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EU countries team up for semiconductor push

• 1cvmask 6y ago
  Arguably the most technically advanced EU country Sweden always avoids Franco-German initiatives and the leader in chip technology in Europe is the brexiting UK with the globally dominant ARM platform (soon to be acquired by NVIDIA from Softbank).
  • _Microft 6y ago
    Isn't ASML [0] the leading manufacturer of photolithography machines? They are dutch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
    • ichbinwiederda 6y ago
      Beat me to it. Also Sweden is leading in tech, how exactly?
      • _Microft 6y ago
        They have number dispensers at the meat or bread counters in supermarkets which is quite neat. You do not have to wait in a queue and can do your other grocery shoppings until the display shows your number. ;)
        • jacknews 6y ago
          lol
        • Semaphor 6y ago
          We have that in Germany as well in some places (CITTI Markt, Northern Germany)
          • kuschku 6y ago
            Yeah but CITTI is the only one to actually do modern stuff (although coop/Sky tried out a few as well, but that ended with the REWE acquisition). And outside of SH, it's even worse.
            • Semaphor 6y ago
              There is a rewe here using e-ink price signs. But it’s privately owned so that doesn’t really count ;) And at least for my normal rewe, it would make no sense to have those numbers, the average is below 1 person who’s in front of me at the counter.
    • brmgb 6y ago
      Yes, as a European, the past two decades were maddening. Europe had no vision concerning strategic industrial assets. Advanced steel production was sold to India. Key assets in the energy sector were pillaged by GE. The UK sold a leader in chip design to Japan and despite having ASML being at the forefront of photolithography there still is no credible fab in the EU. The pandemic really highlighted some major shortcomings regarding the EU production capacity. These are major failures. Hopefully, as this was mostly due to constant sabotages by the UK, the situation will improve now that they are gone. Sadly, their constant push for enlargement can't really be undone and might still doom the union in the end.
      • ducktective 6y ago
        Can you elaborate on "UK's sabotages"?
        • brmgb 6y ago
          But certainly, the UK has been against any kind of concerted efforts by the EU which might go further than the single market for as long as they were a member. They lobbied heavily to be left out of the common agricultural policy and tried to diminish as much as they coud, were against Maastricht and were not a member of the Eurozone, pushed heavily for enlargement ensuring they would be no political cohesion in the union. Leon Brittan as a trade commissioner was a staunch opponent to any kind of state aid in the 90s and single handly significantly weakened the European industry. Don't get me wrong, I like England. Great country, nice culture, shit partner. As far as I am concerned, Brexit is probably the best thing to ever happen to the EU.
          • imtringued 6y ago
            I agree. The UK never really wanted to be part of the EU. It only wanted to cherrypick the best parts and nothing else. Once they decided to leave I wasn't thinking a single thought about the EU crumbling but rather "good riddance". Other than the northern Ireland dilemma it is a win win situation. Of course the UK will take a hit in the short term but failing to prepare for that is on them. It was their decision.
  • kzrdude 6y ago
    I've never heard of Sweden being big in (electronics/IT) hardware manufacturing, what kind of industries are there?
    • queuep 6y ago
      Not alot anymore, although alot of Swedes still think they are in the lead. Although, Ericsson had their manufacturing in Sweden before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson
      • kzrdude 6y ago
        I see. I guess Axis Communications is doing ok too.. but do any of these have any euoropean manufacturing?
  • jariel 6y ago
    I don't see Sweden leading in tech so much as being 'tech progressive'. Sweden is ahead in some things related to tech, particularly their own version of startups. Spotify remember, is related to the fact that Sweden is a pop-music powerhouse - there is definitely industry synergy there. They are generally well organized for a small country, they make Jet Fighters (quite a feat) which is also related to the fact they are a few degrees more 'sovereign' in that they are not part of NATO and have historical antagonisms with a much bigger power, Russia. They had one of the world's largest air forces back when individual fighters were only the price of a few cars. Those synergies resonate with one another but I don't think it's in silicon.
