The increase in global (even excluding China) semiconductor

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But this does not apply to the most advanced VLSI: for example, the already mentioned TSMC in Februarytriumphantly reported, which increased the yield of suitable 3-nm chips to 80%, due to which it hopes to produce 100 thousand wafers monthly, lithographed using the "3 nm" process technology, throughout the rest of 2024, instead of the 60 thousand it had previously counted on. It sounds really inspiring, but these, conditionally, 1 million wafers per year have mexico whatsapp resource already been divided among the largest customers of the Taiwanese factory: Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Intel and Qualcomm. According to McKinsey, we recall, the production of AI logic chips alone should require up to 15 million wafers by 2030 - and where to get them from if Samsung Electronics, the second company besides TSMC to master the "3-nm" process technology, lags behind its Taiwanese colleague in terms of production volumes by about an order of magnitude?

production volumes in the world by 10, 15 or even 20 times, required to meet the demand for AI computing predicted by analysts, poses an extremely difficult problem for the entire chip-making industry. In the conditions of significant inflation, high refinancing rates of central banks, expensive loans, it is necessary to invest tens and hundreds of billions of dollars in the construction of new factories right now, not to mention investments in the cultivation and training of personnel capable of working on them. And these are huge expenses, and not a single analytical company in the world is ready to provide a 100% guarantee of their payback.

If the rush demand for AI is not met at a rate adequate to the forecasts of the same McKinsey, this may lead to unpleasant consequences of a different kind: excessive price increases for available small quantities of hardware, the transition of AI computing from the category of "the basis of any digitalized business" to the category of technological luxury. - and thus to the slow withering of this entire topic. Or, in the best case, to a forced transition of the rapid growth of this segment of the IT market to a much more extended in time, but also much less inspiring gradual mode.

Perhaps for the first time in its history, humanity is faced with a situation in which the seemingly pristine (by all indications and forecasts) road of technical progress is blocked by a boring, banal, but no less unbearable barrier of a fundamental lack of resources and means to follow it. How this contradiction can be resolved and how the IT market will change in the course of such a process - and it is certainly already changing - we will see in the coming years.