TSMC

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSMC; 台灣積體電路製造股份有限公司) is a Taiwanese semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of Taiwan's largest companies, the world's most valuable semiconductor company, and the world's largest dedicated independent , with its headquarters and main operations located in the  in , Taiwan. TSMC has a global capacity of about 13 million 300mm equivalent wafers per year as of 2020, and makes microchips for customers with process nodes from 2 micron to. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 5 and production capabilities and the first to commercialize  (EUV) technology in high volume.

History
Founded in Taiwan in 1987 by, TSMC was the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry and has long been the leading company in its field. It has been listed on the (TWSE: 2330) since 1993; in 1997 it became the first Taiwanese company to be listed in the  (NYSE: TSM). Since 1994, TSMC has had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4% in revenue and a CAGR of 16.1% in earnings. When Chang retired in 2018, after 31 years of TSMC leadership, and C. C. Wei, both high ranking TSMC leaders, became Chairman and Chief Executive respectively.

TSMC and Apple
In 2011, it was reported that TSMC had begun trial production of the A5 and A6 SoCs for Apple's iPad and iPhone devices. According to reports, as of May 2014, Apple is sourcing its new A8 and A8X SoCs from TSMC and later sourced the A9 SoC with both TSMC and Samsung (to increase volume for iPhone 6s launch) with the A9X being exclusively made by TSMC, thus resolving the issue of sourcing a chip in two different  sizes. Apple has become TSMC's most important customer. The Apple A14 and M1 processors have completely saturated TSMC's 5nm production capacity, leading to reports that some units could be outsourced back to Samsung while TSMC and Apple work on preparing a for release in 2022.