    • queuep 6y ago
      I would say generally the swedes are progressive as you say. For example, not alot of cash is being used, most use credit cards/apple pay/swish(like cashapp I guess). My guess would be that most swedes haven't even seen the new paper money design.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      Reminds me of Japan in some ways.
  • adrian_b 6y ago
    In semiconductors Sweden was never more important than between 6th to 15th position in Europe. The only well-known company that might have made semiconductors was ASEA, which might have made some thyristors before disappearing 33 years ago, after the fusion with Brown Boveri. Now ABB has the headquarters in Switzerland. It has various sites in Sweden, but so have some US companies, without any of them being considered as Swedish. Even the Eastern Block countries, during the Soviet hegemony, produced more diverse semiconductor devices than ever done in Sweden. The most technically advanced countries in semiconductors in Europe, before the global fashion of mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs that obliterated most traditional semiconductor companies starting around 1999, were (in no particular order): Netherlands (Philips) Germany (Siemens) France (Thomson CSF) Italy (SGS-ATES) UK (Plessey and a few others) Relics of the former European semiconductor companies can be found now mostly in Infineon, NXP and ST, but all these present companies are the results of long chains of mergers and acquisitions of various companies spread all over the world, so it is difficult to define them as belonging to Europe, US or to any other specific country or group of countries.
    • mongol 6y ago
      The fusion with Brown Boveri was like you say a fusion, not an acquisition. The HQ needs to be somewhere, but ABB is apart from that about as much Swedish as Swiss. Asea was one of the companies within the influence of the Wallenberg family and their company Investor were as of 2015 the largest individual shareholder of ABB.
      • adrian_b 6y ago
        You are right. I agree that it is correct to view ABB as half Swedish. I was exaggerating a bit, as a counterbalance to the weird statement to which I was replying. Nevertheless, while ABB is a great company, its importance as a semiconductor manufacturer is minimal. ABB sells electronic equipment, which is made with components made elsewhere, except for some high-power thyristors that are made by themselves. Thyristors are the easiest to make among semiconductor devices that are still used. The only really difficult part to make are the high-quality silicon wafers from which they are made, but ABB does not make the wafers. Most likely they purchase the wafers from Japan, or maybe from Germany.
• ginko 6y ago
  >Europe’s share of the 440-billion-euro ($533 billion) global semiconductor market is around 10%, with the EU currently relying on chips made abroad. $533 billion for the entire semiconductor industry seems small.. That's like .25 Apples.
  • igravious 6y ago
    “Decadal Plan calls for $3.4 billion annually in [US] federal R&D funding to address seismic shifts in chip technology and pave way for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced wireless communications”† So that would make proposed annual US federal funding in semiconductor R&D like .0016 Apples You're right – when you put it like that it does appear very small. † (Oct 15, 2020) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/semiconductor-industry-announces-research-and-funding-priorities-to-sustain-us-leadership-in-chip-technology-301152899.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/semiconductor-indus...
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Sounds like you're comparing revenue with market cap, which doesn't make much sense. Apple's recent annual revenue was ~275B.
    • ginko 6y ago
      I assumed the 440B was the market cap of the industry. Why would they mention revenue without specifying.
      • killtimeatwork 6y ago
        They said "market", which is the place where things are bought and sold. That's why it's fairly clear that they refer to revenues and not companies valuations.
      • oblio 6y ago
        Because it's quite standard to mention sales, you know, actual revenue, not market cap, which can be 1 today and 1 billion tomorrow, depending how the hype trains move.
• norwegianwhale 6y ago
  I find it quite off putting, that the general approach of EU institutions is to direct resources and economic activity from the top. It not only has demonstrated to be a failure economically, but it's an arrogant attitude by politicians, giving the message they know better than individuals, and that a free market leads to preventable bad outcomes. Also, it's tied to price controls and redistribution concepts. They will assign the money to each person they find moral. Which at the end means a mix of connections and sentiments. [Edit] I mean I don't know why I waste the time arguing with useless commies online. They have a long history of failures and disappointments and still stick to this emotional garbage ideas, at this point it's not something I can fix since I am not a psychologist. It's kind of amusing that HN has such slanted audience, given that startup funding is the biggest exponent of hypercapitalism.
