Tagged Japan · show all articles
Coat, bake, develop, clean — the unglamorous thermal and chemical processing that has to happen between lithography, etch, and deposition, every single time. Tokyo Electron built its business on that connective tissue.
Before TSMC, Nvidia, or anyone else in this cohort can do anything, they need a silicon wafer to start from. Two companies most readers have never heard of supply the majority of them.
The US won the protection it asked for. American DRAM makers never came back. What actually happened next is a stranger, more interesting story than "protectionism failed."
SUMCO is shutting down older production and shelving a new plant to concentrate on the high-end wafers AI chips need — capital reallocation several steps removed from any GPU.
A multi-billion-dollar manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries, next-generation R-Car silicon, and a legacy-fab closure squeezing older analog parts all at once — Renesas's 2026 is a study in managed transition.
Most countries rebuilding a domestic chip industry start with a mature node and work up. Japan's state-backed Rapidus is attempting to go straight to 2-nanometer production by 2027 — with IBM's help and more than 60 companies watching.
By 1986, Japan held roughly 75% of the global DRAM market. By the late 1990s, that lead belonged to Korea, and by the 2000s, Taiwan's foundry model had reshaped the whole industry around it. This briefing covers why, not just when.