Taiwan
China
United StatesLeading-edge foundry
By country, Oct 2021
Taiwan Strait
In the naval blockade case, a disruption at TSMC reaches 107 organisations, each one link away.
Price correlation
Foundries
Organisations reached in the run, by country. Severities are scenario assumptions. Newest input June 2026.
In the naval blockade case, a disruption at TSMC reaches 107 organisations, each one link away.
Organisations reached
Each organisation keeps the highest impact any route gives it. Recovery times are scenario assumptions.
Global Unichip and VisEra Technologies have the highest modelled impact, 20.1%; 91 of the 107 sit at 7.5%, and none reaches 30%.
16 of the 107 links appear in public sources; the others rest on a licensed database that is not redistributed.
| Taiwan | 20.1% | |
| Taiwan | 20.1% | |
| Taiwan | 15% | |
| Taiwan | 15% | |
| China | 12.5% | |
| United States | 12.5% |
By layer, 78 Chip Design, 21 AI Labs & End Users, 3 Lithography & Equipment, 3 Data Centers & Cloud, 2 Fabrication.
Concentration
Block width is the supplier’s share. The ~92% is a country-level figure from 2021, because no primary source publishes a company-level one.
Taiwan accounts for ~92% of leading-edge pure-play foundry manufacturing (CSET, 2021).
NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs use TSMC’s custom 4NP process. AMD’s MI350X specification lists TSMC 3 nm and 6 nm fabrication. Buying from these competing accelerator vendors therefore retains a common foundry dependency.
Herfindahl
Withheld
Foundry revenue
FY2025, TrendForce
AI accelerator fabrication
Scrutica estimate, no published source
EUV lithography systems
ASML 2025 Annual Report
| Customer | Products | Dependency, our rating |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | A-series (iPhone), M-series (Mac), S-series (Watch) | Critical |
| NVIDIA | H100, H200, B200, B300, Grace CPU, Drive Orin | Critical |
| AMD | EPYC (datacenter CPU), MI300X/MI325X (AI GPU), Ryzen (consumer) | Critical |
| Qualcomm | Snapdragon mobile SoC, Snapdragon X Elite (PC), Auto platforms | High |
| Broadcom | Networking ASICs, Custom AI accelerators (Google TPU), WiFi/BT | High |
| MediaTek | Dimensity mobile SoC, Smart TV chips, WiFi/BT | High |
Alternatives
These disclosures identify manufacturing capabilities and partnerships; they provide no estimate of how much displaced TSMC demand could be served or how long a transfer would take.
TSMC’s first Arizona fab entered high-volume 4 nm production in the fourth quarter of 2024. Its 2025 Annual Report schedules the second fab for the second half of 2027. In February 2026, Apple said it was on track to buy well over 100 million Arizona-made chips during the year.
| Step | Alternative | Process or technology |
|---|---|---|
| Leading-edge logic fabrication | Samsung Foundry | 3 nm with gate-all-around (GAA) transistors |
| Leading-edge logic fabrication | Intel Foundry | Intel 18A |
| 7 nm-class logic fabrication | SMIC | N+2 (second-generation 7 nm, no EUV) |
| Replacement of EUV lithography tools | ASML only | EUV lithography systems |
| Advanced packaging (CoWoS, InFO) | Amkor Technology, under TSMC procurement | Advanced packaging and test at Amkor’s planned Arizona campus |
Programmes
The curve follows the supplier company. It does not estimate an outage at an installed cluster or the number of ordered chips that arrive late.
27 programmes are marked as highly dependent on NVIDIA in the sovereign register. Under this case their recorded suppliers, NVIDIA and AMD, peak at 13%, under the page’s 30% display threshold.
Over time
The same illustrative schedule for all four cases: selecting a different case does not recalculate its milestones.
The schedule assumes its deepest loss, 70%, between one and six months.
