The Semiconductor Supply Chain: Sand to AI Chip
The entire semiconductor pipeline, stage by stage: high-purity quartz and polysilicon, silicon wafers (Shin-Etsu, SUMCO), photoresist and specialty gases, the machines (ASML's EUV, Applied Materials, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron), EDA tools (Synopsys, Cadence), chip designers (Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm), fabs (TSMC, Samsung, Intel, SK Hynix), and advanced packaging (CoWoS) — exposing the chokepoints from one quartz town to Taiwan's fabs.
This is an interactive map — enable JavaScript for the full visualization. Part of Muad'Dib Capital, the Atlas of the Physical Economy.
Featured in this map
- ① Raw materials
- ② Materials & chemicals
- ③ Equipment
- ④ Design tools
- ⑤ Chip design
- ⑥ Fabrication
- ⑦ Packaging & test
- ⑧ End products
- High-purity quartz
- Metallurgical silicon
- Neon & rare gases
- Helium
- Fluorspar → HF
- Copper
- Gold
- Tin
- Cerium / rare earths
- Electronic-grade polysilicon
- Silicon wafers (300mm)
- Photoresist
- Specialty / electronic gases
- CMP slurry & pads
- Sputtering targets
- Photomasks & blanks
- IC substrates (ABF)
- Bonding wire / leadframe / solder
- Wet chemicals (acids/solvents)
- Lithography
- Deposition & etch
- Metrology & inspection
- Clean / coat-develop track
- Ion implant
- Test equipment (ATE)
- EDA software
- IP cores
- Nvidia (AI GPUs)
- AMD
- Apple Silicon
- Qualcomm
- Broadcom
- MediaTek
- Marvell
- TSMC (foundry)
- Samsung (foundry + memory)
- Intel (IDM + foundry)
- GlobalFoundries
- UMC
- SMIC (EUV-blocked)
- SK Hynix (memory / HBM)
- Micron (memory)
- Texas Instruments (analog)
- Infineon (power)
- TSMC CoWoS (adv. packaging)
- ASE Technology (OSAT)
- Amkor (OSAT)
- JCET (OSAT)
- Powertech (mem. test/assembly)
- AI servers / GPUs
- Smartphones
- PCs & servers
- Cars (chips inside)
- SSDs / memory modules
- MOCVD / compound deposition
- Mask writers & EUV-mask inspection
- Dicing & wafer grinding
- Bonding & adv-packaging tools
- CMP & plating equipment
- SiC / GaN substrates
- Adv-packaging materials (underfill/TIM)
- Sony (image sensors)
- NXP (auto / embedded)
- Renesas (MCU / auto)
- Analog Devices
- Microchip (MCU)
- onsemi (power / sensors)
- STMicroelectronics (IDM)
- Kioxia (NAND)
- Nanya (DRAM)
- Hua Hong (China mature)
- Tower Semiconductor
- Tongfu (OSAT)
- King Yuan (test)
- Networking / optical
- Sibelco
- The Quartz Corp
- Nordic Mining
- Ferroglobe
- Elkem
- Wacker
- Air Products
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