No country on Earth can make a chip alone.
A finished chip has usually crossed more borders than you have. It may be designed in California, drawn by a machine built in the Netherlands, onto silicon grown in Japan, coated in chemicals from Germany, patterned in Taiwan, then cut, packaged and tested in Malaysia, soldered into a product in Viet Nam and sold in Brazil. No step is optional. And for several of those steps there is no second supplier anywhere who could take over next year.
- Design
Where a chip is drawn is often nowhere near where it is built. A design house may own no factory at all.
- Equipment
One company in the Netherlands makes every EUV machine in the world. There is no second source.
- Fabrication
The most advanced patterning happens in a handful of buildings, concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea.
- 1Design — Where a chip is drawn is often nowhere near where it is built. A design house may own no factory at all.
- 2Equipment — One company in the Netherlands makes every EUV machine in the world. There is no second source.
- 3Fabrication — The most advanced patterning happens in a handful of buildings, concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea.
ASML, in the Netherlands. Each machine costs hundreds of millions of dollars and ships in dozens of crates.
Thousands of parts, many suppliers, most of them replaceable within a year.
Hundreds of steps, and several of them have exactly one supplier on the planet.
Reading a chip's passport is the fastest way to understand modern geopolitics.