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Definition: TSMC


(Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Ltd. Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan) With more than 60,000 employees, TSMC is the largest "pure-play" semiconductor fab in the world, which means it manufactures the chips from its customers' designs.

Founded in 1987 by Morris Chang, TSMC was the first company dedicated to making chips for "fabless" chip companies. For example, it makes chips for Apple, AMD, Qualcomm and NVIDIA. TSMC was also first to produce state-of-the-art five-nanometer chips, and it is likely the first to embrace future generations (see process technology). See foundry, EUV machine, GlobalFoundries and fabless semiconductor company.






A $40 Billion Investment in Arizona
The company is building two chip fabs in North Phoenix, Arizona, and the first fab is expected to be operational in 2025. Given the uncertainty surrounding China's perpetual threat to take over Taiwan, TSMC's Arizona investment could not have been more timely for the U.S. tech sector. (Images taken in October 2022 courtesy of TSMC.)