The silicon disc on which chips are printed, the unit in which foundries count their capacity. Chapter 5.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
Where the book uses it
- Chapter 5 — The Island in Every Machine
Why every accelerator runs through Taiwan: the foundry, the packaging and the memory that are booked years ahead, and what that does to anyone arriving late with cash.
Where the record uses it
- Scorecard indicator CoWoS
- Dated test Chapter 5, the concentration half, due 31 December 2027
- Dated test Chapter 5, NVIDIA’s place in the queue, read apart, due 31 December 2027
Sources that use it
- TrendForce, “TSMC 3nm Monthly Wafer Starts to Hit 180K by Early 4Q26 on Strong Demand,” 3 August 2026 (N3 ~150,000 WPM in H1 2026 → ~180,000 — estimates, not company disclosure; N2 50,000–60,000 → ~100,000 by end-2026). In the Sources
Related terms
From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.
How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “Wafer.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/wafer (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-wafer-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{Wafer}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/wafer},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}