> There's huge demand for EUV machines but they are lower margin products for the company that makes them.
ASML, a Dutch company, is at the core of TSMCs success. But the machines are only one part of the ecosystem... the buildings to house them are incredibly expensive because you need the cleanest of clean rooms you can get, and then you need expert staff to operate these, and since there isn't much of a domestic chip industry any more in the Western countries, that knowledge has long ago moved off to Taiwan and South Korea.
And on top of that, Western wages are extremely high and environmental regulations are extremely strict after half of Silicon Valley became a superfund site from all the stuff that leeched into the soil from decades of chipmaking.
You also need hundreds of other machines from Applied Materials, KLA Tencor, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron, etc. Then, years of process development R&D: what temperature do we bake this layer at, how long, what profile, what atmosphere in the tool… Every process step has a large parameter set to optimize. Creating a process is a painstaking many many variable optimization slog.
Just wanted to add that since I see people only mention ASML often here. They are very important, but there is so much more to TSMC’s success.
ASML, a Dutch company, is at the core of TSMCs success. But the machines are only one part of the ecosystem... the buildings to house them are incredibly expensive because you need the cleanest of clean rooms you can get, and then you need expert staff to operate these, and since there isn't much of a domestic chip industry any more in the Western countries, that knowledge has long ago moved off to Taiwan and South Korea.
And on top of that, Western wages are extremely high and environmental regulations are extremely strict after half of Silicon Valley became a superfund site from all the stuff that leeched into the soil from decades of chipmaking.