33 ms·

Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

453 points by throwaway4good 4y ago

mmastrac 4y ago
Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  Most of Intel's fabs are in the US.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Why is the local fab specifically important? They're still going to fly the wafers to Malaysia or wherever for packaging, right? And the tools and chemicals will all be made elsewhere, won't they? It's not as simple as having a steady supply of apples from your local orchard.
  - sva_ 4y ago
    I think sourcing those things would be a lot easier than building a fab, on a time scale.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    There's a lot of assumptions there. Why don't you assume that it's about having as much of the supply chain locally?
  - mojzu 4y ago
    I'd imagine it won't replace the entire supply chain in one go (although I think quite a bit of semiconductor tooling is already manufactured in the EU), but I think it's a step on the path towards that. Which is probably a good thing considering how fragile it appears some of our hyper-efficient globalised supply chains can be
  - ChemSpider 4y ago
    That part is solved: (1) German BASF is one of the manufactures for "semiconductor chemicals". (2) More important: Getting parts from Malaysia (etc) is no issue as I don't think they plan to attack any neighboring countries in the next decade. Also, they did not start a trade boycott against Lithuania just over the name of an trade office.
    - ratww 4y ago
      Exactly. Malaysia can still be a partner, however this is a big step that opens the door for replacing labor in distant countries with another EU neighbour. This is good for the entire EU.
    - coffeeblack 4y ago
      If there is a conflict with China, maritime routes will become much less reliable than they are now, after 75+ years of peace and 30+ years of a unipolar international system.
      - paganel 4y ago
        Plus, I suspect that in a The West vs China war a country like Malaysia will think twice before choosing a side, and I'm afraid they won't choose the West by default.
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        And the possibility port blockades.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
    Self sufficiency for products that are the lifeblood of your economy is attractive to governments. Any of the things you describe can easily be replicated locally, fabs much less so. Even more to the point is that it gives countries the chance to develop a high value competitive advantage that others cannot replicate. Places like the EU would argue that they have the human capital to compete globally but they don't have the industry because of historical factors.
  - arlort 4y ago
    They're also creating a packaging center in Italy https://gamingnews.cyou/here-is-intels-plan-for-europe-a-packaging-factory-in-italy/ https://gamingnews.cyou/here-is-intels-plan-for-europe-a-pac... And an R&D center in France https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/eu-news-2022-release.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/eu-new...
  - ezsmi 4y ago
    Assembly services are all over the place. Here's a large one in Escondido, CA which is commonly used. https://www.qptechnologies.com/about-us/company-info-bios/ https://www.qptechnologies.com/about-us/company-info-bios/
- baybal2 4y ago
  This will not do much with Taiwan being a single source for semiconductor manufacturing supplies. Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that huge there. All 300mm fabs working outside of Taiwan are just few shipments of consumables away from stalling all the time. When Russia attacks Ukraine, the 3rd world is fucked. When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    What makes Taiwan inherently better than somewhere else ? If it's just for historical and/or economical reason I don't see why Europe or the US couldn't build their own chemical plants. You have to start somewhere, it took us decades to delocalise everything to Asia, it'll take decades to build these industries locally.
    - baybal2 4y ago
      You have just asked why we can't "just move manufacturing out of China:" There are no individual chemical plants, there are huge chemical complexes owned by many companies with own well guarded know hows. There may be 2-4 suppliers in a row producing some intermediary product used in making of only 1 output. Just to make the semiconductor grade hyperpure propanol you need ultrapure catalysts, ultrapure sulphuric acid, ultrapure water, and ultrapure input hydrocarbon stock. Ah, forgot, you also needs an ultrapure tare manufacturer, because bottles you ship ultrapure materials are single use. You need decades just to replicate this. Now you need to move 100+ of such material chains. > If it's just for historical and/or economical reason Simple answer, yes! Taiwan has quietly swallowed near an entirety of the wider precision manufacturing industry. It been consistently swallowing very capital intensive industries producing exportable niche products one after another simply because nobody else been taking such hard, and risky ventures. Yes, their profitability is not high, but their "moat" is gigantic. Taiwan been an industrial titan for 20+ years, and the US only finds out about it now.
      - JoachimS 4y ago
        Excellent explanation.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  ASML is in the Netherlands though. Edit: Yes ASML is obviously not a chip fab but they supply the machines that actually fabricate the chips.
  - joker99 4y ago
    Correct, but ASML is not a chip fab
    - amelius 4y ago
      I think the point was that high-tech shouldn't be concentrated in one location. What if ASML was in China?
      - rmah 4y ago
        Well, as far as I can tell, China is seems willing to sell just about anything to anyone as long as they can pay.
      - himlion 4y ago
        ASML is prohibited from shipping its newest machines to China by the Dutch government, because of heavy US pressure. I'm sure China would love ASML to be fully based there.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
      No but it is the monopoly supplier of the single most important device for fabs. If ASML (and all their knowledge) disappeared off the face of the earth today progress in semiconductors would probably be set back a decade or two. The fact they are a single company in one country that the global industry depends on for progress in semis should be of concern.
      - eternauta3k 4y ago
        What company has the next-best litho machines after ASML?
- cinntaile 4y ago
  I don't think this is why fabs were centralized. I think this is because when you start to decrease node size, the fab costs go up astronomically so to keep the cost in check you need economies of scale and with the current manufacturing techniques you can achieve this by centralizing manufacturing.
  - sephlietz 4y ago
    Didn't you and parent both say "to keep costs low"?
  - bottled_poe 4y ago
    Seems to me that most software is horribly inefficient anyway. If push came to shove we might just consider making better software?
    - rat9988 4y ago
      Software engineers are expensive too.
    - sneak 4y ago
      The cutting edge of software that mostly uses these advanced process node sizes is not horribly inefficient. The new applications enabled by, for example, GPU-accelerated ML are not the same as running 400 chrome tabs on an M1. The hot paths in most important high-end computing are mostly quite efficient.
