Leading-edge fabrication is concentrated in three companies:
- TSMC (Taiwan), with new fabs in Arizona, currently shipping N3 (Apple M4 on N3E, AMD on N4/N5, NVIDIA H100 on N4) and ramping N2 (GAA).
- Samsung Foundry (Korea, Texas) was first to ship 3 nm GAA but with lower yield than TSMC; customers include some Qualcomm, Tesla, and NVIDIA parts.
- Intel Foundry (Oregon, Arizona, Ireland) is shipping Intel 4 (EUV) and ramping Intel 3 and Intel 18A with RibbonFET (their GAA) and PowerVia (backside power delivery).
Significant non-leading-edge fabs: GlobalFoundries (mature, RF, FD-SOI), SMIC (China, 14 nm and 7 nm class, hampered by EUV controls), UMC (Taiwan, mature), Tower Semiconductor (Israel, specialty).
A leading-edge fab today costs 30 billion. The US CHIPS Act, EU Chips Act, and similar programs subsidize them.
Security/geopolitical takeaway. Concentration of leading-edge fabrication in Taiwan is a strategic bottleneck. US export controls on EUV machines and advanced GPUs have reshaped the industry. Where a chip is fabbed and who designed it are now first-class security concerns, not just engineering ones.