  • norwegianwhale 6y ago
    One minute past the comment and it already fetched 2 downvotes. Apparently being concerned about dirigism is detrimental to the community. Pretty sure they work for the government / do badly in the free market.
    • tjomk 6y ago
      Someone apparently has bad memories from the USSR-era where they centrally planned the whole economy, including how much people have sex.
    • krastanov 6y ago
      My understanding is that Hacker News etiquette includes "downvote as simple sign of not agreeing" not only "downvote if a comment is low effort".
    • bildung 6y ago
      Are you aware how Silicon Valley came into being? The Internet? The moon landing?
      • norwegianwhale 6y ago
• arnaudsm 6y ago
  This is a great decision! I never understood why Europe under-invested in semi considering the talents they have and the strategic nature of it. Intel is dying a slow death, ARM is leaving UK's control, and TSMC is slowly taken over by China. The tables are turning.
  • burlesona 6y ago
    How is TSMC being taken over by China?
    • robert_foss 6y ago
      Only 14 out of 193 UN countries recognize Taiwan as an independent state. Given how Hong Kong was forced to bend the knee recently, I'd say this is a reasonable worry.
      • chokeartist 6y ago
        Will never happen. One reason: Three Gorges Dam, specifically that Taiwan has vaguely threatened to strike it first, if they were ever invaded. China could take Taiwan, easily. Likewise, Taiwan could cause 5M to 10M dead Chongers, easily.
      • abrowne 6y ago
        But many do provide support "unofficially". And HK was already under "one country, two systems", while Taiwan is de facto independent even if the PRC claims it.
        • jonplackett 6y ago
          They're just saying it's a worry. The point is if China decide to do this, there isn't anyone who can stop them.
          • JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
            There will be quite a few people that stop them.
• LunaSea 6y ago
  What will actually happen: some countries will spend a trivial amount of money in a PR stunt with not coordination between the countries and result in no advance for the EU countries participating. Source: All other industries in Europe.
  • WhoCaresLies 6y ago
    Energy, Steel, Semi(ARM), Pharma, Luxury, Distribution, Telecom Giants in Europe, there are a lot more Only Americans think the opposite, i wonder why.. And speaking of market, Europe is a big player, https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ console sales speak for itself Stop being brainwashed
    • eru 6y ago
      How many of those were put together by governments? (Airbus has pretty heavy government involved, to be fair.)
      • brmgb 6y ago
        Most of the big ones in France (Thales, Airbus, Safran, Technicatome, Alstom). Until the 80s, France pretty much had a planned economy.
        • nraynaud 6y ago
          it's the same in the US, it's just that the US government buys the products, while the French state buys the stock.
        • wott 6y ago
          Yes, but each of the numerous political announcements (on the French level as well as on the EU level) of "we're going to build a giant of [this industry], this time for real" which were made since the 90s have always ended up in something ranging between complete vaporwave and utter failure. Basically all French industrial successes were recorded between the end of WW2 and the end of the 70s/ beginning of the 80s, for the last 3 or 4 decades it all has been going down. That was not helped by the motto of the 90s, when the 'glory' was to become "a company without factory"... And whenever the planned giant at least comes to reality, even if it is as dwarf; the politicians who previously made great announcements, distributed millions, created random office, launched parties and cut the ribbon of the project in front of cameras, then don't even feed it with public commands, but give them to the very American or Chinese giants those projects were supposed to counterbalance. I don't think anyone here believes this kind of announcement any more: there has been so many similar ones already, that are already forgotten and replaced with yet another announcement 9 months later, and again, and again.
• Zdup 6y ago
  How will they be keeping talent? I heard workers in IT are paid low compared to other jobs and especially compared to similar jobs in North America, what stops them. from just going to US/Canada?
