6 ms·

Are there any companies in EU who are developing chips now? I only know ASML but that only makes the wafers. I ask as I can't imagine the government doing this

by nikivi 6y ago

Are there any companies in EU who are developing chips now? I only know ASML but that only makes the wafers. I ask as I can't imagine the government doing this. So there must be some company behind this deal.

xiphias2 6y ago
They could get into chip dev for that amount of investment money. But of course EU will just waste the money as always.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > But of course EU will just waste the money as always. As someone working in HPC and EU projects related to this subject, I don't think they'll waste it. Current HPC and processor push is very real now.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    EU’s decreasing GDP share in the world shows that EU is wasting lots of money by trying to pick winners. Just having low tax for small tech companies like in Shanghai would incentivize people to work on new great ideas, but I don’t see it happening.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Technology is always pushed by states, not small companies. Small companies can figure out how to market and reduce costs, but have never successfully created new, advanced technology.
      - nickpp 6y ago
        Saying this while waiting for the new savior vaccine with a brand new mRNA technology pushed by two startups: Moderna & BioNTech is just... funny.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        No, that's a great example of what I'm saying. The vaccine is payed for by states - they had a 100% guaranteed worldwide market. Whether they invested their own money (like BioNTech) or were explicitly financed by a state (like Moderna and Pfizer), the money for that research will ultimately be payed almost entirely by the state.
        nickpp 6y ago
        No. States are simply clients, buyers of the end-product. Investors included VCs and states. But the Tech was built by the startups.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Guaranteed wealthy clients are equivalent to investors. They're actually better, because you don't have to pay them back. One of the main ways that states fund technological advances is exactly by promising to buy the results. This was one of the most important things in early IT - the fact that the US army was buying it at all. If the companies in that space would have had to live by selling their tech on the free market, no one would have been crazy enough to invest in it.
        nickpp 6y ago
        Guaranteed wealthy clients and investors exist in free markets too. That doesn’t make them Tech creators, that merit is still reserved to the startup itself. Both Moderna and BioNTech were funded and working on the mRNA technology before governments came with large orders for the vaccines.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        If you have guaranteed clients, you're not selling on a free market. This is one of the reasons why you can't have have (healthy) free markets in medicine in general. And yes, while BioNTech and Moderna had been investing in mRNA before this, governments had been investing in mRNA research for many years. BioNTech itself has received significant investments from the EU, at least since 2019.
    - QuesnayJr 6y ago
      The EU spends less time picking winners than countries did back in the pre-EU days. If you take that evidence at face value, it suggests that the EU isn't trying to pick enough winners.
  - hydroreadsstuff 6y ago
    As someone who worked in HPC Projects in the EU, I'd say the vast majority of the grants is wasted. E.g. on - obscure software and programming paradigms/libraries - one-off's - projects that create only reports, papers and recommendations - endless recreations of the same software over the years and decades - plain dumb projects - attempts at recreating other people's software (e.g. U.S.) There is also a large amount of overlap in work/content between projects, and lots of time is appropriated for unrelated work e.g. employees working on their PhDs. On the other hand the industry takes a lot more money and plays similar games. Project partners do not take the right path, because it's not conducive to fulfilling a grant, getting the next grant or increasing your citation count. The incentives are wrong.
bayindirh 6y ago
This is the tipping of old European Processor Initiative as far as I can see. They can either leverage ARM or OpenPOWER I guess. I don't think they'll start a new ISA from scratch.
Pietertje 6y ago
ASML does lithography, they do not make wafers. NXP develops chips, especially for automotive industry. There are also some small companies focusing on photonics in NL, Smart Photonics is one of them for example.
farseer 6y ago
ASML makes the equipment to etch on wafers. The best in the world I believe. ASML has thousands of suppliers in the EU.
mkl 6y ago
ASML makes photolithography machines, including the EUV machines TSMC will be using for 3nm chips.
archi42 6y ago
Yes, there are. One of our project partners (in a different EU project) has a fab for large structures. I don't know what I can legally share beyond that, and also don't want to put wrong info here since I don't know the hardware details well enough (did software work higher up the stack and only have to care for the ISA) ;)
iagovar 6y ago
NXP, Infineon and STM are the three major in Europe, although STM is Swiss/Italian.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  STM is also very strongly French. And these three are only the largest pure-semiconductor companies. There are many dozens of smaller companies and quite some fabs. A lot of automotive electronics is done by European companies. Also, many international semiconductor companies have development sites in Europe.
  - gpderetta 6y ago
    STM was originally Italo-French; it is a public company these days, whose headquartier is in Switzerland (as a neutral territory I guess), but the major shareholder (which is incorporated in Nederland) is still jointly owned directly by the Italian and French governments, and major production and reasearch sites are still in these countries. So, it is complicated
hydroreadsstuff 6y ago
Infineon, X-Fab (formerly ZMD) are coming to my mind. Not sure you would include foreign companies with plants in the EU. Nexperia, TI, GloFo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... Aside from that I'd expected chip designers like ARM (+licensees), Bull Atos (would you call that an OEM?) and related software companies to take part in this.
yvdriess 6y ago
Most precompetitive research in the semi industry also happens at Imec in Belgium. The ASML litho machines are a single step in even just the wafer production process, there are several companies involved in making and processing masks, doing the etching, cleaning solutions, etc. As many industries, it's a highly globalized supply chain, with many companies distributed around the world specializing and leading different aspects. And yes, several of them are in the EU. As to why the governments would do this, well it's geopolitics. The EU has some big players in the industry, but other parts of the supply chain are elsewhere. When all big geopolitical powers are interdependent, then no player will move to block another off at risk of hurting themselves. Now, both China and the US are shoveling billions into developing a higher independence (even before the trade war). Likely, the EU feels it is now forced to follow suit, or risk having e.g. the access to high-volume fabs to be a bargaining chip in future trade negotiations.
Kosirich 6y ago
Zeiss does a lot of work for microchip industry.(lithography)

