Glossary term
Wafer
The thin silicon disk on which chips are manufactured; wafer allocation is TSMC's primary commercial lever.
A Wafer is the thin silicon disk on which many chips are fabricated simultaneously before being cut into individual dies. Standard advanced wafers are 300mm in diameter, and the number of good dies per wafer drives the economics of every chip. Wafer allocation — who gets capacity at the leading edge — is TSMC's primary commercial mechanism and a key signal of supply-chain priority. See Foundry Economics 101.