  • ginko 6y ago
    >what stops them. from just going to US/Canada? As an European working in a sector very close to the semiconductor industry my main reason is that I don't want to live in the US/Canada.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • AshamedCaptain 6y ago
      I might literally get double the salary just for moving to the US, and still I don't want it, either.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      I think they mean 'going to' as in working for them. You can work for a US or Canadian company remotely. I've done it my whole career. I've never seen anything even remotely approaching a competitive offer from a European company. They can't compete. What incentive is there to work for a European company?
  • WhoCaresLies 6y ago
    you don't want workers in IT, look at the USA, other than silicon valey (1 state), they all hire from India, and the salary from other states are comparable to what you find elsewhere in the world, including China you want researchers, and EU has ton of them ;)
    • duxup 6y ago
      If this is because of security, is just having a bunch of researchers enough to provide for security?
• Baetylraig7 6y ago
  The same people that want to weaken encryption, demand upload filters and try to make search engines pay for links to news sites, spending 145 billion euros on "digital projects". Couldn't they come up with cheaper way to produce hot air?
• Gravityloss 6y ago
  So, what would a new bleeding edge modern architecture and instruction set look like if one could start from scratch? I assume general computing so cell phones and servers are the target.
  • fsflover 6y ago
    Here is how it could look: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor
    • yvdriess 6y ago
      RISC-V bleeding edge?
      • sitkack 6y ago
        In avoiding the morass of stupid patent rulings that allow manufacturers to camp on an ISA. There is no reason that anyone shouldn't be able to take someone's databook for a processor and produce a legal work alike. But since we can't do that. The whole industry is forced to create a new ISA for the sole purpose of saying it is ok to produce work-a-likes. Cutting edge, but in legal maneuvers.
      • progre 6y ago
        Also: not an architecture, an instruction set.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
  • yvdriess 6y ago
    I personally would love to see a frontend architecture that more closely resembles the backend: dataflow execution. It's been researched in the 80s/90s, with some hybrids popping up in literature from time to time (TRIPS, ADAM, etc) Counterpoint: processors have gotten so good at extracting ILP from a sequential ISA that I wonder how much benefit you would gain from a dataflow ISA. The downside is that it would require to completely rethink and redo the software stack. (efficient par to seq is just as hard as efficient seq to par)
• newbie578 6y ago
  Unfortunately, does anyone even takes the EU serious nowadays in tech? The more I follow the European tech scene, the more disappointed I become. EU's biggest tech company aside of ARM is Spotify... Almost every second startup I read about in https://www.eu-startups.com/ https://www.eu-startups.com/ is a fintech/budgeting app which is trying to "disrupt" banking. Revolut is the biggest player, yet they are literally throwing money to achieve a miniscule growth, if you have a shitty product, your ad spend won't save you.. I feel like there is a need for a fundamental shift in mindset in Europe..
  • cleansy 6y ago
    > Almost every second startup I read about in https://www.eu-startups.com/ https://www.eu-startups.com/ is a fintech/budgeting app These kind of startup focused news sites are quite biased towards B2C/C2C software/*tech places, as most of their businesses need the public attention to succeed. Most B2B startups don't care much about outreach to these outlets, as most of their clients don't read it.
  • erk__ 6y ago
    The biggest tech firm in europe is SAP, which is the largest non american software company. Although it is not a very "cool" company compared to startups.
  • Flashtoo 6y ago
    What is your definition of a "big tech company"? Do you only mean very young startups? Going by valuation, Revolut is pretty small. ASML is 40x larger than Revolut and 4x as large as ARM. NXP and Adyen are both about as large as Spotify at 50-60 billion. The startup scene is less vibrant: valuations are typically lower and funding is not as easy to get as it is in Silicon Valley, but you shouldn't discount established players that innovate and mature startups.
  • Deukhoofd 6y ago
    > EU's biggest tech company aside of ARM is Spotify How about SAP, Capgemini, Atos, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Vodafone, ASML? Not hip enough for you?
• seek3r 6y ago
  Finally!
• kelvin0 6y ago
  I interpret this as: We are sovereign entities and we need to be able to use technology without having to worry about any backdoors and other threats to our national security. As such we're going to build our own tech, and we might even slip some of our own 'medecine' in there too ... My .2$
• tigerbelt 6y ago
  Good luck EU ! US best ! I am a low key semi conductor wiz if EU ever needs help / the best stuff clean of IP risk.