Chinese chip production
The sources below establish particular capabilities, but leave replacement capacity unknown.
| Product | Capability |
|---|---|
| SMIC 7 nm (N+2) | Logic fabrication demonstrated in Huawei’s Kirin 9000s processor |
| YMTC NAND flash | Storage memory |
| CXMT DRAM | System and mobile memory |
| Huawei Ascend accelerators | AI accelerator shipments |
Export controls
These records document particular export-control actions. Assessing their effect during a disruption also requires evidence about replacement production and the terms under which equipment or chips could reach it.
| Entity List addition | Effective | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) | 18 Dec 2020 | 85 FR 83416 |
| SMIC Semiconductor Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. | 18 Dec 2020 | 85 FR 83416 |
| Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd. (YMTC) | 16 Dec 2022 | 87 FR 77505 |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 16 May 2019 | 84 FR 22961 |
| Shanghai HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd. | 19 Aug 2019 | 84 FR 43493 |
Questions for enforcement, 4
Equipment access. Which equipment, software and servicing transactions would require permission for a proposed replacement supplier? Distinguish installed equipment from equipment that the supplier could obtain and maintain during the disruption.
Production commitments. Which customers already hold the available foundry and memory capacity, and what would have to change to redirect it? The relevant production must also meet the device specifications and arrive within the disruption window.
End-user verification. What evidence identifies the final customer when a shipment passes through intermediaries? Trace the buyer and consignees through to the proposed use before assessing whether restrictions would apply.
Decisions across jurisdictions. Which governments would need to change licenses or coordinate their application? Compare the timing of those decisions and the transactions each would cover.
The 2019 Japan–South Korea trade dispute
The controls changed both the licences required for individual materials and South Korea’s wider trading status. Those decisions followed different schedules.
4 Jul 2019, Individual licences required for three materials. The change announced on 1 July took effect on 4 July. Exports to South Korea of fluorinated polyimide, resist polymers and hydrogen fluoride, with related technologies, moved from bulk licensing to individual contract applications. Republic of Korea, WTO consultation request WT/DS590/1, paragraphs 5–9
28 Aug 2019, South Korea leaves Group A. The Cabinet ordinance removing South Korea from Japan’s preferred export-control group entered into force. This country classification was separate from the July licensing change for the three materials. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Bluebook 2020, section 2(2)A(F)
17 Mar 2023, METI announces revision of the three-item controls. METI announced its decision to revise export-control operations for hydrogen fluoride, resist and fluorinated polyimide. South Korea's separate Group A status remained under review at this date. METI, Minister Nishimura press conference, 17 March 2023
27 Jun 2023, Cabinet approves Group A reinstatement. Japan approved an amendment restoring South Korea to Group A, scheduled to take effect on 21 July. South Korea’s trade ministry explained that this would restore access to general bulk licences and ease application requirements. South Korea Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, 27 June 2023
Research summary, April 2023, The trade response differed by material. Makioka and Zhang found a large fall in Japan’s hydrogen-fluoride exports to South Korea, with no comparable decline for photoresist or fluorinated polyimide. South Korea increased hydrogen-fluoride imports from the US and Taiwan, and photoresist imports from Belgium. Their descriptive production data also showed increases at Korean firms and Japanese affiliates in South Korea. Makioka and Zhang, VoxEU research summary, 27 April 2023
The trade response illustrates how suppliers and buyers can adapt when factories remain available. A loss of fabrication capacity would also require qualified production elsewhere; this history supplies no recovery-time estimate for that step.
Cases
All four apply a disruption to the same organisation.
| Case | Severity | Hop keeps | Time to impact | Assumed duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naval Blockade | 95% | 88% | Weeks | 6-24 months (dependent on blockade resolution) |
| Targeted Fab Strike | 100% | 92% | Hours | 2-5 years (fab rebuild + EUV tool procurement) |
| Taiwan Power Grid Disruption | 80% | 85% | Hours | Weeks to months (grid repair) + months (WIP rebuild + qualification) |
| Voluntary Export Restriction | 40% | 65% | Weeks | Indefinite (policy-dependent) |
Related pages
Sources
No recorded review. Newest input June 2026.
