TSMC is investing $16 billion in a new advanced chip factory

Some interesting news has just appeared online, but first we'll tackle the business side of things. TSMC has said that it is investing a hefty $16 billion on creating a new chip factory, but there was some more interesting news that didn't seem to make the headlines.

TSMC will never make a 20nm GPU, with the reasoning behind this is that there are very low yields associated with the big cores and high performance requirements. Starting next year the Taiwanese giant will switch over to 16nm FinFET, but it wants to shift into 10nm as early as late 2016.

Intel is another player in the 10nm business, where it has invested $6 billion in fabrication facilities over in Israel. The chipmaker has already invested into the R&D of 7nm, which should happen before 2020. TSMC shifting to 16nm and then 10nm so quickly is a pre-emptive move against Samsung and Globalfoundaries, which have just joined forces in the R&D side of things.