• guai888 6y ago
  Semiconductor sector usually has a No. 1 player which takes more than 50% of the market share of a specific application or business model. It is a very crowded field and very difficult to catch up to current leaders. Unless Europe has a game changing technology or business model, I am not optimistic about the outcome. They should think about working with Taiwan or South Korea instead of going alone. US end up persuades(orders) Taiwan to make sure TSMC builds a new plant in US.
  • sjogress 6y ago
    I guess their goal isn't necessarily to make a world leader but rather to ensure they're not left behind if the geopolitical climate keeps worsening.
    • hans1729 6y ago
      That's very much the tone I get when listening to any german public figure within the political game talking about these things. Sadly, at this point I wouldn't even expect a solid strategy, it's gonna be blatant actionism. But maybe that's just the cynic in me hoping to be proven wrong
  • JoshTko 6y ago
    This is likely a backup plan. What these countries are trying to avoid is ending up in a situation like China and Huawei where your leading tech corp. is kneecapped due to an unpredictable US political climate.
  • tyu2 6y ago
    > usually has a No. 1 player which takes more than 50% of the market share > It is a very crowded field and very difficult to catch up to current leaders. With more than 50% market share it's the least crowded field there is, basically a monopoly formed by a very high barrier of entry, because not everyone has billions to risk on complex long term projects, private investors prefer shorter term returns. But it doesn't mean it's difficult to catch up or that the leader produces something good, on the contrary, monopoly means low quality, slow innovation, high price, easy to catch up by just throwing money at it, it just takes government involvement to do it.
• joelbluminator 6y ago
  Why isn't Netherlands mentioned btw? What semiconductors companies did Germany , France and Spain built so far? Netherlands has ASML, NXP and ASM...
  • ajnin 6y ago
    ST Microelectronics, merger of French and Italian nationalized semiconductor industries.
    • CaciaraAsAServi 6y ago
      Yup! SGS from Italy and Thomson from France, in 1987 (not '88, corrected). ST in fact used to mean SGS-Thomson.
  • aduitsis 6y ago
    It is mentioned: "The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia."
  • hans1729 6y ago
    >The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. GER and FR are just bigger names
    • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      I think GP's point is that when you consider their output they're really not the bigger names.
      • hans1729 6y ago
        Yes sure, but in the scope of geostrategic developments, opening with Germany and France totally makes sense with regards to the general public, as they won't read NL and think "oh, it's on".
      • 6y ago
• tanilama 6y ago
  Fantastic news. Go Europe, we need an alternative to compete.
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  Now, invest about the same in EU media and we might have some more influence. A majority of audiovisual media that people see and hear is made by USAian companies that project a USAian view onto the world. They took advantage of a broken Europe after the second world war and have been reaping the benefits ever since.
• BestCatalonia 6y ago
  US's Ban on China really gives everyone an alarm...
• jason0597 6y ago
  Regarding the discussion below, here is a very relevant video about tech companies in the EU (and why there don't seem to be that many): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSU5MFPn6Zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSU5MFPn6Zk
• gok 6y ago
  I'm sure this will be as disruptive to semiconductors as Quaero was to search engines and Cloudwatt was to cloud computing.
• rossdavidh 6y ago
  So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech. That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90's, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan. I'm sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of Sematech. It was a lot of hype, but not much result. If, at the time of the founding of TSMC, you had tried to get a consortium of companies, much less nations, to agree on the idea of a semiconductor foundry, you would not have been able to get agreement to do it. Consortiums can help to pool resources when everyone knows what needs doing, but even Intel has had a problem getting the latest generation of semi manufacturing going, and their problem sure wasn't a lack of resources. Sometimes the problem is the speed of innovation, and the more parties you have involved the harder it is to get agreement to try any given thing, especially if it is innovative (i.e. not certain to work). I wish them good fortune, it would be good for the stability of the world economy not to have all the world's advanced semiconductors made in one region, but I am skeptical of whether or not this can make a big difference, no matter how much money is spent.
