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Yep, the omission of mentioning the Intel/Arm dynamic in the article is very telling.

Notable also is the omission of Nvida - which I also believe mostly uses TSMC.



The market changed recently. With ARM (and not sure how many others), it democratized chip design to an extent that companies could design their own requirements, simulate, add standard functionalities, and then find a third party fab which can manufacture that in bulk. The core value transferred from one company doing everything in a centralized manner to three distinct sections - chip design done by individual companies, fab + manufacturing on given designs (eg: SK Hynix, TSMC), and ARM which enables both these sections to function as they do. As with tech markets, once democratized, the overall pie increases massively. (This is a gross simplification and at conceptual level. Not this clear cut, but this is pretty much the value chain)

ARM allowed companies to focus on design, and not having to worry about manufacturing. Nvidia is mostly dependent on TSMC, but truth is they can move to SK Hynix and Samsung without a drop in quality. (Basically whoever has the capacity to build the chips at their nm level).

I laud the authorities for stopping Nvidia/ARM acquisition a couple of years ago. More than any other acquisition, this would have skewed things up massively.




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