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aurareturn • today at 2:39 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

  I think it mostly shows that there is no moat
You can argue that TSMC has no moat since Intel and Samsung are also able to eventually make a node as good as TSMC - just a few years later and at smaller scale.

And no one would say that about TSMC.

So there is clearly a moat there somewhere.

Replies

saithound • today at 3:02 AM

No. In the semiconductor industry, the "catch-up" player isn't normally spending less in absolute R&D terms.

Comparing the R&D costs of creating GPT-4o vs. DeepSeek V3 (the latest gen for which we already have good accurate numbers) it looks like the latter cost 1/20th as much to create.

If Samsung could catch up with TSMC for 1/20th of the cost, people definitely would say that TSMC has no moat.

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coolandsmartrr • today at 2:56 AM

Yeah, I'm not sure if "no moat" analogy stands for chip manufacturing. Even if foundries acquire lithographic nodes, the procedures (temperature, duration, etc) are for them to figure out and are usually kept secret. This secret could be the "moat" that differentiates each foundry's operational capabilities.