Stages
The Chain Runs Through 13 Stages Before a Chip Ships
A chip passes through 13 supply stages before it reaches a board. Materials and design come first; wafers, masks and tools feed the fab; packaging and test finish the part. A shortfall at any stage stops every stage after it, and most stages have one to three suppliers that matter.
- Made in US
- Some US volume
- US planned
- Made abroad
| Stage | Leaders | In the US | Page | US status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Quartz and polysilicon | Spruce Pine quartz (about 80% of high-purity supply); Hemlock, Wacker, Tokuyama polysilicon | Spruce Pine mines; Hemlock in Michigan and Wacker in Tennessee make semiconductor-grade polysilicon | Quartzite to Polysilicon | Made in US |
| 02 Critical elements | China: about 99% of primary gallium, 91% of rare earth refining | No US primary gallium; rare earth separation is small | Critical Elements | Made abroad |
| 03 Gases and chemicals | Linde, Air Liquide, Air Products; Stella Chemifa, Soulbrain for HF | Industrial gas plants at most US fabs; chemical plants planned near Casa Grande, Arizona | Process Chemicals | Some US volume |
| 04 Resist, slurries, targets | JSR, TOK, Shin-Etsu resist; Entegris, Fujimi, Anji slurries; JX targets | DuPont ancillary chemistry and Entegris US lines; JX target plant in Mesa; EUV resist made in Japan | Photoresist | Some US volume |
| 05 Silicon wafers | Shin-Etsu and SUMCO about half of 300mm; GlobalWafers, Siltronic, SK Siltron | GlobalWafers Sherman, Texas is the first US 300mm plant (May 2025) | Wafer Production | Some US volume |
| 06 Masks and blanks | AGC and Hoya EUV blanks; Tekscend, Photronics, DNP merchant masks | Photronics Boise makes masks to 7nm; no US EUV blanks | Photomasks and Reticles | Some US volume |
| 07 Design, EDA and IP | NVIDIA, Broadcom, Qualcomm, AMD; Synopsys, Cadence; Arm | US companies hold most fabless revenue and EDA | Fabless Design and IP | Made in US |
| 08 Fab equipment | ASML, Applied, Lam, Tokyo Electron, KLA | Applied, Lam and KLA US plants; ASML EUV light sources in San Diego | Wafer Fab Equipment | Some US volume |
| 09 Leading-edge wafers | TSMC 72.5% of foundry revenue (2Q26); Samsung, Intel | TSMC Arizona and Intel 18A in Arizona; Samsung Taylor in pilot | Leading-Edge Fabs | Some US volume |
| 10 Memory and HBM | SK hynix 50%, Samsung 33%, Micron 18% of HBM (2Q26) | Micron DRAM in Virginia and Idaho; HBM packaging in Indiana from 2H 2029 | HBM | Some US volume |
| 11 Advanced packaging | TSMC CoWoS and SoIC; Intel EMIB and Foveros; ASE, Amkor | Intel packages its own chips in New Mexico; no CoWoS-class line until Amkor Peoria in 2028 | Advanced Packaging | Some US volume |
| 12 Assembly and test (OSAT) | ASE 44.6% of top 10 revenue (2024); Amkor, JCET, Tongfu | Amkor Peoria, Arizona starts early 2028 | Back-End Assembly | Made abroad |
| 13 Test equipment | Advantest about 65% of testers; Teradyne; FormFactor and Technoprobe probe cards | FormFactor probe cards in California; Aehr burn-in in Fremont | Test Equipment | Some US volume |
US status
The US Makes Something at 11 of 13 Stages and Nothing at Two
Today the US has volume at 11 of the 13 stages. At two of them it is the main source: high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine and chip design, where US companies hold most fabless revenue and the two largest EDA vendors. At the other nine it makes part of the output through plants such as TSMC Arizona, Intel's Arizona fabs, GlobalWafers Sherman, Photronics Boise and Micron's DRAM fabs.
Two stages have no US volume. Outsourced assembly and test arrives with Amkor's plant in Peoria, Arizona in early 2028. Primary gallium and rare earth refining have no US plant planned on the scale of China's, so China's export licensing since 2023 reaches every US fab that uses those elements (see Critical Elements).
"Some US volume" covers a wide range. TSMC Arizona makes 4nm wafers now, with 3nm planned for 2027, yet 79% of TSMC's wafer revenue comes from 7nm and finer and nearly all of it from Taiwan; one US link does not make a US chain. The Chip Supplier Rings follow 10 named chips link by link.
Market size
Fabless Design Earns More Than Contract Manufacturing
Among the stages that sell to each other, fabless design is the largest. The top 10 fabless companies took $359.4B in 2025, NVIDIA alone $205.7B of it, while the whole top 10 of foundries took $53.5B in the second quarter of 2026, about $214B a year at that rate. The tools and materials behind every chip are smaller markets again. Memory makers and other integrated device makers, which design and build their own chips, sit outside this comparison.
| Stage | Market | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design | $359.4B, top 10 fabless companies | 2025 | TrendForce, via Fabless |
| Foundry | $53.5B, top 10 foundries (about $214B a year at that rate, computed) | 2Q 2026 | TrendForce, via Business Models |
| Equipment | $135.1B, all chip equipment billings | 2025 | SEMI, via Wafer Fab Equipment |
| Materials | $73.2B, fab and packaging materials | 2025 | SEMI, via Materials |
| Assembly and test | $41.6B, top 10 OSATs | 2024 | TrendForce, via Back-End Assembly |
| EDA | About $12.4B, Synopsys and Cadence | Latest fiscal year | Company reports, via EDA Tools |
Periods differ because each source reports on its own calendar; the figures show scale, not a single-year total.
China
China Builds Its Own Chain Beside the Global One
China appears in the stage table twice as a leader, in critical elements and in mature-node foundry, where SMIC, Hua Hong and Nexchip took 8.5% of world foundry revenue in the second quarter of 2026. It is building domestic sources for most other stages under export controls: Naura and AMEC tools, Empyrean EDA, Anji slurries and JCET and Tongfu packaging. China Bifurcation maps where the two chains still cross.
Record
Page Record
- Covers
- The 13 stages of the chain, leaders and US status today and planned, market size by stage, China
- Sources
- Figures as verified on the linked SemiconductorX pages (October 2026): BloombergNEF (quartz); USGS and IEA (gallium, rare earths); TrendForce (fabless 2025, foundry 2Q26, HBM 2Q26, OSAT 2024); SEMI (equipment billings and materials 2025); Synopsys and Cadence reports; company announcements for GlobalWafers Sherman, Amkor Peoria and SK hynix West Lafayette
- Last verified
- October 2026