"TSMC is like the island's guardian mountain is gone and the frogs on the island are wailing."

"Where's ***? Hurry up and give her some favors, or she'll starve to death."

The funniest thing is that the 4v public opinion was in an uproar, but the people on the stage either said nothing or made a bunch of irrelevant remarks. No one dared to stand up and say that the Federation was wrong. The smell of decay was so suffocating that it almost made people faint.

However, the relevant parties in China came out and made a lot of comments.

Onlookers can’t figure out who is the manager of 4V.

The lobbying money that TSMC had given before had not been spent, so they urgently added another $5000 million to try to persuade the federal government not to let them relocate.

Unfortunately, all these efforts are in vain. Now that the federal government has personally intervened and used all means, how could it not take action against TSMC?

The emergence of Ark has accelerated the pace of the federal relocation of TSMC.

But for those with discerning eyes, the relocation of TSMC means that the risk of war in the entire sea area has increased significantly.

(End of this chapter)