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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
by 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 agoHow is TSMC being taken over by China?
- robert_foss 6y agoOnly 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 agoWill 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 agoBut 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 agoThey'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 agoThere will be quite a few people that stop them.
- LunaSea 6y agoLike they did for Hong Kong?
- MangoCoffee 6y agoHK doesn't have its own military. its a 99 yrs lease to UK that UK hand back. Taiwan's history is complicated. it have its own military. its people pay taxes to Taiwan, not China. Taiwan's safety is its own responsibility. its more than possible that China can take Taiwan by force but at what price. its not like Taiwan's military have no teeth.
- Apocryphon 6y agoA Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be war between two advanced industrialized economies that is unprecedented in modern times since perhaps the end of WWII. It's not comparable to the PRC government reaffirming their dominance over territory they already had control over. At the very least, China would be hit with many sanctions in the event of such a conflict.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoAbsurd comparison. HK was returned to China in accordance with a previously signed contract. After it became part of China again, it is not possible to interviene militarily in Beijing - HK relationship - that would be an invasion of China and violation of international law. You could not phisically station an army in HK. Even if China has violated an agreement with UK regarding HK autonomy, thay does not give you legal grounds to start a war. In cotrast, you could deploy the entire US military in Taiwan tomorrow, it would be legal and peacefull (provided Taiwanese Gov. Invited it). Additionally, invading Taiwan is actually extremely difficult because of terrain, just because you have a massive land army does not mean they can just teleport to Taiwan. It would be basically a D-day style effort against a well entrenched opponent. So it is unlikely we will see phisical takeover of Taiwan in the near future, as so far we have no indication that China is looming for a causualty heavy war with little gain.
- newsclues 6y agoAnd yet the US military essentially safeguards Taiwan, and will continue to do so for the American business interests in TSMC.
- oblio 6y ago... in 2020. What will happen in 2040, when the Chinese economy is double the US one?
- viktorcode 6y agoEconomies don't develop by linear growth extrapolation.
- est31 6y agoChina's economy with all its issues has definitely far more potential for growth left than the EU or the USA... It's still a developing country for the most part. Better learn Chinese if you want to stay relevant in 30 years... wait better learn it now. In the hardware world, Documentation about new chips etc. is increasingly available in Chinese first.
- elefanten 6y agoWhich chips?
- whimsicalism 6y ago> Economies don't develop by linear growth extrapolation. This is true, but I view China's economic growth more as 'reversion to the mean' when their population is 3x that of the US.
- MangoCoffee 6y agoTaiwan have it own military. Taiwan never rely on any country for its own defensive.
- 6y ago
- christophilus 6y agoJust a guess, but there's been some press about China luring TSMC's talent by offering outsized salaries. Also, there's the increasingly aggressive military presence of China (flying bombers and jets over Taiwanese airspace with ever greater audacity) which suggests it's only a matter of time before China officially takes Taiwan. I honestly don't see the world doing anything to stop that.
- chrisjc 6y agoSo i wonder if "being overtaken" by China is a better way to phrase it then.
- guai888 6y agoUS is doing everything they can to kill semiconductor in China. US and Japan have most of the key tools, components necessary to design and fabricate semiconductor. After US announce the sanction on SMIC, the writing is on the wall for China's semiconductor industry. Just this week we saw huge rise in Taiwanese semiconductor companies's stocks price and huge drop in China's semiconductor companies's.
- kiproping 6y agoUS tried to kill China's space industry. Look how it went.
- yvdriess 6y agoASML and Imec are still firmly in the heart of Europe though. In a sense, the bleeding edge/precompetitive part is already firmly leading in the EU.
- nraynaud 6y agowhat's weird is that Europe has never been that bad, there are ST Microelectronics MEMS and MCUs everywhere.
- y04nn 6y agoExactly my thought, ST Microelectronics is producing microchips in Grenoble, France, not far from where I live. And ST Micro chips are heavenly used in IOT. Maybe it's more than the semiconductor sector and includes telecommunications, networks equipment, phone/pc CPUs.
- Thimothy 6y agoAnd don't forget about the new Starlink flat antennas! The biggest surprise from the tearing videos for many EE I know was that the custom chips doing the DSP magic are made by ST, and not Analog Devices or TI. Undersampling in KU band on cheap silicon is not a trivial undertaking. Makes you see ST in a new light.