      - colinsane 4y ago
        > The hot paths in most important high-end computing are mostly quite efficient. it’s hard to determine the lower bound on a lot of these things. in scientific computing (e.g. physics sims) i still run across a lot of runtime branching that could easily be compiled out if we were using languages that had stronger type systems/templates. we use linear approximations for a lot of things, but it’s been shown that smarter interpolation can let you decrease your resolution without losing accuracy/stability. there’s an easy 2x or more perf gain every time you do that successfully. there’s also the boundary conditions: we always simulate more volume of space than we’re actually interested in so as to avoid certain types of distortion (reflections from the boundary of the simulation). over time we’ve learned tricks for reducing those reflections: we’ve applied a lot of general-purpose optimizations, but there’s evidence that we can go further if we encode more simulation-specific information at these boundaries. this whole area has just been slow, steady, compounded optimizations. i don’t work in ML, but i find it very unlikely that (a) optimizing neural networks is a completely solved problem or (b) that you all know how to train them using the fewest iterations. you make sweeping statements that just aren't obvious to me.
- ISL 4y ago
  It is very important for national stability. A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing international stability.
  - hh3k0 4y ago
    - bakuninsbart 4y ago
      There's no contradiction in interconnected economies being both better for global stability and more volatile to global instability. On a populist level, these kinds of questions are always presented as either-or, when in reality it is a pretty delicate balancing act. No, we shouldn't be completely reliant on potentially adversarial states for our basic well-being, but intertwined economies change the cost-benefit-analysis of a lot of adversarial geopolitical actions, and that has led to a lot less war in the world.
      - baja_blast 4y ago
        The USSR and United States had zero trade and never went to war. And since the fall of the USSR the number of conflicts has not gone down. Ukraine and Russia were very interconnected, but that did not prevent the invasion.
        selimthegrim 4y ago
        Uh, we sold them grain, and they sold oil, and let’s leave aside the NEP period…
        nradov 4y ago
        The United States sold huge amounts of grain to the USSR. Did this prevent a war, or make a war more likely? Who knows? https://coldwarheartland.ku.edu/documents/foes-or-friends https://coldwarheartland.ku.edu/documents/foes-or-friends
        4y ago
- _trackno5 4y ago
  Will it make much of a difference, though? Sure they can fabricate the chips, but a lot of the raw material needed will come from places like China.
  - myself248 4y ago
    Right now, the raw material will come from China because that's where the resources are developed. But once a fab is in place, it makes sense to push more to develop local resources, or at least among more diverse allies. It doesn't make sense to do that now, because you'd just be shipping local resources to a foreign fab, so that's still a bottleneck. But I think having a local fab is the tipping-point.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - sounds 4y ago
    It's a move back down the supply chain. Fine, they haven't completely verticalized the entire supply chain. It's still a strategic move.
  - cromka 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - baja_blast 4y ago
    copper, silicon, gold, aluminum are sourced from many countries so they wouldn't need any raw materials from any particular country. Also the machines used to make the Fabs are sourced right next door in the Netherlands
  - audunw 4y ago
    Which raw material specifically? Norway is the fifth largest exporter of Quartz. Turkey is third. I think there's enough Quartz in Europe for silicon. For silicon wafer manufacturing there's Okmetic Oy in Finland and Siltronic AG in Germany.
- explaingarlic 4y ago
  Doesn't feel to me like microchips are in such short supply that any more would significantly contribute to the economy. Am I just unaware of the crisis going on all around me?
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
    That wasn't the parent's argument. But, incredibly enough, there really is a shortage in microchips that has lead, among other problems, to shutdown of whole production lines for cars. It doesn't necessarily matter to have local fabs: at least in the current situation, the worldwide chip production is still a mostly free market with products being sold to the highest bidder independent of location (as long as it's not Russia). But the confidence of this state continuing is certainly lower than it was a few years ago.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. Nah, this is a bargain. Rather than chasing the technology for 50 years, they just waited until it's already mature (2nm may be the end of the road?) and spend a few billion after all the development has happened elsewhere. BTW Germany is already home to some fairly advanced non-EUV fabs with Global Foundries.
  - dorgo 4y ago
    > (2nm may be the end of the road?) from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit : >However, it has been shown that access to quantum memory in principle allows computational algorithms that require arbitrarily small amount of energy/time per one elementary computation step.[6][7] Not the end of the road.
- toss1 4y ago
  Yup May have had something to do with these tweets [1] from Emily Haber @GermanAmbUSA German Ambassador to USA: >> "The current geopolitical situation and its impact on supply chains has triggered a discussion about “technological sovereignty” in the US and Europe. For us, it means being able to help shape future technologies in line with our values. We see the USA as natural partners in this." >> "It's one reason our Minister for Education and Research is visiting Washington. Welcome, Minister @starkwatzinger . Your visit will deepen our cooperation as we face intense global challenges! 2/2" https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUSA/status/1534236635562491905 https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUSA/status/1534236635562491905
- bradgessler 4y ago
  Not just fabs, but other staples like baby formula.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  Is the increase in cost known or predictable in decentralizing fabs? The argument for geopolitical stability is strong but at what cost?
- LdSGSgvupDV 4y ago
  Yep. Accelerate the global warming for inefficient waste on local fab and pollute the environment globally. For the national security, we could sacrifice all countries including ourself. Hillarius.
outside1234 4y ago
Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does something crazy inevitably.
- rob74 4y ago
  Pssst! Don't tell anyone I told you: they are already doing crazy stuff, but we shouldn't complain too loudly, or else...
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    There's a difference between internal and external genocide. Not morally, but realistically. As we've seen with Iraq and many other times, trying to stop internal genocide is not really doable.
- alaricus 4y ago
  This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in local companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Having an established player that trains and employs workers creates a pool of experienced workers in the area. Those are exactly the kinds of people to get a local competitor started.
    - alaricus 4y ago
      There are lots of local semiconductor companies (Infineon, Bosch). This money would be better spent on them.
  - f6v 4y ago
    Why? Germany doesn’t pursue political objectivity anyway.
throw457 4y ago
Just wait 10 years until we get rid of it again like we did with AMD and Infineon.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  If they're willing to build a lot of processors rather than add dangerous features to use one chip or core or whatever maybe they can make it multiples of ten years this time ;-) Wenn sie bereit sind, viele Prozessoren zu bauen, anstatt gefährliche Funktionen hinzuzufügen, um einen Chip oder Kern oder was auch immer zu verwenden, können sie dieses Mal vielleicht ein Vielfaches von zehn Jahren schaffen ;-)
  - april_22 4y ago
    Yes, Bosch just built a huge factory in Saxony
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      I hope they treat the workers well. Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop. (I think I can keep repairing this one for a while, sorry I'm a bad capitalist or whatever.)
