TSMC's board approved capital appropriations of about US$11.8 billion for fab construction and installation of fab facility systems, installation and upgrade of advanced technology capacity, as well as other purposes including installation of mature and specialty technology capacity, installation and upgrade of advanced packaging capacity, and second-quarter 2021 R&D capital investments and sustaining capital expenditures.

TSMC's board also approved a NT$2.50 per share cash dividend for the fourth quarter of 2020, when the company reported net profits hit a record high of NT$142.77 billion or NT$5.51 per share.

China's industry ministry said this week that it met with automotive and chip manufacturers to try and help ease what is now being called a "crisis" of a shortage in global semiconductors.

Shortage of chips in auto industry seems like bad reason to keep auto production at low levels reached during COVID. As most of them are made on old lines and always had been very predictable.

Something went off in original COVID plan so some pause formed.

TSMC is believed to have been under political pressure to set up an advanced wafer fab locally in the US in the wake of the US-China trade war.

Who could have though...

Nvidia and Qualcomm reportedly have already reached agreements with TSMC for capacity support from its next-generation manufacturing processes,

All eggs will be in one basket and it can fall from the cliff.

Research and development spending by semiconductor companies worldwide is forecast to grow 4% in 2021 to $71.4 billion after rising 5% in 2020 to a record high of $68.4 billion, according to IC Insights’ new 2021 edition of The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry. Total R&D spending by semiconductor companies is expected to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8% between 2021 and 2025 to $89.3 billion.

Total semiconductor R&D spending has declined in only four years since the end of the 1970s (-1% in 2019 during an economic slowdown, -10% in 2009 after the industry was hit by a major global recession, and back-to-back drops of -1% in 2002 and -10% in 2001 when an economic downturn coincided with the implosion of the Internet “dot-com” bubble at the turn of the century). In the aftermath of the global recession of 2008-2009, R&D spending recovered strongly in 2010 and 2011, but then outlays slowed during the rest of the last decade for a variety of reasons, including ongoing uncertainty about the global economy and an historic wave of acquisitions in the chip industry.

Since the year 2000, total semiconductor R&D spending as a percent of worldwide sales has exceeded the four-decade historical average of 14.6% in all but five years (2000, 2010, 2017, 2018, and 2020).

Intel continued to top all other semiconductor suppliers in R&D expenditures in 2020, accounting for about 19% of the industry’s total. However, cost cuts, the elimination some product categories, and a drive to maximize efficiencies resulted in a 4% decrease in Intel’s R&D outlays in 2020 to an estimated $12.9 billion after its spending declined 1% in 2019, when its share was 22% of the industry’s total. The 2019-2020 drops in Intel R&D expenditures were the first consecutive annual declines for the company since 2008 and 2009. The 4% decrease in 2020 was the largest R&D decline for Intel since the mid 1990s. Second-ranked Samsung increased its R&D spending by 19% in 2020 to $5.6 billion partly because the South Korean memory giant stepped up development of leading-edge logic processes (of 5nm and below) to compete in the advanced IC foundry business with market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which raised its expenditures on research and development by 24% to nearly $3.7 billion last year.

You can see both extreme greed and monopolization from this.

The wall is very near and now all companies are unprepared, TSMC just have highest speed and it will be hit hardest in time.

Throughout 2020, TSMC had to update its budget for expanding production and mastering new technical processes almost monthly. As a result, it reached $ 18 billion, but this year the company is going to spend a record $28 billion on specialized needs.

TSMC becoming sacred cow, hence the change of US attitude toward Taiwan.

Almost all TSMC factories are wrongly located in very risky areas.

As automakers build vehicles that resemble more of a computer, they're facing a shortage of semiconductors that is now beginning to affect vehicle production. Both Ford Motor and Nissan Motor said they froze production at plants in the U.S and Japan, respectively, as they work with suppliers to resolve the situation and monitor additional impacts.

Rumors are that AMD, Nvidia and ASIC makers offered best terms trying to get their billions from crypto bubble.

TSMC's 2021 capex will beat the record-high target of US$17 billion set last year, the report quoted market watchers as saying. The foundry will utilize its capex this year for the expansion of its 5nm process capacity, installation of more-advanced 3nm process capacity, and 2nm process R&D.

The pure-play foundry is expected to budget more than US$20 billion in capex this year.

Situation on TSMC is bad now as similar to Intel with super successful 14nm it can hit wall with problematic 3nm that they can't make to work still even for small batches.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/25030/first-big-apple-issues-3nm-process-can-be-postponed-up-to-2-years#Item_1

Issues are serious, free market ends here - EU Signs €145bn Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

In a major push to give Europe pride of place in the global semiconductor design and fabrication ecosystem, 17 EU member states this week signed a joint declaration to commit to work together in developing next generation, trusted low-power embedded processors and advanced process technologies down to 2nm. It will allocate up to €145bn funding for this European initiative over the next 2-3 years.

https://www.eetimes.eu/eu-signs-e145bn-declaration-to-develop-next-gen-processors-and-2nm-technology/

TSMC and Samsung Electronics have both encountered different but critical bottlenecks in the development of their respective 3nm process technologies, according to industry sources. The foundry houses may have to delay moving their respective 3nm process to volume production.

Who could have thought.

And it will be real tragedy for Apple.

DRAM memory progress

You can see approach that is similar to that NAND manufacturers are doing, yet it is no layers for now.