- yaantc 6y agoThere is no need for advanced nodes for micro-controllers. Typically even advanced µC use 40nm, planar, where the TSMC leading node is 5nm FinFET. ST also does FD-SOI 22nm if I remember well, but that's the densest node they have and nowhere near the current state of the art at TSMC. The thing is, micro-controllers do not need advanced nodes. They don't have a lot of logic (it's all relative, but compared to a PC CPU or smartphone SoC), so would be "pad limited" on advanced nodes: the area of a chip depends on the logic (and memory), but also on the I/O pins or pads, which take area. So if you used a too advanced node for a chip with (relatively) little logic and still enough I/O pads, some die area would be wasted as the minimum area would come from the pads. It's a situation you want to avoid, as there's no point paying for a more costly finer nodes (with more leakage) to waste it by not using the silicon area. Another factor is that micro-controllers also embed Flash on their die, to have a very integrated solution with logic, RAM and Flash storage on a single die. This puts a limit on the node density. Flash is OK down to 40nm. Then from then one must move to more advanced, and still young and costly, alternatives (MRAM). So if your business is driven by micro-controllers, there's no real point in pushing toward node density ("low" nodes). ST does process optimization as everyone, but at "medium" nodes best suited for µC. There's no business drive for them to chase TSMC. It's similar for other Eurpeans silicon makers: they tend to be on specific segments where going for "low" nodes like 5nm simply doesn't make sense. The relatively advanced fabs in Europe are from Intel and Global Foundries (both US). And GloFo stopped the race to advanced node at 14nm, as it was too expensive.
- ralfn 6y agoMost competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML The US companies do what they do best: innovate business models and find ways to vendor lock in and own the market. But who's been doing all the research keeping moore's law alive? Lithography? For a country as small as the Netherlands, you can wonder if we could afford from a geopolitical point of view to be producing all the world's chips (answer: no, it would force other place to invest highly in competition out of strategic interest). Hence the strategy of being long term profitable and to just sell the machines to everyone at the same price. It does make it baffling why Intel is unable to produce 5nn chips with the same ASML machines TSC is using. It must be management failing Boeing style. As for the rest of Europe. Im sure they can politically do this. But where will the money end up? It will end up in the pockets of friends and families of politicians that will be in "the management". So don't expect anything from this. The future most sold chip will still be Apple Silicon or Samsung Exynos in TSC's foundry or Samsung foundry on a machine by ASML using IP from ARM and NVidia
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago>Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML AFAIK, ASMLs fancy EUV tech comes from a Bay Area company they acquired a while ago and not from the Netherlands.
- dragonelite 6y agoYeah i'm always wonder just because the company is located in the EU, does it mean its actually a EU company? Given US institutional investors who probably have big voting power own majority stake in those tech companies.
- joelbluminator 6y agoI think ASML's connection to NL is solid, you could say it's a Dutch company. The R&D, world headquarters are in NL and board of directors includes many Dutch people, including the CEO.
- 6y ago
- sitkack 6y agoNXP and STM are both European companies. Arm is from the UK. I do agree that every continent should have a modern fab along with the supply chain to feed and repair it.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago> This is a great decision! If they can execute, which I very much doubt, given the history of similar EU initiatives. The only example I can think of is Airbus. Those funds are usually funneled toward bullshit vendors that are specialised in milking such EU programs, with nothing to show for it afterwards.
- rapsey 6y agoExactly. This is just money down the drain. A giveaway to companies that are politically connected. I’ve met a CEO of one such company. A filthy rich scumbag that has half the government in his pocket. Ensuring that he gets the big government contracts and muscles out other companies for EU funds.
- publicola1990 6y agoAnd even Airbus is widely thought to being dependent on under the table government funding to keep it afloat, and keep its pricing competative. The line between private and government is blurred when EU is usually involved as well.
- stefan_ 6y agoI don't think there is a single airplane manufacturer in the world that is not either straight up government funded or government guaranteed.
- 908B64B197 6y agoBombardier! When slapped with tariffs later judged to be illegal the Trudeau government didn't do anything, allowing Airbus to get ownership of their flagship plane.
- corty 6y agoRather over-the-table. France pushes Toulouse every chance it gets, the city basically only consists of plane and rocket factories. When the A380 project went to search for other sites to manufacture some parts of the plane, European cities and governments went all-in with dubious offers, fast-tracks and regulations-be-damned to get the site. E.g. for the Hamburg site, read about "Mühlenberger Loch".
- MangoCoffee 6y ago>TSMC is slowly taken over by China far from it
- vmchale 6y ago> I never understood why Europe under-invested in semi considering the talents they have and the strategic nature of it. Lots of better stuff in the US, until recently when the stagnation in the US made it more feasible (and politics made things scarier).
- b0rsuk 6y agoWilk Elektronik from Poland is the only RAM manufacturer in Europe. Their Goodram brand is getting good reviews. It ain't much, but it's honest work.