      - flohofwoe 4y ago
        > Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop. Unless your laptop is also a car that's probably unlikely ;) (AFAIK the new Bosch fab will mainly produce chips for the car industry)
        selimthegrim 4y ago
        Well I never thought the Transformers would be big with Germans
  - biztos 4y ago
    No comment on the actual content, but I love how the German version is almost 30% longer ;-)
samwillis 4y ago
I honestly think this is something the UK should be doing too, however with the current political environment it wouldn’t be possible.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Once again EU taxpayer money bankrolling US tech dominance. When will we ever learn to build up our domestic tech industry? And before the chip hipsters crawl all over my back to prove we ackshually have a powerful domestic semi industry, please name me another EU company, other than ASML (a company 90% of people here never heard of before the chip shortage), that has the same margins, dominance and ability to shape the market, as much as the US based Intel, Quallcomm, AMD, Nvidia, Apple. I'll wait. The thing is, other than ASML, most of our domestic semi companies (NXP, ST, Ericsson, Nordic, Infineon, Bosch, AMS, etc.) are only competing for relatively low margin chips with high competition, therefore bring home relatively little money, compared to their US counterparts which have monopolized high margin sectors (general compute, AI, graphics, etc) and rake in the big bucks. Don't get me wrong, it's great we have our own semi industry, and we make great chips to boot, but I wish we could do more high margin products, as Chinese companies are hot on our heels with massive support from their government. Remember the failed attempt from the merger of ST-Ericsson to take on QUALCOMM's ARM Snapdragon SoCs and modems in the mobile space 10 years ago? I was talking to a former Dutch manager who had a stint there and his reply dropped my jaw: "Yeah, that merger was never meant to ship any chips that can beat Quallcomm, it was just a vehicle designed to suck up as money as possible and funnel it into the right pockets, while some managers pad their resumes so they can move up at other companies later." Source: Former EU semi engineer.
- DSingularity 4y ago
  That’s called interest on the Marshall plan.
- nosianu 4y ago
  Right... "TSMC, Samsung want slice of America's $52b chip subsidies" -- https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/tsmc_samsung_chip_subsidies/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/tsmc_samsung_chip_sub... "Intel and Micron pushing hard for subsidies from the US government" -- https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-and-micron-pushing-hard-for-subsidies-from-the-us-government/ https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-and-micron-pushing-hard-for-su... "Subsidy Tracker: Intel" -- https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/intel https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/intel "Intel boss presses Congress for manufacturing subsidies" -- https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/intel_chips_subsidy/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/intel_chips_subsidy/
dagurp 4y ago
Does fab mean factory here?
- _Microft 4y ago
  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
klelatti 4y ago
Open question. Will this be enough to support an ecosystem of related companies close by?
hunglee2 4y ago
German investment again going to foreign companies, the very opposite of strategic sovereignty. The Trump era should be enough evidence that there are no friends in geo-politics, just temporary alliances of convenience.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mantas 4y ago
  Germany and strategic sovereignty… Looking at gas pipes, they have an alternative understanding of sovereignty.
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    Well, if you have any alternative than gas pipes please let us know. Germany is already pushing for green techs. And, gas coming from another part of the continent is always more expensive than neighboring countries? Yes, they shouldn't have dismantled Nuclear Power. But after an incident in Japan, many people were nuclear phobic so can't blame politicians alone? That being said, I do agree that paying 5.5bn of taxpayers money to foreign tech is silly. Such money can be easily used in investing local companies which will provide more employement and ROI to Germany.
    - mantas 4y ago
      Germany could have been using existing pipes through eastern europe. That would have been damn nice insurance from Russian aggression. And for nuclear, IMO „nuclear phobia“ was financed from the same pockets as sea pipeline.
  - hunglee2 4y ago
    an unstated and unrequited aspiration for sure.
  - alaricus 4y ago
    Increasing trade with Russia is a good strategy. No need to follow America to WW3 or a new cold war.
waterlaw 4y ago
Intel spent tens of billions on stock buybacks and now they're getting subsidies to build fabs. Why does the middle class taxpayer have to bail everyone out, with lower living standards due to taxation and inflation.
- jakobov 4y ago
  It's about national security. A fab is necessary for national security
  - alaricus 4y ago
    Subsidizing an American company is not necessary for Germany's security. In fact, it undermines it.
    - julianozen 4y ago
      I mean in theory but not in practice
    - ikinsey 4y ago
      Would you mind explaining why you think this is the case?
      - PKop 4y ago
        They are dependent on and subservient to the US and its geopolitical interests. We see this right now with Germany self-sabotaging it's own economy and industrial power by cutting off cheap Russian energy at the direction of US policy interests (Nord Stream 2 was agreed upon for years between Russia and Germany but thwarted at every turn, sanctioned etc by US).
        WoahNoun 4y ago
        It was also hated by other EU countries: >President of the European Council Donald Tusk said that Nord Stream 2 is not in the EU's interests.[19] Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have questioned the different treatment of Nord Stream 2 and South Stream projects.[19][20] Some claim that the project violates the long-term declared strategy of the EU to diversify its gas supplies.[21] A letter, signed by the leaders of nine EU countries, was sent to the EC in March 2016, warning that the Nord Stream 2 project contradicts the European energy policy requirements that suppliers to the EU should not control the energy transmission assets, and that access to the energy infrastructure must be secured for non-consortium companies.[22][23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2
mcdermott 4y ago
It's too late for Intel. x86 doesn't have a future, ARM64 SoC architectures like Apple's M1 (TSMC) are the future of computing. Just as fast (and often faster in many benchmarks) with only 20-25% the power consumption and heat. Even Microsoft is preparing for the shift to ARM, at Build 2⁰22 they announced project Voltera, an ARM Windows 11 PC loaded with Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 7 all for ARM to give devs a head start for the coming ARM Microsoft systems. Microsoft will partner with Qualcomm and have their own custom SoC like the M1. Intel is toast (because their CPUs are too hot). This is going to be a massive shift in the PC industry.