by nikivi 6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago

They could get into chip dev for that amount of investment money. But of course EU will just waste the money as always.

bayindirh 6y ago
> But of course EU will just waste the money as always. As someone working in HPC and EU projects related to this subject, I don't think they'll waste it. Current HPC and processor push is very real now.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  EU’s decreasing GDP share in the world shows that EU is wasting lots of money by trying to pick winners. Just having low tax for small tech companies like in Shanghai would incentivize people to work on new great ideas, but I don’t see it happening.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Technology is always pushed by states, not small companies. Small companies can figure out how to market and reduce costs, but have never successfully created new, advanced technology.
    - nickpp 6y ago
      Saying this while waiting for the new savior vaccine with a brand new mRNA technology pushed by two startups: Moderna & BioNTech is just... funny.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        No, that's a great example of what I'm saying. The vaccine is payed for by states - they had a 100% guaranteed worldwide market. Whether they invested their own money (like BioNTech) or were explicitly financed by a state (like Moderna and Pfizer), the money for that research will ultimately be payed almost entirely by the state.
        nickpp 6y ago
        No. States are simply clients, buyers of the end-product. Investors included VCs and states. But the Tech was built by the startups.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Guaranteed wealthy clients are equivalent to investors. They're actually better, because you don't have to pay them back. One of the main ways that states fund technological advances is exactly by promising to buy the results. This was one of the most important things in early IT - the fact that the US army was buying it at all. If the companies in that space would have had to live by selling their tech on the free market, no one would have been crazy enough to invest in it.
        nickpp 6y ago
        Guaranteed wealthy clients and investors exist in free markets too. That doesn’t make them Tech creators, that merit is still reserved to the startup itself. Both Moderna and BioNTech were funded and working on the mRNA technology before governments came with large orders for the vaccines.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        If you have guaranteed clients, you're not selling on a free market. This is one of the reasons why you can't have have (healthy) free markets in medicine in general. And yes, while BioNTech and Moderna had been investing in mRNA before this, governments had been investing in mRNA research for many years. BioNTech itself has received significant investments from the EU, at least since 2019.
  - QuesnayJr 6y ago
    The EU spends less time picking winners than countries did back in the pre-EU days. If you take that evidence at face value, it suggests that the EU isn't trying to pick enough winners.
- hydroreadsstuff 6y ago
  As someone who worked in HPC Projects in the EU, I'd say the vast majority of the grants is wasted. E.g. on - obscure software and programming paradigms/libraries - one-off's - projects that create only reports, papers and recommendations - endless recreations of the same software over the years and decades - plain dumb projects - attempts at recreating other people's software (e.g. U.S.) There is also a large amount of overlap in work/content between projects, and lots of time is appropriated for unrelated work e.g. employees working on their PhDs. On the other hand the industry takes a lot more money and plays similar games. Project partners do not take the right path, because it's not conducive to fulfilling a grant, getting the next grant or increasing your citation count. The incentives are wrong.

