tsmc

The three business models in chip manufacturing — fabless designer, pure-play foundry, integrated device manufacturer — and the capex, yield, and learning-curve forces that drove the leading edge into a small handful of firms.

How a near-perfect silicon ingot becomes a billion-transistor chip. The 600-step fab cycle, photolithography down to 13.5 nm EUV (vaporized tin droplets at 220,000 °C), ion implantation for doping, the truth behind '5 nm' node naming, and the chokepoint-heavy global supply chain.