  • andy_ppp 6y ago
    I agree, their problem wasn't lack of resources it was they stopped believing in Moore's law. They started to believe that 5 and 3nm advancements were not coming and didn't make the hundreds/thousands of new inventions needed to get them there. At least that's what I get reading between the lines here... Jim Keller talks about this in this in the Lex Fridman podcast: https://youtu.be/Nb2tebYAaOA?t=1892 https://youtu.be/Nb2tebYAaOA?t=1892
  • guai888 6y ago
    With the success of Apple M1, TSMC and Samsung will grow faster than Intel. Taiwan,Korea,Japan and US will control the semiconductor industry in the near future unless a game changing technology is introduced. Taiwan semiconductor companies's stocks are going banana after US slap sanction on SMIC. UMC stock has not changed much in years jumped 250% in last few weeks. (UMC invented foundry as service, then TSMC copy them)
• therealmarv 6y ago
  European alternative to Google, European alternative to Visa/Mastercard, European alternative to Chips. lol. When I think about where this approach succeeded only Galileo (alternative to GPS) and SEPA payment (but US sucks there) comes into my mind.
• sadfev 6y ago
  Government incompetence at the highest level!
• eating555 6y ago
  Good luck. But remember Taiwanese working 24/7 for TSMC. If they want to catch up TSMC, they might need to do the same.
• flexie 6y ago
  Isn't the problem that European tech companies are sold to American companies? There are and have been countless of European chipmakers but they are usually bought by Americans. European companies grow to a certain size, and are then either sold to an established American company or relaunched from Silicon Valley with American investments. I think most of this is tax driven. American tax rules allow venture funds and also private wealth to accumulate and grow easier than European counterparts. The American government simply allows its business and private individuals to accumulate money via off shore companies in the Caribbean. The US deliberately allows this.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
    Aren't offshore accounts also very popular in Europe?
  • dcolkitt 6y ago
    > I think most of this is tax driven. Disagree. Research has consistently shown that American multinationals consistently apply better corporate management practices than their European counterparts.[1] This is especially true in IT-intensive industries.[2] This is true even when comparing American multinationals operating in Europe. Any sufficiently large company in a globally integrated, competitive industry, is going to reap potentially large efficiency gains by replacing European management with American management. [1]https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/jep.pdf https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/... [2]https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/adib.pdf https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/...
    • Daho0n 6y ago
      Do you have any non-American sources? You always needs to hear it from at least two different sides.
      • dgdas9 6y ago
        Nicholas Bloom the author of both papers is British. Also, it's not like in economics/business science there's a European vs American distinction in publications. The European Economics Association is quite small and most European departments hire out of the American association's market, for instance
• young_unixer 6y ago
  Coming soon: a law that makes your CPU ask you to consent to each instruction that it's executing.
• 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  This is an excellent point regarding a critical geopolitical matter. In some ways, it's not unlike the space race, or the race to acquire nuclear weapons. The nation that controls the most advanced chips can make the most advanced weapons and hold sway over the rest of the world. One aspect that is less explored is the actual depth and breadth of the semiconductor supply chain. Moreover, that supply chain is bound with technical expertise at every level. You may have the fastest car at Le Mans, but you're not going to win without the best driver. Chip design starts with design software. The most sophisticated software is made in the US. To use it, you need a variety of highly experienced designers of the right ilk (think neurosurgeon vs. cardiologist), supported by program management, organizational management, test and validation engineering and other disciplines. This synthesis of expertise and tools and equipment has to be at the highest level of capability all the way up and down the supply chain before you can get a 7nm chip to boot up. Additionally, there are about 40 different types of process equipment used in chip fabrication. Every one of them requires dozens of product development engineers to design and build. Those teams rely on decades of both personal and organization experience to build on before they can produce tools that can, for example, apply a material like, say, tungsten, to a 12" slice of pure silicon in a layer that can be precisely measured in atoms, uniformly, across the 'wafer'. Of all the 40 process tool types, the most complex work of science is the lithography tool made by ASML in the Netherlands. This thing produces the light needed to print the chip circuits at 7 nanometer geometries by emitting droplets of molten tin into a vacuum chamber and hitting the droplets with a 25,000 KW laser that vaporizes the tin and produces the light. It fires at 50KHz[0]. ASML has spent more than 20 years, employing 100s of engineers and scientists, in order to produce this wonder. There is no company (and certainly no government) on Earth that can catch up to ASML in any reasonable amount of time. Next in the chip production chain is called 'Assembly' where the wafers are cut into individual chips and packaged into what you'd recognize. That node in the chain has it's own set of non-trivial equipment and expertise. All of this is to say that there are vulnerabilities all up and down the supply chain, bouncing all over the planet. No one country has the technology to build state of the art chips from both the supply chain and expertise standpoints all within its own border. As soon as a nation has a deficit of one aspect of the overall technology required, that nation is no self sufficient. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIiqVrKDtLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIiqVrKDtLc
• monkeydust 6y ago
  Can anyone recommend a good primer on the semiconductor industry - background, history, players, trends, view on future state?