- freemint 4y ago
  Intel protects itself against x86_64 becoming deprecated by investing into RISC-V.
- machinekob 4y ago
  But Intel is investing in ARM/RISC-V and x86 will be with us a bit longer (probably even 10+years). I would be more concerned about AMD then I'm about Intel tbh.
  - bilger321 4y ago
    AMD recently acquired Xilinx, who makes ARM SoCs https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html
    - nereye 4y ago
      Intel acquired Altera in 2015, Altera has been producing FPGAs with ARM cores since 2011 at least (https://www.embedded.com/altera-integrates-arm-processor-in-fpgas/ https://www.embedded.com/altera-integrates-arm-processor-in-...). The Xilinx devices above are also FPGAs with ARM cores (a natural evolution from FPGAs with soft cores, MicroBlaze in the case of Xilinx and Nios in the case of Altera).
  - 0des 4y ago
    than
DeathArrow 4y ago
Why can't everyone get a help from the German government to start a business? I want to grow cucumbers, so it would be nice for Germany to pay to help me start a cucumber growing business.
- freemint 4y ago
  Joke is on you. Germany kinda does that for the unemployed https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/arbeitslosengeld/existenzgruendung-gruendungszuschuss https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/arbeitslosengeld/existenzgruen... And in case you want to do something larger there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KfW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KfW which at least gives you loans.
- stnikolauswagne 4y ago
  I mean germany/the EU does pay subsidies to (cucumber)-farmers [0], there is literally billions each year flowing into keeping farmers somewhat afloat. [0]https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2013-11/agrarreform-landwirtschaft-eu?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.de%2F https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2013-11/agrarreform-landwirts...
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    Maybe I am an US citizen and I want to start a business in Germany.
    - stnikolauswagne 4y ago
      Okay, in that case you are eligible for a variety of loans, up to 40% of the costs of establishing the business, granted you are willing to establish it in the more rural eastern regions [0], additionally there is a wide variety of relatively lenient credits available for founding companies [1]. [0] https://www.iamexpat.de/career/entrepreneur-germany/start-up-grants-financial-incentives-businesses https://www.iamexpat.de/career/entrepreneur-germany/start-up... [1]
  - Aerroon 4y ago
    The trick that he's missing is that first you hire a lawyer to figure out all the subsidies you can get and then you see whether the business is viable!
ho_schi 4y ago
Everyone is paying for chip fabs. This isn't new? Especially Intel and TSMC are in a position where they can require money for a fab. Together with Infineon, NXP or ASML we could built up own production lines but these will also cost a lot of money. Because China is doing the same. Europe just missed to do the same, strategic investment into the economy. Free trade...China never believed in and we shouldn't neither.
unfocused 4y ago
It's going to be a while before we are not depending on China. If you look at this 2020 Apple List of Suppliers: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supplier-List.pdf https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp... you can see the large variety of companies they they rely on for manufacturing. Plugging this into Excel, you get the following distribution: Country Count: China 156 Japan 40 US 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23 Vietnam 21 Malaysia 15 Philippines 15 Thailand 15 Singapore 14 India 9 Germany 8 United Kingdom 4 Austria 3 Mexico 3 Belgium 2 Brazil 2 Czech Republic 2 France 2 Indonesia 2 Australia 1 Cambodia 1 Costa Rica 1 Finland 1 Ireland 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Malta 1 Netherlands 1 Norway 1 apologies for the formatting.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  However the suppliers this fab with its EU-subsidies aims to outcompete are not in China but in Taiwan, the US, and South Korea.
- seany 4y ago
  China 156 Japan 40 US 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23 Vietnam 21 Malaysia 15 Philippines 15 Thailand 15 Singapore 14 India 9 Germany 8 United Kingdom 4 Austria 3 Mexico 3 Belgium 2 Brazil 2 Czech Republic 2 France 2 Indonesia 2 Australia 1 Cambodia 1 Costa Rica 1 Finland 1 Ireland 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Malta 1 Netherlands 1 Norway 1
  - unfocused 4y ago
    Much love! Thanks for the formatting :)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blackoil 4y ago
N19PEDL2 4y ago
How many RISC-V research centers could be created with that money?
- MikusR 4y ago
  And build those designs where?
- alaricus 4y ago
  A lot.
- i5heu 4y ago
  RISC-V research center do not build 5nm chips at industrial scale. And without 5nm chips at industrial scale, RISC-V research is useless.
api 4y ago
Sounds like a bargain given the local skill base support and industrial autonomy. The most economical solution is to hand virtually all industrial expertise and capacity to China, who not coincidentally massively subsidizes its industrial base. China's government puts its thumb on the scale. Not doing the same is unilateral disarmament.
throwaway4good 4y ago
What is even funnier is that Intel has plenty money and is profitable and dividend paying even though nearly all of Intel's fabs are in the US (and thus suffering from the high cost level compared to Asia is a part justification for these subsidies).
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
  They lost $ 20 billion in the last year.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    Intel earnings per share is still positive. Do you mean they made less than before?
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    They made $20 billion last year.
pmoriarty 4y ago
A more interdependent world is a friendlier and more secure world. When countries are completely independent of each other they will be able to more easily shrug off economic consequences of their aggression. Economic ties also foster greater cultural exchange and understanding, so the less of those there are the insular and navel-gazing the inhabitants of such countries will tend to be, which will also increase the likelihood of conflict as people tend to fear those who they aren't in close contact with and don't understand. As bad as the world is today, it'll get much worse as countries isolate.
