In this week’s Economist, there’s a great article on how chip manufacturers work and their current economic situation. One of the most interesting parts of the article is the collective impressions of “high-ranking executives at leading firms, who prefer not to be quoted,” who believe that there is only room in the industry for three big chipmakers, those companies being “Samsung in memory chips, Intel in microprocessors and TSMC in foundries.” It is predicted that AMD and other, smaller companies, will live on for the foreseeable future, though these companies will be “nationalistic ventures in need of regular government bail-outs.” This is largely do to the enormous cost of working in the semiconductor industry. I highly recommend reading the article in full, which can be found here.
