Where value & control concentrate
Design (EDA & IP)
Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm design; Synopsys & Cadence own the EDA tools; Arm licenses the cores. US/UK dominated.
Foundry
TSMC makes ~90% of leading-edge logic, with Samsung and Intel trailing. Taiwan is the single point of concentration.
Equipment
ASML (NL) is the sole maker of EUV lithography. Applied Materials, Lam, Tokyo Electron, KLA round out deposition/etch/metrology.
Materials
Wafers (Shin-Etsu, SUMCO), photoresists (JSR, Tokyo Ohka), gases, and the critical elements below. Japan-heavy.
Packaging (OSAT)
Advanced packaging — CoWoS, chiplets — is now a bottleneck of its own. TSMC, ASE, Amkor lead.
Power & RF (compound)
GaN and SiC for power electronics and RF; gallium & silicon-carbide supply is China-concentrated.
The chokepoints
- EUV lithography — ASML is the only supplier on Earth; no leading-edge chip exists without it.
- Leading-edge foundry — TSMC's Taiwan fabs are a geopolitical single point of failure.
- Gallium & germanium — China controls ~95% / ~68% of supply and has imposed export controls.
- Photoresists & wafers — a few Japanese firms dominate.
Why the materials matter
Silicon is the substrate, but the leverage sits in the minor metals: gallium and germanium for high-frequency and power devices, indium for displays and transceivers, plus the ultrapure gases and rare earths used in polishing and deposition. These are small markets with outsized strategic weight — exactly the supply chains mapped in the minerals engine.
Critical materials powering semiconductors (…)
Ranked by chokepoint risk. Click any element to open its full locations / uses / mine-to-buyer profile in the minerals engine. Explore all 68 →