Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacoma
It's not as simple as just stop outsourcing. TSMC (and others like Samsung) have mastered production of the most advanced chips that other companies simply can't do. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger admitted they don't have the know-how to manufacture these most advanced chips. It's not just building the factory and start producing. You need the process technology that takes massive investment in the tens of billions of dollars.
Also, it's not a supply issue but rather the root cause was brought upon by companies that had slowed or shut down suddenly all restarting at the same time spiking demand past capacity limits. People working from home spurred a massive digital transformation that spiked demand as well. The US-China trade war also caused a massive front-loading of chip demand... and so on.
These events are not normal. In normal times, production capacity is more than sufficient to cover demand.
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The chips the automotive industry is short on, by-and-large, are not advanced. They are MCUs and other garden variety stuff on older process nodes that could have been made in many fabs. Automotive (outside of infotainment or Tesla) uses ancient stuff by consumer market standards. The real issue is that the CEOs running these companies have decided to sell off fabs or reduce what's made internally as much as possible. The stock market has rewarded chip companies for getting rid of their fabs. The end result is that you have a good portion of Infineon, STM, or NXP automotive chips being fabbed by a handful of outside foundries.
These older process nodes are not a priority for TSMC especially. Roadmaps are predetermined years ahead of time and there is no way to quickly add capacity. Foundries will not invest in old stuff for what is perceived as a short-term demand spike. Intel will probably never fab chips like these, they are not advanced enough. However, there does need to be more diversification of the supply chain. The relentless focus on short term profit for shareholder return is what has driven this industry-wide consolidation and we are all paying the price for it.
Most of these automotive chips could be made just about anywhere, but it is usually no trivial task to move a chip to another foundry. Many "simple" 45-90nm digital parts would take months and months of work to move. With analog stuff, it is not uncommon for a new part to be created and the old one discontinued because the performance of the part is so tightly coupled to where it's manufactured.