TSMC, a Taiwanese tech giant, said that it had started mass production of its 3-nanometre chips, among the most advanced in market. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the largest producer of high- performance chips in the world that are uses in almost everything. TSMC is Apple’s main chip supplier. The 3-nanometre chips are expected to have more processing power while using less power.
At a ceremony announcing mass production at a plant in the southwestern city of Tainan, the chairman, Mark Liu, said that the company’s 3-nanometre technology will be used in future state-of-the-art technological products, including supercomputers, cloud server, high-speed internet and many many mobile devices. He said that the company plans to build even smaller 2-nanometre chip plants in the Taiwanese cities of Hsinchu and Taichung.
Taiwan is a major player in the global chip industry and alone 50 percent of the world’s production of chips below 10nm is accounted for by TSMC. TSMC has agreed to build more foundries overseas after being lobbied by western powers. The company is constructing a huge $40 billion plant in Arizona. TSMC has already agreed to build foundries in Japan and is also looking at Germany as a possible location to build foundries.
Taiwan’s tech companies and its government want to make sure that the majority of state-of-the-art production stays in Taiwan. Taiwan’s “Silicon Shield” is crucial to the global economy because so many crucial chips are made there. TSMC founder Morris Chang has said Taiwan is the best place for TSMC to invest in as Taiwan has a comprehensive ecosystem and superior workforce.