- sofixa 4y ago
  That has been the prevailing thought since before WWI, but multiple World Wars and Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year have proven otherwise. Do you know who was the biggest trading partner of Nazi Germany on the eve of Operation Barbarossa? You guessed it, the Soviet Union. It was responsible for the vast majority of imports of critical resources like various metals, oil, grain, etc. It didn't stop Hitler. Do you know who were the main buyers of Russian gas, and via which country that gas arrives to them? You guessed it, EU, and the main pipelines pass through Ukraine. On paper, yes, you're absolutely right. But you're assuming rationality where it's far from certain. Same as in the 1930s, we have a bunch of empty populists everywhere who are anything but rational, intent on blaming everything bad on "bad guys of today", be it the EU, migrants, Soros, the Jews, Nazis, have your pick. With those types of people, you can't assume rationality of actions. Brexit wasn't a rational decision, to give but one example. Poland infringing on press and human freedoms against the will of the EU, while receiving billions of aid from the EU, isn't rational.
  - dv_dt 4y ago
    The difficult thing about even very good prevention is that the absence of events is difficult to prove. Is interconnection perfect? obviously not. Does interconnection prevent more conflicts vs fully independent nations? Likely yes. I think what we are seeing is societies and governments forgetting how bad wars are for stability, on a backdrop of slowing or reversing quality of life for many modern nations.
sylware 4y ago
??? Why intel??? Why not ASML???
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lkbm 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Germany would also find value in an ASML facility, but as I understand it, ASML doesn't make fabs. They make the tools technology used in fabs. They're different parts of the supply chains. Even if they were both in the same business, it's not like ordering whichever brand you want from Amazon. If ASML wants to build something in Germany, they will, and Germany can incentivize that, but it's still up to them. Germany can't just tell them to do it anyway.
  - sylware 4y ago
    So the 50 billions euros fund which is supposed to be used to build a EU own top-notch chip foundry will be own and built by the US? Is this a joke?
cynusx 4y ago
Can't they just give them a subsidy to invest in a friendly country instead? This factory will die the moment the subsidies stop
kristianpaul 4y ago
This could be a good chance for some universities with Chip Lab/Fab facilities across the world to start manufacturing even at small scale is important for every country self-sufficiency.
LatteLazy 4y ago
I think one of the lessons the EU has learnt from the last 10 years is you cannot rely on international trade. Trump and now Putin mean the EU needs domestic weapons, chips, energy and a few other things...
bell-cot 4y ago
Wow. For those old (or well-read enough in history) enough to have a sense of just how dominant Germany once was, world-wide, in science, technology, chemistry, optics, etc. etc....this news feels kinda like a tombstone of German identity.
- finiteseries 4y ago
  The median age in Germany is now 46 years old, ie closer to retirement than doing anything new/risky.
- audunw 4y ago
  Umm, the German company Zeiss is the only company in the world capable of making the mirrors for the EUV machines used in this factory. They're still have world leaders in power semiconductors with Bosch and Infineon. This isn't the only fab in Germany btw. Global Foundries has a fab in Dresden doing advanced low-power FDSOI ICs. You can't expect a single country to lead a majority of technical fields forever. That's unrealistic. I'd say Germany is doing completely fine.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Lol, Germany was never anywhere close to being a leader in chip manufacturing (and why should it in a global market). Arguably, even East Germany had a better chip industry than West Germany in the 70s and 80s, but that was still 5..10 years behind the state of the art.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  For those really not familiar with the history - German's global dominance ran from roughly the early 1800's to ~1930. We're talking the era of the German Customs Union - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_customs_union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_customs_union That Union was mostly driven by the Kingdom of Prussia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia
verisimi 4y ago
Wow. These deals amaze me. Imagine you got given subsidies to live somewhere. I'm not talking about your wages - I'm talking about something extra. Well that is a direct equivalent here. How any governance structure can think this is ok boggles the mind. Is it not clear how we already live in a fascist state - where government + corporations are working together at the people's expense? $5.5 billion.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Serious question - How do you propose governments encourage companies to do what they want? Yes it’s a subsidy but it also seems like the government in this case is essentially buying a service. I guess Germany would hire people to build this factory directly rather than paying a foreign company to do it? Which I imagine would be more expensive if it’s even possible to do. Do you think there are better ways to do this within capitalism or are you proposing we dismantle capitalism?
  - trasz 4y ago
    >Serious question - How do you propose governments encourage companies In some countries capitalism simply works the opposite way.
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      Companies pay governments to do business there? I mean this sounds great, I would love my grocery store to pay me to shop there. How do we make this happen? It seems to me sometimes like waiting for these kind of things to happen is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
      - trasz 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
  - verisimi 4y ago
Patrol8394 4y ago
Germany always enforce EU rules on all other members, but when it comes to them, they couldn't give two f ...
Shadonototra 4y ago
EU is funding american companies now... what a joke this is Couldn't Volkswagen build their own foundation for a sovereign and independent ecosystem?
malchow 4y ago
It will be clear that this money was wasted within ten years. What a government needs to do to attract real manufacturing entrepreneurs: - pro family policies (for people) - pro immigration (for people) - cut environmental laws (for capex make-right) - cut business taxes (for gm make-right) - cut personal taxes (for people) - fight back against china-sponsored economic maneuvering at the multilateral level (to create a competitive market)
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  > - cut environmental laws (for capex make-right) I'm with you on all but this. Cleaning up the environment is a very expensive, time consuming process. There's still about 20 superfund sites in Santa Clara County due to its heyday of tech manufacturing. Our local community has been fighting for the cleanup of a 60 year old disaster. That they agreed to clean up 20 years ago. But they've barely started.
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  And watch as your fledgling local business dies due to hundreds of billions of subsidies for foreign fabs. South Korea alone is subsidizing Semiconductors with $450Bn [1]. If you want local fabs, you need to spend money. Or you get to watch your automotive assembly lines stop because of chip shortages. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-unveils-450-billion-push-to-seize-global-chipmaking-crown https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-unv... [1 Non paywalled]: https://archive.ph/9Gs8q https://archive.ph/9Gs8q
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
  Germany hasn't been doing any of that except immigration, and it has fared exceptionally well over the last decades. Taiwan's chip industry is the result of massive subsidies that got it started.
- rat87 4y ago
  I'm not saying this won't be wasted but in also skeptical of your policy? And why do we care so much about manufacturing anyway?
