Comment by dotdi
Comment by dotdi 2 months ago
Can't wait to see the factory in Germany also starting to pump out chips.
Comment by dotdi 2 months ago
Can't wait to see the factory in Germany also starting to pump out chips.
Strategic for that same German auto industry, though. I assume that the Covid disruption to the supply of boring but essential microcontrollers for cars was a wake-up call.
Speaking of the leading edge, though: while industrial policy, like other kinds of investment, is easier with the benefit of hindsight, there must be some regret at having let Global Foundries drop out of the peloton.
That's still nice, especially considering that it’s somewhere between Haswell and Broadwell from 2014.
Maybe not the kind of progress or initiative that gets headlines, but neither is it trying to push as far as what Intel has been trying to do for the past few years.
Sure, but coming dead last behind Taiwan, Korea, US, Japan and China in the race to cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing is nothing to brag about. That's like celebrating for coming last.
This means you're getting the lowest industry margins, meaning less profits, less money for R&D, less wages and also less geopolitical leverage. This is nothing to celebrate but should be an alarm clock for our elected leader to wake the f up.
A lot of semi research is done in the EU, like at IMEC in Belgium, but few of it ends up commercialized by EU companies, so EU taxpayer money gets spent but other nations get to reap the rewards.
> nothing to brag about
Maybe some things shouldn't be about bragging but about getting the job done, and cutting edge isn't the only way to do it. If anything, the problem here isn't that it's "just" 16nm but that the EU isn't developing a end-to-end (research to manufacturing) true home grown industry and still relies a lot on external partners like Intel to do it from the outside.
But a good first step to develop enough talent locally that can later flow into domestic alternatives.
Agree with this take. Additionally it brings geopolitical stability by not putting the onus on just one-to-two countries (Taiwan, US) to produce the majority of the worlds info-tech infrastructure. A 16nm process is still very very modern in the grander scope of things.
Be interesting to see if there's integration with research environments within the EU.. otherwise it could fizzle in terms of it's true potential positive impact.
It's all well and good shooting for the best, latest semiconductors. It's also well and good securing the source of the rest of the chips used by the rest of the devices in the world. Cars, consumer goods, every industrial machine ever, etc ... A stable domestic supply chain might pay dividends, especially if international order degrades at all.
> but few of it ends up commercialized by EU companies
ASML is massive, no?
What Europe wants is not necessarily profitability but rather resilience. You can't leave this kind of decision up to the irrationality of market forces. So—you're correct, germany (or the EU) should subsidize chips if they want to weather the future.
If you mean the Intel factory, this is delayed by 2 years. If it ever will come.. And the other planed Wolfspeed factory is cancelled completely.
I guess the expensive energy in Germany, lots of red tape and nimbyism, and not enough state subsidies which is what these companies were hoping for when they were fishing for places to open fabs.
I’m assuming he means capex vs opex ? Electricity is opex.
When you get a detailed quotation from a manufacturer it's usually split into three: NRE, time (labor and machine) and material. Energy and other recurring consumables go under material.
In case of semiconductors with frontier processes (last few generations) NRE is extremely high and machine time rates are expensive. Doubling or tripling energy costs would have negligible effects.
German TSMC fab will produce 16nm there, not 4nm though. Useful for the auto industry but much lower margin and less strategically important than 4nm fab in the US.