The world's largest chip manufacturer, TSMC, faces a monumental bottleneck. Its CEO acknowledged that they cannot meet the demand for artificial intelligence, even with their new plants in the United States. Fulfilling orders from American soil will take much longer than expected, according to his own words.
The AI chip bottleneck worsens with expansion ⏳
TSMC is expanding its capacity with factories in Arizona, but the manufacturing process for advanced nodes like 3nm and 2nm is slow and complex. The company noted that they can only support the frenzy of orders, which includes NVIDIA, AMD, and Apple, up to a certain point. The shortage of lithography equipment and qualified personnel delays mass production on American soil.
TSMC: We open a factory in the USA, but bring patience and coffee ☕
So the promise of manufacturing AI chips at home looks more like a trial subscription: it takes forever and arrives with fewer features than expected. Meanwhile, investors dream of instant data and engineers settle for watching the grass grow at the new plant. At least the coffee from the vending machine is decent.