  • briankelly 6y ago
    I hope others will chime in with followup sources, but if you want a book for historical background The Idea Factory covers the creation of the transistor and touches upon Shockley, the Traitorous Eight, and Fairchild Semiconductor which is sort of the inception of the US semiconductor industry. It's not exactly the focus of the book, but everything it covers is tied together.
• mrlonglong 6y ago
  Once again, the UK loses out with Brexit. Does the UK even have any silicon fab facilities left?
• crb002 6y ago
  I'd negotiate with TSMC to build a EU plant and a recycling center to source rare earths. Compare this deal and chose the one that is more economical.
• bogidon 6y ago
  Since Reuters appears intent to abbreviate the full list of countries, here's all of them: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/joint-declaration-processors-and-semiconductor-technologies https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/joint-dec...
• amai 6y ago
  If that works as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) we might see first results in 10 years.
• screye 6y ago
  Genuine question - Has any major tech innovation/ product come out European industry (mainland EU) over the last couple of decades ? (not Academia) Their biggest tech companies are Spotify and Skype. That's pretty underwhelming given that Spotify's biggest innovations are in product development and Skype became a subsidiary of an American company within 2 years of its existence. Additionally, the 2 companies that seem to have industry tech talent: UK and Sweden, are not part of this deal.
  • SSLy 6y ago
    For a major product sure, the ASML devices. Ericsson and Nokia are pushing 5G.
  • sfvisser 6y ago
    ASML comes to mind. Dutch company building large lithography machines being used to create semi conductors. The tech scene in mainland Europe operates completely differently from what you might be used to from Silicon Valley, but there is lots of stuff going on. If you only look at the European car manufactures and the endless amount of small-to-medium sized businesses involved in the supply chain. Lots of stuff going on.
  • skummetmaelk 6y ago
    If your definition of "tech" is so narrow that it only includes web app companies then yeah, you're right.
  • lou1306 6y ago
    BioNTech is German.
  • dejv 6y ago
    EU power is in niches. There are many companies specialised equipment, are worth billions and if you are not in that niche you probably never hear pf them. For example most of electron microscopes are developed and manufactured in EU. (Actually more than 60% of world supply is manufactured in my home town of 350k)
  • Daho0n 6y ago
• analog31 6y ago
  In kind of a similar vein, many years ago Germany decided to become kind of the silicon valley of optics and photonics (e.g., lasers and their ilk). While I don't think they are the dominant player today, they are certainly a force to be reckoned with, and they seem to have a developed a decent pipeline of ideas and people from university and government labs to a private sector that is probably subsidized. Granted, it's a smaller business than semi, but it suggests to me that a national program to strengthen an industry isn't guaranteed to be a failure.
  • herodoturtle 6y ago
    > it suggests to me that a national program to strengthen an industry isn't guaranteed to be a failure "Isn't guaranteed to be a failure". Sorry, I struggle to interpret sentences like this. English isn't my first language. Please clarify? Are you saying that "it is not definitely a failure"? I can't figure out if it's the above, or if it is this: "won't necessary fail" More specifically, I'm not sure if the implication is optimistic or pessimistic. I hope that makes sense - the nuances of English are a delightful journey of exceptions; something my programming brain struggles with at times.