bayindirh 6y ago

This is the tipping of old European Processor Initiative as far as I can see. They can either leverage ARM or OpenPOWER I guess. I don't think they'll start a new ISA from scratch.

Pietertje 6y ago

ASML does lithography, they do not make wafers. NXP develops chips, especially for automotive industry. There are also some small companies focusing on photonics in NL, Smart Photonics is one of them for example.

farseer 6y ago

ASML makes the equipment to etch on wafers. The best in the world I believe. ASML has thousands of suppliers in the EU.

mkl 6y ago

ASML makes photolithography machines, including the EUV machines TSMC will be using for 3nm chips.

archi42 6y ago

Yes, there are. One of our project partners (in a different EU project) has a fab for large structures. I don't know what I can legally share beyond that, and also don't want to put wrong info here since I don't know the hardware details well enough (did software work higher up the stack and only have to care for the ISA) ;)

iagovar 6y ago

NXP, Infineon and STM are the three major in Europe, although STM is Swiss/Italian.

_ph_ 6y ago
STM is also very strongly French. And these three are only the largest pure-semiconductor companies. There are many dozens of smaller companies and quite some fabs. A lot of automotive electronics is done by European companies. Also, many international semiconductor companies have development sites in Europe.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  STM was originally Italo-French; it is a public company these days, whose headquartier is in Switzerland (as a neutral territory I guess), but the major shareholder (which is incorporated in Nederland) is still jointly owned directly by the Italian and French governments, and major production and reasearch sites are still in these countries. So, it is complicated

hydroreadsstuff 6y ago

Infineon, X-Fab (formerly ZMD) are coming to my mind. Not sure you would include foreign companies with plants in the EU. Nexperia, TI, GloFo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... Aside from that I'd expected chip designers like ARM (+licensees), Bull Atos (would you call that an OEM?) and related software companies to take part in this.

yvdriess 6y ago

Most precompetitive research in the semi industry also happens at Imec in Belgium. The ASML litho machines are a single step in even just the wafer production process, there are several companies involved in making and processing masks, doing the etching, cleaning solutions, etc. As many industries, it's a highly globalized supply chain, with many companies distributed around the world specializing and leading different aspects. And yes, several of them are in the EU. As to why the governments would do this, well it's geopolitics. The EU has some big players in the industry, but other parts of the supply chain are elsewhere. When all big geopolitical powers are interdependent, then no player will move to block another off at risk of hurting themselves. Now, both China and the US are shoveling billions into developing a higher independence (even before the trade war). Likely, the EU feels it is now forced to follow suit, or risk having e.g. the access to high-volume fabs to be a bargaining chip in future trade negotiations.

Kosirich 6y ago

Zeiss does a lot of work for microchip industry.(lithography)