- 4y ago
Linda703 4y ago
[dead]
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
I was under the impression that this would count as direct government investment in a private company and would breach EU competition rules?
adventured 4y ago
> Whether or not additional funds are available from the EU is not known. Fine it out of Google, give it to Intel.
tester756 4y ago
Nice, I hope I'll be able to get job there What kind of skillset is needed there?
jupp0r 4y ago
It's really common for chip companies to shop around and start a bidding war to see where they can get the highest subsidies.
paganel 4y ago
Stupid move by Germany, giving even more money to the US corporations. In fact, the EU as a whole is presently doing just that, those Next Generation EU funds will, for a great part, find their place in the coffers of the big US tech companies. It goes like this: EU gives billions of dollars to EU national governments but with many strings attached -> an important part of those strings is related to digitisation -> the EU national governments redirect the money they received from Brussels to digitisation implementations -> US tech companies get even more wealthy, as there's almost no local European competitor that can compete when it comes to the cloud, hardware and even software (just think of all the EU funds that will go almost directly to paying Oracle licenses). Similar thing happens with re-directing EU money into China's coffers, as most of the EV batteries are now produced in China and there's a big push at the EU level for us, EU, citizens, to purchase EVs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  It's not very well stupid though if there isn't a great viable alternative, is it? The issue with there being no good local competitors is a more fundamental one-- it's extremely difficult to spin up a viable tech business in the EU, period. In part, this boils down to regulatory issues including tech companies needing to abide by a myriad of complex regulations but also things like fairly costly labor regulations.
omega3 4y ago
> It has been suggested that already-allocated funds from the €95.5-billion Horizon Europe budget could be re-purposed. EC president Ursula Von der Leyen has said that, in addition, she’ll find €12 billion from public/private sources. The rich get richer and stay rich. It's hard not to get cynical about the fact that the whole of Europe is working so that a couple of countries ensure their continuing wealth.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
clivend 4y ago
good luck to Russia to make its own chip fab now that no one will buy its gas
leonry 4y ago
Why Magdeburg? I have a really hard time to find an argument that puts the city in an advantageous position relative to other competitor places (like Dresden, Munich agglomeration, Rhein/Main area, Hamburg agglomeration).
- FinnKuhn 4y ago
  Cheap place to build, cheap place to live, cheap labour, pretty good infrastructure. All of the cities you mentioned are very expensive to built in, but also to live in.
- wafriedemann 4y ago
  If the government pays subsidies they will combine it with strengthening economically weaker areas. No one needs more high quality jobs in the overcrowded and overly expensive Munich area.
- davidktr 4y ago
  Why not? Cheap, Uni Magdeburg is pretty good in STEM, water (yes that is an issue!), close enough to Berlin and Wolfsburg (Volkswagen), good transportation.
- dmitrij 4y ago
  Already prepared grand space for industrial use with energy, water and public transport; 100% carbon neutral wind energy and very soon also water-neutrality were a few of the reasons given.
  - leonry 4y ago
    True, space is a selling point.
cwkoss 4y ago
Elon Musk would be way cooler if he built 10 chip fabs instead of buying twitter
- tester756 4y ago
  doesn't one state of art fab cost more than that?
  - cwkoss 4y ago
    Ah, some estimates put it as high as $20B, some as low as $3B. Still, two nice fabs would be cooler than twitter.
- fomine3 4y ago
  SpaceX is really cool work for national security. Starlink helps communication, Falcon helps trip to ISS without Russian ship.
Zigurd 4y ago
I have to wonder if deglobalization and expensive onshoring is as much of herd mentality as glocalization and offshoring have been. Sure, if the no college white males of the US get their demographic last hurrah and elect a populist isolationist who pulls America out of NATO, then, yeah, it's bad times for a rational set of international interdependencies. Or, if the Taiwan and Korean foundries are the best on the planet, everyone should contribute to the international stability it takes to maintain access to those resources. Almost every part of the tech industry benefits from global low-friction trade. Brexit regret is a solid majority opinion in the UK. The US recently lowered trade barriers to solar panels from China. Hopefully sanity prevails. While it is possible to overdo the offshoring and JIT inventories, increased trade volume makes everyone more prosperous.
- robk 4y ago
  39/47 regretting brexit is not a solid majority. https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
  - Zigurd 4y ago
    Regret https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-boris-johnson-lies-b1980372.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-b...
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    Brexit regret is always a solid majority in the minds of the diehards, who claimed the day after the 2016 referendum (seriously) that a) millions of Leave voters already regretted their votes, so b) a do-over was the only right and proper thing to do.

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

throwaway4good 4y ago
Most of Intel's fabs are in the US.
jeffbee 4y ago
Why is the local fab specifically important? They're still going to fly the wafers to Malaysia or wherever for packaging, right? And the tools and chemicals will all be made elsewhere, won't they? It's not as simple as having a steady supply of apples from your local orchard.
- sva_ 4y ago
  I think sourcing those things would be a lot easier than building a fab, on a time scale.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  There's a lot of assumptions there. Why don't you assume that it's about having as much of the supply chain locally?
- mojzu 4y ago
  I'd imagine it won't replace the entire supply chain in one go (although I think quite a bit of semiconductor tooling is already manufactured in the EU), but I think it's a step on the path towards that. Which is probably a good thing considering how fragile it appears some of our hyper-efficient globalised supply chains can be
- ChemSpider 4y ago
  That part is solved: (1) German BASF is one of the manufactures for "semiconductor chemicals". (2) More important: Getting parts from Malaysia (etc) is no issue as I don't think they plan to attack any neighboring countries in the next decade. Also, they did not start a trade boycott against Lithuania just over the name of an trade office.
  - ratww 4y ago
    Exactly. Malaysia can still be a partner, however this is a big step that opens the door for replacing labor in distant countries with another EU neighbour. This is good for the entire EU.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    If there is a conflict with China, maritime routes will become much less reliable than they are now, after 75+ years of peace and 30+ years of a unipolar international system.
    - paganel 4y ago
      Plus, I suspect that in a The West vs China war a country like Malaysia will think twice before choosing a side, and I'm afraid they won't choose the West by default.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      And the possibility port blockades.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
  Self sufficiency for products that are the lifeblood of your economy is attractive to governments. Any of the things you describe can easily be replicated locally, fabs much less so. Even more to the point is that it gives countries the chance to develop a high value competitive advantage that others cannot replicate. Places like the EU would argue that they have the human capital to compete globally but they don't have the industry because of historical factors.
