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Posted by speckx 1/15/2026

Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage(www.culpium.com)
773 points | 479 commentspage 2
captain_coffee 1/15/2026|
Legit question - what is the current status of the construction of chip production factories in the US?

I know about the existence of the initiative but I don't know how it is progressing / what is actually going on on that front.

jobs_throwaway 1/15/2026||
TMSC's Arizona fab is up and running producing 4nm chips

There's ~a dozen in the works or under construction

TMSC plans to have 2-3nm fabs operational in the next 2-3 years

So we're 2-3 years behind the standard (currently 2nm), and further behind on the bleeding edge sub-2nm fabs

techgnosis 1/15/2026|||
Don't forget Intel. They are producing chips on 18A right now, with 14A up next.
alt227 1/15/2026|||
> TMSC's Arizona fab is up and running producing 4nm chips

Are the majority of the staff still shipped in from Asia?

jpk2f2 1/15/2026||
No. It was originally 50%, unclear what the current numbers are (it was supposed to decrease over time as they train local replacements).
FuriouslyAdrift 1/15/2026|||
TSMC is already producing at their first one in Arizona (N4 process), second one comes online for N3 in 2028, and third one (N2) broke ground in April 2025 (online date 2029-30)

https://www.tsmc.com/static/abouttsmcaz/index.htm

tim-tday 1/15/2026||
The projects seem to go well and then union bosses threaten to shut the whole thing down.

Then the essential skilled personnel can’t come train people because the visa process was created by and is operated by the equivalent of four year olds with learning disabilities. Sometimes companies say fuck it we’re doing it anyway and then ice raids their facility and shuts it down.

I’d post the news articles about th above, but your googling thumbs work as well as mine.

01100011 1/15/2026||
That's great! Apple has the resources to incentivize and invest in alternate production capacity(Intel, Samsung, or others). Sure, it will take years, but a thousand mile journey begins with one step...
SecretDreams 1/15/2026|
Apple is actually a big reason why TSMC is the king of fabs today. They were a reliable cash source for years before TSMC was even ahead of Intel.

Apple can and should do it again!

nonethewiser 1/15/2026||
Fabs are in kind of a catch 22. They need big business to improve and to get lots of business they need to be competitive. Im mostly familiar with that narrative in terms of Intel's current uphill battle - was it really the same for TSMC? I guess maybe there was a similar dynamic except the playing field was more even at that time, so it was a bit less of a catch 22.
SecretDreams 1/16/2026||
Yes, it was. Intel was well ahead of TSMC for quite some time. But TSMC had a diversified and hungry list of clients, with Apple at the forefront. Apple got the taste for wanting their own chips which pushed TSMC to be hungrier. Meanwhile, Intel got fat and complacent. It also helped that phone chips were considerably smaller, so managing yields was easier.
jonway 1/16/2026||
Apple should use its bajillions and quadrillions of cash-dollars to spin up a new fab. The Chinese reportedly have EUV in testing right? Maybe there are other partners willing to play ball?
mekpro 1/16/2026||
I think the opposite. Having NVIDIA investing in TSMC's bleeding-edge process node should benefit Apple rather than disadvantage.

It means that Apple doesn't have to be sole investor in latest node development which is more harder to justify, especially in the year where smartphone upgrade cycle is slowdown. Having NVIDIA (and AI boom) in the picture should help Apple reduce CAPEX for their semi-conductor investment.

jlarocco 1/15/2026||
This isn't really news. Apple has to pay market price like everybody else.

NVidia gets the capacity because they're willing to pay more. If Apple wants to, they can pay more to get it back.

walterbell 1/16/2026||
Which customers have available power capacity to use Blackwell GPUs already shipped? https://www.wheresyoured.at/nvidia-isnt-enron-so-what-is-it/

  6 million Blackwell GPUs.. have left NVIDIA’s warehouses.. 15.6GW of power is required to make the last four quarters of NVIDIA GPUs sold turn on
HardCodedBias 1/15/2026||
Nvidia direct silicon revenue is higher.

Also Nvidia's margins are higher which means that they will be willing to pay a higher unit price.

This seems like an open and closed case from TSMC's side.

Squarex 1/15/2026|
It also means that we will have a trouble buying new laptops for a few next years.
HardCodedBias 1/15/2026||
They will simply be more expensive.

More likely they will not use leading the leading edge fab process, which TBH is fine for the vast majority.

010111101000 1/16/2026||
ADA RTX 4090 L1 16 Megabytes L2 72 Megabytes

Blackwell 100 8192-bit 8 Terabytes/sec

Blackwell 200 8192-bit 8 Terabytes/sec

Hopper H100 5120-bit 3.35 Terabytes/sec

Hopper H200 6144-bit 4.8 Terabytes/sec

Hopper precedes the Blackwell architecture, implementations of B40 and B100 accelerators circa 2023.

Semiconductor fabrication, either half-node, transistor-gate in terms of identifying the local 90nm semiconductor circuits for clear paths to 10nm node.

shevy-java 1/15/2026||
I am very unhappy with the increased RAM prices - and now general increase in prices for hardware. To me this is collusion, a de-facto monopoly. Governments that don't stop this practice are also part of the mafia.

We really need many more smaller, more independent manufacturers. All the big guns, from NVIDIA, Apple, Intel, AMD, etc... have massively disappointed about 99.9% of us here now.

tibbydudeza 1/16/2026|
That Arizona TSMC plant - what process node can it do - is the latest ?.

Afiak there is a law in Taiwan that says the overseas plants cannot be on par with local plants iro process nodes - two or one generations behind.

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