4 sources
| Source |
|---|
| TSMC Annual Reports |
| Epoch AI Frontier Data Centers |
| CSET leading-edge foundry share |
| Supply-chain source collection, 20,687 supply-chain records across all sources |
- TSMC Annual Reports: https://investor.tsmc.com/english/annual-reports
- Epoch AI Frontier Data Centers: https://epoch.ai/data/data-centers
- CSET leading-edge foundry share: https://scrutica.com/methodology
- Supply-chain source collection, 20,687 supply-chain records across all sources: https://scrutica.com/methodology#licensed-substrate
Key findings, 7
CSET’s October 2021 report put Taiwan’s share of leading-edge pure-play foundry manufacturing at approximately 92%. TSMC’s 2025 Annual Report separately records that processes of 7 nm and below generated 74% of its wafer revenue.
The country share and company revenue mix answer different questions. The former is a historical measure of geographic concentration; the latter describes TSMC’s business and cannot establish its share of worldwide advanced-node capacity.
CSET report, TSMC annual report. Source dates: October 2021 country share; FY2025 revenue mix.
NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs use TSMC’s custom 4NP process. AMD’s MI350X specification lists TSMC 3 nm and 6 nm fabrication. Buying from these competing accelerator vendors therefore retains a common foundry dependency.
A shared foundry does not imply identical exposure to a particular fab or country. The affected production steps, available inventories and packaging arrangements determine how a disruption reaches each product.
NVIDIA process disclosure, AMD product specification. Source dates: Not stated on the product pages.
Samsung announced initial production of 3 nm GAA chips in June 2022. Its process-specific design ecosystem is relevant to evaluating a transfer from TSMC.
The announcement does not quantify spare capacity or the time needed to qualify a displaced customer’s design.
Production announcement. Source dates: June 2022 announcement.
Rhodium Group’s December 2022 blockade assessment put more than $2 trillion in economic activity at risk, including up to $1.6 trillion in annual revenue across industries dependent on Taiwanese chips. Its scenario assumes that all trade between Taiwan and the rest of the world stops.
The figures describe exposure at the onset of a blockade, with flows expressed annually. Realised losses would depend on the crisis’s duration and subsequent responses; the assessment excludes sanctions, military escalation and second-order effects and does not estimate GDP losses.
Blockade assessment. Source dates: December 2022 assessment.
ASML identifies itself as the sole manufacturer of EUV lithography systems in its 2025 Annual Report.
A replacement schedule for damaged fab equipment requires a site inventory and delivery commitments; annual system sales alone cannot establish it.
Annual report. Source dates: FY2025 report.
After the 3 April 2024 earthquake, TSMC reported full tool recovery by the end of the third day and no damage to its critical equipment, including EUV tools. Wafer scrappage still caused losses: its 2024 Annual Report records approximately NT$3 billion, net of insurance, recognised in the second quarter.
Tool recovery and replacement of lost output have different timelines: on 18 April, TSMC expected to recover most lost production during the second quarter. This event offers limited evidence for a scenario with structural fab damage or a sustained power outage, neither of which TSMC reported here.
Earthquake statement, Annual report. Source dates: April 2024 event; FY2024 loss disclosure.
TSMC’s first Arizona fab entered high-volume 4 nm production in the fourth quarter of 2024. Its 2025 Annual Report schedules the second fab for the second half of 2027. In February 2026, Apple said it was on track to buy well over 100 million Arizona-made chips during the year.
Arizona provides operating fabrication capacity outside Taiwan. How much supply it could preserve during a Taiwan disruption depends on the products qualified there, capacity already committed to customers and the remaining packaging and material dependencies. Apple’s chip-purchase forecast supplies no wafer-capacity estimate.
TSMC annual report, Apple purchase forecast. Source dates: FY2025 report; February 2026 purchase forecast.
