How Taiwan Makes the Chips Behind Modern Life

aiwan's chipmakers earn well over half of the world's contract chipmaking revenue, and the island produces the vast majority of the most advanced chips. We follow a chip from design to the wafer, lithography with extreme ultraviolet light, the thousand-step process of building layers, testing and packaging, and the flights that carry chips around the world — plus the risks of concentrating so much in one place. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:17 How Taiwan became a chip superpower 3:15 Stage 1 · Design 4:34 Stage 2 · The wafer 6:36 Stage 3 · Lithography 8:14 Stage 4 · Building the layers 9:57 Stage 5 · Testing & packaging 11:19 Stage 6 · Shipping 12:23 Water, earthquakes and geopolitics 13:25 What comes next 13:54 One system SOURCES • TrendForce — global foundry market share • BCG / Semiconductor Industry Association (2021) — advanced-node capacity • Taiwan Ministry of Finance — export statistics Figures are rounded and may be revised by the sources.