A Company Few Americans Know Is About to Dethrone Intel
(Bloomberg) -- For more than 30 years, Intel Corp. has dominated chipmaking, producing the most important component in the bulk of the world’s computers. That run is now under threat from a company many Americans have never heard of.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was created in 1987 to churn out chips for companies that lacked the money to build their own facilities. The approach was famously dismissed at the time by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. founder Jerry Sanders. "Real men have fabs," he quipped at a conference, using industry lingo for factories.
These days, ridicule has given way to envy as TSMC plants have risen to challenge Intel at the pinnacle of the $400 billion industry. AMD recently chose TSMC to make its most advanced processors, having spun off its own struggling factories years before.
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“It’s a once-in-a-50-year situation,” said Renee James, the former No. 2 at Intel who heads startup Ampere. Her company is less than two years old and yet it’s going after Intel’s dominant server chip business. That Ampere thinks it can compete is a testament to stumbles by Intel, and TSMC’s ability to benefit from those mistakes.
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(Bloomberg) -- For more than 30 years, Intel Corp. has dominated chipmaking, producing the most important component in the bulk of the world’s computers. That run is now under threat from a company many Americans have never heard of.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was created in 1987 to churn out chips for companies that lacked the money to build their own facilities. The approach was famously dismissed at the time by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. founder Jerry Sanders. "Real men have fabs," he quipped at a conference, using industry lingo for factories.
These days, ridicule has given way to envy as TSMC plants have risen to challenge Intel at the pinnacle of the $400 billion industry. AMD recently chose TSMC to make its most advanced processors, having spun off its own struggling factories years before.
...
“It’s a once-in-a-50-year situation,” said Renee James, the former No. 2 at Intel who heads startup Ampere. Her company is less than two years old and yet it’s going after Intel’s dominant server chip business. That Ampere thinks it can compete is a testament to stumbles by Intel, and TSMC’s ability to benefit from those mistakes.
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