Cable incidents, 2006 and 2023
Two accounts of damage to submarine cables near Taiwan, each with its sources. They are context, not a complete list of incidents there, and none of the four cases takes an input from them.
26 Dec 2006, Hengchun Earthquake Cable Cuts (Luzon Strait / South of Taiwan)
An M7.1 earthquake struck off southern Taiwan on 26 December 2006. ICPC's March 2007 account reported nine broken cables in the Luzon Strait and identified submarine landslides as the likely cause.
Internet services across East and Southeast Asia suffered outages and delays. Traffic was rerouted through surviving cables, with delays continuing for weeks. ICPC reported 21 faults across nine cables and a 49-day restoration effort involving 11 ships.
ICPC press release, 21 Mar 2007; USGS event catalog.
2 Feb 2023, Matsu Cable Breaks (Matsu Islands, Taiwan Strait)
The two cables linking Matsu to Taiwan broke on 2 and 8 February 2023. AP reported that the NCC blamed Chinese vessels, while noting that Taiwan had not established a deliberate act.
Chunghwa Telecom used microwave backup to prioritise essential services while broadband was severely constrained. On 31 March it announced that repairing one cable had restored normal communications; the second cable still awaited repair.
Chunghwa Telecom, 16 Feb 2023; Chunghwa Telecom, 31 Mar 2023; AP, 8 Mar 2023.
How the figures were made
The cascade applies each case’s severity and propagation multiplier to TSMC across the recorded supplier–customer network, including licensed and public sources. Substitution and recovery figures are authored assumptions. The underlying collection contains 20,687 supply-chain records across all sources. Of these, 1,924 come from a licensed layer limited to relationships between organisations already in Scrutica's records.
All four cases apply a disruption to the same organisation. They do not select individual fabs, electrical connections or customers by export destination. The export-restriction case approximates a selective interruption with a lower company-wide severity. The inventory-buffer curve separately applies each case’s layer multipliers to its stored buffer assumptions.
The cascade totals include every source class; the price-correlation lines and the inventory-buffer calculation use the publicly sourced subset, so some organisations the run reaches have no line or buffer of their own there.
The substitution rows record sourced capabilities without replacement shares or qualification periods, because no cited source publishes them. The recovery schedule is fixed: selecting a different disruption does not recalculate its milestones.
The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) adds squared company market shares. The 2023 US Merger Guidelines classify markets above 1,800 as highly concentrated; their merger presumption also requires an increase of more than 100 points. Here HHI describes the supplier shares in each dated market snapshot. Leading-edge concentration uses the ~92% figure for Taiwan’s country share (CSET 2021). The company-level advanced-node share is left unknown, and a country share cannot supply a company-level HHI. The foundry figure is a floor over the six foundries the source names, and the accelerator-fabrication figure is withheld because its shares are a Scrutica estimate.
The programmes’ curves follow the supplier company; the graph does not distinguish production lines for individual chip models. They do not estimate an outage at an installed cluster or the number of ordered chips that arrive late. The 30% cutoff is a fixed analytical display threshold.
The cascade simulator’s TSMC disruption preset runs with its own default severity and propagation settings, not those of the four cases here.
Compute-weighted trajectory unavailable: facility evidence does not support a complete denominator.
No completed review is recorded for the full analysis. The newest input comes from Amkor’s 16 June 2026 announcement of a ten-year advanced-packaging and test agreement with TSMC, cited in the substitution assessment. Review state for every scenario is on the Scenarios page.
Corrections to this page, 4
Market concentration: one Herfindahl per market on every page, and seven figures withheld, 10 Nov 2026
Sovereign AI: the TSMC and export-control-reach ratings are withdrawn, and four NVIDIA ratings removed, 25 Sep 2026
Cascade: relationships last disclosed five or more years before the latest filing wave no longer propagate, 23 Sep 2026
Cascade: partnerships no longer propagate as supply, 23 Sep 2026