I keep hearing SMIC has allllllmost caught up, of course…
> In 1991, scientists at Bell Labs published a paper demonstrating the possibility of using a wavelength of 13.8 nm for the so-called soft X-ray projection lithography.[4]
> To address the challenge of EUV lithography, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA).[3]
Unfortunately, I also can't see any government willing to put the money on the table to establish a third party from scratch. All that seems to be available is handouts for TSMC to construct a fab in Arizona, and even that was widely criticized.
Probably. And I suspect it will happen. Chips are crucial, and the governments know it.
Mind you, Apple also has large sums of money available (I suspect more than they know what to do with). So some of that going towards propping up Intel may be no bad thing.
> Unfortunately, I also can't see any government willing to put the money on the table to establish a third party from scratch.
I believe the Chinese government is in the process of doing this with SMIC. It seems likely that they will be competitive before too long.
It's certainly in Apple (and every company that requires a leading-edge fab)'s interest to try and keep Intel competitive with TSMC and Samsung. 3 companies is already too few for a truly competitive market. And 2 is worse.
I'd argue it's also in everyone's interest to have some redundancy in the chip fabrication supply chain (esp. given the geopolitical situation in Taiwan). It would already be catastrophic if TSMC's production was disrupted for any reason. It would be even more catastrophic if there was no Intel.