TSMC SAYS AI CHIP SHORTAGE WILL PERSIST FOR YEARS | Techlife News - technology - Magzter

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) forecasts that demand for artificial intelligence chips will continue to outpace supply for an extended period, with CEO C. C. Wei indicating it will ... Read original →

The AI chip shortage isn't cyclical—it's structurally entrenched by the dual constraints of sub-3nm process complexity and geopolitical friction. Upstream EUV delivery bottlenecks and downstream hyperscaler data center buildouts have locked over 70% of TSMC’s (Taiwan, China) 3nm capacity to NVIDIA and Meta, crowding out Apple and Tesla. The New York Fed’s recent classification of semiconductor tools as 'strategic assets,' coupled with CHIPS Act localization mandates, has inflated fab expansion costs by over 30%. Samsung and Intel’s aggressive 2nm roadmaps remain hamstrung by yield issues, unable to challenge TSMC’s CoWoS packaging dominance or HPC ecosystem lock-in. Over the next 18 months, 'capacity rationing' will intensify: only customers with pre-committed wafer allocations secure supply, forcing smaller AI firms toward chiplet-based designs or RISC-V alternatives. This shortage is the opening salvo in a global contest for computational sovereignty—where semiconductor autonomy equals national security.