As the carrier of integrated circuit, chip is the result of integrated circuit design, manufacturing, packaging and testing. Qualcomm and MediaTek, which we are familiar with, belong to well-known integrated circuit designers, while TSMC belongs to the field of OEM.
Chip manufacturing is the biggest problem. First of all, the chip industry is highly technology-intensive and capital-intensive. If there is not enough technology accumulation, money alone can't do it, because a small chip contains billions, tens or even hundreds of billions of small transistors, and there are quite complicated circuit structures.
At present, the investment of "one" chip production line needs to be as high as 654.38+0.7 billion dollars, and the production line has been built for more than 2 years! There are not many enterprises in the world that can produce the core technology of nano-processors. Intel and AMD in the United States manufacture computer processors, which are almost in a monopoly position, while the production technology of mobile phone processors is more demanding.
Apple developed its own mobile phone processor, but because the process of producing the processor is very demanding, a production line needs at least tens of billions of dollars, so it chose a foundry to produce it. Only a few companies in the world have mastered the core secret production technology, such as Samsung and TSMC. These companies can produce mobile phone chips, but the technology has accumulated for decades.
The most important thing about chips is technology, and the other is technology patents. Technology refers to mass production, and technology patents are the research and development of chips. From upstream to downstream, the whole semiconductor industry can be basically divided into three parts: chip design, chip manufacturing and chip packaging testing, in which chip manufacturing is the most complicated and difficult part.