Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, is widely known as the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry.
Morris Chang founded TSMC in Taiwan in 1987. Its business model separated chip design from chip manufacturing: customers could design processors while TSMC produced them in specialized fabrication plants.
This model helped create the modern fabless semiconductor industry. Companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and many other chip designers can concentrate on architecture and products without owning equivalent manufacturing capacity.
TSMC is especially important for advanced processors used in smartphones, data centers, consumer electronics, and artificial-intelligence systems. It is sometimes confused with Samsung or Intel, which also manufacture chips but operate different combinations of design, production, and consumer businesses.