This is fucked up.

I must be tired. Took me extra digging to understand that they produce high quality defect free silicon wafers as raw material for the top foundries to use.

I guess on the plus side even if Sumco can’t expand much there’s a sign that there’s a lot of demand for computer chips that is expected to stay strong until at least 2026. Hopefully over the next 12 months we get something healthier for the consumer as investment in more production capacity starts to come online at the end of the year and slowly continue to restore the balance.

Well materials for chips are also finite and rare metals are rare. Also wafers or at least the basic recources are also used for other products like solar panels and obviously a lot more devices have more complex chips nowadays. For example your TV, car, phone, tablet etc. all have advanced chips and a lot more countries are getting access to these kind of devices. So the shortages won't end for a while. Luckily there are still mountains of old e-waste which are rich in materials to build new chips at least.

Uh, no?

Silicon is the most common element on Earth. Your local beach may provide it

I have noticed more demand for expansion of sand mines lately.

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in Japan will start operations until 2024.

That would help a lot.

Huh again?

This is a 22/28nm plant jointly operated by Sony. It is mainly for image signal processors to microcontrollers for the Japanese market.

Of course this plant is exactly the opposite of what you think, it will be another customer for wafers (though my guess is lower quality wafers than the 5-7nm stuff).

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in Japan will start operations until 2024.

That would help a lot.

Silicon in itself isn't, but there go a lot more materials into a working chip. Also you need factories to actually refine silicium, so in the end there is a limit how much chip grade silicon we can produce, let alone how many chips.