TSMC is headquartered in Hsinchu and manufactures chips designed by many other firms.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. A foundry manufactures integrated circuits for customers that generally design the chips themselves. This differs from an integrated device manufacturer, which traditionally designs and manufactures its own processors.
TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang in Taiwan. Its business model helped popularize the dedicated-foundry approach, allowing companies such as fabless chip designers to use advanced manufacturing without owning comparable factories. TSMC produces chips for smartphones, computers, artificial intelligence, vehicles, and many other products.
TSMC’s market value is closely watched because advanced chips are essential to modern computing. It is sometimes confused with chip designers such as Nvidia or Qualcomm, but those companies primarily design products, while TSMC is the major contract manufacturer that fabricates many of them.