> but operate on thin margins, because a competitor can also build a fab
Building new fabs, especially for the advanced nodes, costs billions, takes years, and requires a lot of know how and special equipment. There are only a handful of companies operating and building new fabs.
> TSMC has some extra expertise that others doesn't [...] but together with NVidia, they are the champions, and others are constantly catching up
Not sure what you mean. Nvidia uses TSMC for the manufacturing for the 40 series (and Samsung for the 3000 series) and doesn't have their own fabs.
> Think graphic cards, Radeon(now AMD) has consistently built worse graphic cards, with less R&D, but sold at a cheaper price point and survived throughout the years.
You mean ATI (now AMD)? They got rid of their fabs back in 2009 and put them into GlobalFoundries. They now also mostly use TSMC for their CPUs and GPUs (and profit from the more advances nodes compared to GF) and GF for a few things in larger nodes.
Apple also (just as everyone else you have mentioned) uses TSMC for (most of) their chips and is one of TSMCs largest customers. Intel and Samsung have their own fabs, but also seem to lag behind TSMC.
I'm not comparing TSMC with Nvidia, I said they are champions in that business, given that there are companies that design chips and also has fabs, my comment makes sense?
I'm also sure here people know how fabs are expensive.
I believe you understood my comment related to Radeon being part of AMD. And also you need to work on being less pedantic.
Building new fabs, especially for the advanced nodes, costs billions, takes years, and requires a lot of know how and special equipment. There are only a handful of companies operating and building new fabs.
> TSMC has some extra expertise that others doesn't [...] but together with NVidia, they are the champions, and others are constantly catching up
Not sure what you mean. Nvidia uses TSMC for the manufacturing for the 40 series (and Samsung for the 3000 series) and doesn't have their own fabs.
> Think graphic cards, Radeon(now AMD) has consistently built worse graphic cards, with less R&D, but sold at a cheaper price point and survived throughout the years.
You mean ATI (now AMD)? They got rid of their fabs back in 2009 and put them into GlobalFoundries. They now also mostly use TSMC for their CPUs and GPUs (and profit from the more advances nodes compared to GF) and GF for a few things in larger nodes.
Apple also (just as everyone else you have mentioned) uses TSMC for (most of) their chips and is one of TSMCs largest customers. Intel and Samsung have their own fabs, but also seem to lag behind TSMC.