- arlort 4y ago
  They're also creating a packaging center in Italy https://gamingnews.cyou/here-is-intels-plan-for-europe-a-packaging-factory-in-italy/ https://gamingnews.cyou/here-is-intels-plan-for-europe-a-pac... And an R&D center in France https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/eu-news-2022-release.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/eu-new...
- ezsmi 4y ago
  Assembly services are all over the place. Here's a large one in Escondido, CA which is commonly used. https://www.qptechnologies.com/about-us/company-info-bios/ https://www.qptechnologies.com/about-us/company-info-bios/
baybal2 4y ago
This will not do much with Taiwan being a single source for semiconductor manufacturing supplies. Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that huge there. All 300mm fabs working outside of Taiwan are just few shipments of consumables away from stalling all the time. When Russia attacks Ukraine, the 3rd world is fucked. When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.
- lm28469 4y ago
  What makes Taiwan inherently better than somewhere else ? If it's just for historical and/or economical reason I don't see why Europe or the US couldn't build their own chemical plants. You have to start somewhere, it took us decades to delocalise everything to Asia, it'll take decades to build these industries locally.
  - baybal2 4y ago
    You have just asked why we can't "just move manufacturing out of China:" There are no individual chemical plants, there are huge chemical complexes owned by many companies with own well guarded know hows. There may be 2-4 suppliers in a row producing some intermediary product used in making of only 1 output. Just to make the semiconductor grade hyperpure propanol you need ultrapure catalysts, ultrapure sulphuric acid, ultrapure water, and ultrapure input hydrocarbon stock. Ah, forgot, you also needs an ultrapure tare manufacturer, because bottles you ship ultrapure materials are single use. You need decades just to replicate this. Now you need to move 100+ of such material chains. > If it's just for historical and/or economical reason Simple answer, yes! Taiwan has quietly swallowed near an entirety of the wider precision manufacturing industry. It been consistently swallowing very capital intensive industries producing exportable niche products one after another simply because nobody else been taking such hard, and risky ventures. Yes, their profitability is not high, but their "moat" is gigantic. Taiwan been an industrial titan for 20+ years, and the US only finds out about it now.
    - JoachimS 4y ago
      Excellent explanation.
curiousgal 4y ago
ASML is in the Netherlands though. Edit: Yes ASML is obviously not a chip fab but they supply the machines that actually fabricate the chips.
- joker99 4y ago
  Correct, but ASML is not a chip fab
  - amelius 4y ago
    I think the point was that high-tech shouldn't be concentrated in one location. What if ASML was in China?
    - rmah 4y ago
      Well, as far as I can tell, China is seems willing to sell just about anything to anyone as long as they can pay.
    - himlion 4y ago
      ASML is prohibited from shipping its newest machines to China by the Dutch government, because of heavy US pressure. I'm sure China would love ASML to be fully based there.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
    No but it is the monopoly supplier of the single most important device for fabs. If ASML (and all their knowledge) disappeared off the face of the earth today progress in semiconductors would probably be set back a decade or two. The fact they are a single company in one country that the global industry depends on for progress in semis should be of concern.
    - eternauta3k 4y ago
      What company has the next-best litho machines after ASML?
cinntaile 4y ago
I don't think this is why fabs were centralized. I think this is because when you start to decrease node size, the fab costs go up astronomically so to keep the cost in check you need economies of scale and with the current manufacturing techniques you can achieve this by centralizing manufacturing.
- sephlietz 4y ago
  Didn't you and parent both say "to keep costs low"?
- bottled_poe 4y ago
  Seems to me that most software is horribly inefficient anyway. If push came to shove we might just consider making better software?
  - rat9988 4y ago
    Software engineers are expensive too.
  - sneak 4y ago
    The cutting edge of software that mostly uses these advanced process node sizes is not horribly inefficient. The new applications enabled by, for example, GPU-accelerated ML are not the same as running 400 chrome tabs on an M1. The hot paths in most important high-end computing are mostly quite efficient.
    - colinsane 4y ago
      > The hot paths in most important high-end computing are mostly quite efficient. it’s hard to determine the lower bound on a lot of these things. in scientific computing (e.g. physics sims) i still run across a lot of runtime branching that could easily be compiled out if we were using languages that had stronger type systems/templates. we use linear approximations for a lot of things, but it’s been shown that smarter interpolation can let you decrease your resolution without losing accuracy/stability. there’s an easy 2x or more perf gain every time you do that successfully. there’s also the boundary conditions: we always simulate more volume of space than we’re actually interested in so as to avoid certain types of distortion (reflections from the boundary of the simulation). over time we’ve learned tricks for reducing those reflections: we’ve applied a lot of general-purpose optimizations, but there’s evidence that we can go further if we encode more simulation-specific information at these boundaries. this whole area has just been slow, steady, compounded optimizations. i don’t work in ML, but i find it very unlikely that (a) optimizing neural networks is a completely solved problem or (b) that you all know how to train them using the fewest iterations. you make sweeping statements that just aren't obvious to me.
ISL 4y ago
It is very important for national stability. A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing international stability.
- hh3k0 4y ago
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    There's no contradiction in interconnected economies being both better for global stability and more volatile to global instability. On a populist level, these kinds of questions are always presented as either-or, when in reality it is a pretty delicate balancing act. No, we shouldn't be completely reliant on potentially adversarial states for our basic well-being, but intertwined economies change the cost-benefit-analysis of a lot of adversarial geopolitical actions, and that has led to a lot less war in the world.
    - baja_blast 4y ago
      The USSR and United States had zero trade and never went to war. And since the fall of the USSR the number of conflicts has not gone down. Ukraine and Russia were very interconnected, but that did not prevent the invasion.
      - selimthegrim 4y ago
        Uh, we sold them grain, and they sold oil, and let’s leave aside the NEP period…
      - nradov 4y ago
        The United States sold huge amounts of grain to the USSR. Did this prevent a war, or make a war more likely? Who knows? https://coldwarheartland.ku.edu/documents/foes-or-friends https://coldwarheartland.ku.edu/documents/foes-or-friends
      - 4y ago
_trackno5 4y ago
Will it make much of a difference, though? Sure they can fabricate the chips, but a lot of the raw material needed will come from places like China.
