TAIPEI: Taiwanese contract chipmaker TSMC, whose major clients include Nvidia and Apple, said on Tuesday (Jun 4) it had held talks with some customers about moving its chip plants off the island as tensions mounted with China but such a move would be impossible.
Tensions between China and Taiwan have increased sharply since Beijing launched war games around the democratically governed island last month following the inauguration of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, who Beijing denounces as a “separatist”.
“Instability across the Taiwan Straits is indeed a consideration for supply chain, but I want to say that we certainly do not want wars to happen,” Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman CC Wei told reporters after the company’s annual general meeting.
He said it would be impossible to move chip factories out of the island, given that 80 to 90 per cent of its production capacity is in Taiwan.
Wei did not name the customers with whom TSMC had held talks on the potential shift out of Taiwan.
TSMC, which is grappling with surging orders for high-end chips used to offer generative artificial intelligence tools and services, had discussions with ChatGPT creator OpenAI over AI chip supplies, which the Taiwanese firm considered “too aggressive”, Wei said, without elaborating.
“He is very aggressive, too aggressive for me to believe,” Wei said, referring to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Altman held talks with TSMC last year to discuss a potential partnership to build roughly three dozen factories in order to ensure that the company would be able to acquire enough silicon to meet their steadily growing need, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The talks were cordial, but TSMC officials made clear that the number of fabs Altman was proposing was too many, and TSMC feared it would not be able to operate the factories at the needed 80 per cent or greater capacity, the source said.
TSMC’s projections at the time did not forecast enough demand for more than 30 new fabs.
It was not clear if TSMC and Altman talked about building its fabs outside of Taiwan.
From: channelnewsasia
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