    • ddulaney 6y ago
      For me (Eastern US) “is not definitely a failure”, “won’t necessarily fail”, and “isn’t guaranteed to be a failure” all indicate that something would be expected to usually fail, but might not. To me, they can be optimistic or pessimistic based on what the baseline is. I read the GP’s post as optimistic, as they come from a perspective of these kinds of government programs always failing. However, from a baseline of these kinds of government programs often succeeding, any of the three versions would be pessimistic.
    • ppseafield 6y ago
      Since the post
    • analog31 6y ago
      Optimistic. I would say: Definitely not a failure. And I apologize for using unclear language. I should be thinking about a wider audience when writing in an international forum. Thanks for pointing it out!
• lumost 6y ago
  It’s interesting to see a return to national “strategic” industrial development. This type of activity used to be common throughout the west until the 70s and 80s and served in part to ensure that there was always competition in “core” industries.
• giuliomagnifico 6y ago
  Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25334471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25334471
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• russli1993 6y ago
  Under this line of thinking, EU or Britain should think twice about approving Nvidia's purchase of arm. Arm's British's one of the most influential technology company in the world. And with Apple's M1 and other arm chips movements lately, the future of computing will be moving to arm from x86. Arm is not financially strong right now, but there are so much potential to improve it's financials. Make arm remains an British company and build it in Britian should be one of the method to realize this semi dream
  • lottin 6y ago
    ARM is owned by a Japanese conglomerate since 2016.
  • dharma1 6y ago
    The co-founder of ARM, Hermann Hauser is pushing for blocking the deal. I'm not hopeful it's going to be stopped. The UK has too much hanging on a trade deal with the US post-Brexit. https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/14/arm-co-founder-starts-save-arm-campaign-to-keep-independence-amid-40b-nvidia-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/14/arm-co-founder-starts-save... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrKmYomSLJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrKmYomSLJU
• ur-whale 6y ago
  European governments getting involved in trying to get tech. to move forward, film at 11. We've all seen it and already know the end of the movie. Good luck to them, but I wouldn't build any kind of business plan based on the predicted outcome.
  • AsyncAwait 6y ago
    Actually, there are some rather successful EU wide projects, CERN, ESA, Galileo etc. so I wouldn't make plans per se but not doom it from the start either.
• a4444f 6y ago
  Why do chip makers need subsidies?
• ruslan 6y ago
  AFAIK, KiCAD got its recent boost from CERN. It would be a common good if europeans go further to push up development of open source tools for IC manufacturing. This will loosen world's dependance on US backed proprietary and extremely expensive technologies.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  They're not going to get anything from this. When federations attempt stuff like this, each participant will want something out of it besides the final product. i.e. they'll want some phase of manufacturing to be done at home. This will break them.
• punnerud 6y ago
  For Europe to see it a success it does not need to be better than the established alternatives, it only need to reduce the prices by increasing competition. List of EU projects with associated legislations and projects: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/ https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/
• outside1234 6y ago
  This is getting into the wrong game. The right game is building end to end systems (ala what Apple does) where semiconductors are an important ingredient in that.
• supernova87a 6y ago
  Is it just me, or do you also worry that something like this could easily head down the path of "design by committee" given the many countries and politics involved? Equal-to-current-best-practice is not good enough as a goal. What something like this needs is a leader driven by a huge personal product/technology belief and vision, backed up by personal technical capability, and his/her ass on the line. Versus what I could see is some generic credentialed CEO being put in to the top position to "manage", with little penalty for failure.
• albertop 6y ago
  Europe is dying. Check "How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom" by Matt Ridley. Government programs will not help.
• ivan1783 6y ago
  Bosch has two semiconductor fabs in Germany. They supply for their own modules mostly. https://www.bosch-semiconductors.com/ https://www.bosch-semiconductors.com/