H83:

TSMC can´t afford to lose a customer like Apple. They buy a lof of chips every year and they don´t mind to pay. What TSMC needs is more factories but those take time and cost lots of money. And they are an huge risk.

I would argue it's most costly and more risky to not build more factories. Overhead is money they're not earning, and there is a LOT of overhead. Meanwhile to my understanding, they only have 1 facility, at least only one doing the 7nm production. Taiwan isn't exactly known for being the safest place in the world when it comes to natural disasters. It's really just a matter of time until they suffer a major problem, at which point, all production stops and the company loses billions. And let's not forget China slowly taking more and more control over places like HK, Tibet, and Xinjiang - they want Taiwan too. It's perplexing to me why they don't build more facilities.

Like I predicted stock is magically back for tax season.

DarkQuark:

We will just have to agree to disagree. It is the dream of every business to make product as fast as they can and for it to fly off the shelves as they do.

We are talking about two different things: In your scenario a manufacturer was planning and is able to produce a million units and is fortunately successfully selling those million units. In AMD/Nvidia situation, the manufacturers were wishing to produce a million units, knowing they could probably sell a million units, but they also know they can only get half a million manufactured. Numbers are random in the examples. I hope you see the problem and how it indeed is a problem.

Devid:

I've just recently heard that GlobalFoundries is working on it's own 3nm.

I really really really really really hope this is true and they nail it with the first try !