- myself248 4y ago
  Right now, the raw material will come from China because that's where the resources are developed. But once a fab is in place, it makes sense to push more to develop local resources, or at least among more diverse allies. It doesn't make sense to do that now, because you'd just be shipping local resources to a foreign fab, so that's still a bottleneck. But I think having a local fab is the tipping-point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- sounds 4y ago
  It's a move back down the supply chain. Fine, they haven't completely verticalized the entire supply chain. It's still a strategic move.
- cromka 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- baja_blast 4y ago
  copper, silicon, gold, aluminum are sourced from many countries so they wouldn't need any raw materials from any particular country. Also the machines used to make the Fabs are sourced right next door in the Netherlands
- audunw 4y ago
  Which raw material specifically? Norway is the fifth largest exporter of Quartz. Turkey is third. I think there's enough Quartz in Europe for silicon. For silicon wafer manufacturing there's Okmetic Oy in Finland and Siltronic AG in Germany.
explaingarlic 4y ago
Doesn't feel to me like microchips are in such short supply that any more would significantly contribute to the economy. Am I just unaware of the crisis going on all around me?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
  That wasn't the parent's argument. But, incredibly enough, there really is a shortage in microchips that has lead, among other problems, to shutdown of whole production lines for cars. It doesn't necessarily matter to have local fabs: at least in the current situation, the worldwide chip production is still a mostly free market with products being sold to the highest bidder independent of location (as long as it's not Russia). But the confidence of this state continuing is certainly lower than it was a few years ago.
phkahler 4y ago
>> Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. Nah, this is a bargain. Rather than chasing the technology for 50 years, they just waited until it's already mature (2nm may be the end of the road?) and spend a few billion after all the development has happened elsewhere. BTW Germany is already home to some fairly advanced non-EUV fabs with Global Foundries.
- dorgo 4y ago
  > (2nm may be the end of the road?) from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit : >However, it has been shown that access to quantum memory in principle allows computational algorithms that require arbitrarily small amount of energy/time per one elementary computation step.[6][7] Not the end of the road.
toss1 4y ago
Yup May have had something to do with these tweets [1] from Emily Haber @GermanAmbUSA German Ambassador to USA: >> "The current geopolitical situation and its impact on supply chains has triggered a discussion about “technological sovereignty” in the US and Europe. For us, it means being able to help shape future technologies in line with our values. We see the USA as natural partners in this." >> "It's one reason our Minister for Education and Research is visiting Washington. Welcome, Minister @starkwatzinger . Your visit will deepen our cooperation as we face intense global challenges! 2/2" https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUSA/status/1534236635562491905 https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUSA/status/1534236635562491905
bradgessler 4y ago
Not just fabs, but other staples like baby formula.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
Is the increase in cost known or predictable in decentralizing fabs? The argument for geopolitical stability is strong but at what cost?
LdSGSgvupDV 4y ago
Yep. Accelerate the global warming for inefficient waste on local fab and pollute the environment globally. For the national security, we could sacrifice all countries including ourself. Hillarius.

outside1234 4y ago

Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does something crazy inevitably.

rob74 4y ago
Pssst! Don't tell anyone I told you: they are already doing crazy stuff, but we shouldn't complain too loudly, or else...
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  There's a difference between internal and external genocide. Not morally, but realistically. As we've seen with Iraq and many other times, trying to stop internal genocide is not really doable.
alaricus 4y ago
This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in local companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Having an established player that trains and employs workers creates a pool of experienced workers in the area. Those are exactly the kinds of people to get a local competitor started.
  - alaricus 4y ago
    There are lots of local semiconductor companies (Infineon, Bosch). This money would be better spent on them.
- f6v 4y ago
  Why? Germany doesn’t pursue political objectivity anyway.

throw457 4y ago

Just wait 10 years until we get rid of it again like we did with AMD and Infineon.

dontbenebby 4y ago
If they're willing to build a lot of processors rather than add dangerous features to use one chip or core or whatever maybe they can make it multiples of ten years this time ;-) Wenn sie bereit sind, viele Prozessoren zu bauen, anstatt gefährliche Funktionen hinzuzufügen, um einen Chip oder Kern oder was auch immer zu verwenden, können sie dieses Mal vielleicht ein Vielfaches von zehn Jahren schaffen ;-)
- april_22 4y ago
  Yes, Bosch just built a huge factory in Saxony
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    I hope they treat the workers well. Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop. (I think I can keep repairing this one for a while, sorry I'm a bad capitalist or whatever.)
    - flohofwoe 4y ago
      > Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop. Unless your laptop is also a car that's probably unlikely ;) (AFAIK the new Bosch fab will mainly produce chips for the car industry)
      - selimthegrim 4y ago
        Well I never thought the Transformers would be big with Germans
- biztos 4y ago
  No comment on the actual content, but I love how the German version is almost 30% longer ;-)

samwillis 4y ago

I honestly think this is something the UK should be doing too, however with the current political environment it wouldn’t be possible.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Once again EU taxpayer money bankrolling US tech dominance. When will we ever learn to build up our domestic tech industry? And before the chip hipsters crawl all over my back to prove we ackshually have a powerful domestic semi industry, please name me another EU company, other than ASML (a company 90% of people here never heard of before the chip shortage), that has the same margins, dominance and ability to shape the market, as much as the US based Intel, Quallcomm, AMD, Nvidia, Apple. I'll wait. The thing is, other than ASML, most of our domestic semi companies (NXP, ST, Ericsson, Nordic, Infineon, Bosch, AMS, etc.) are only competing for relatively low margin chips with high competition, therefore bring home relatively little money, compared to their US counterparts which have monopolized high margin sectors (general compute, AI, graphics, etc) and rake in the big bucks. Don't get me wrong, it's great we have our own semi industry, and we make great chips to boot, but I wish we could do more high margin products, as Chinese companies are hot on our heels with massive support from their government. Remember the failed attempt from the merger of ST-Ericsson to take on QUALCOMM's ARM Snapdragon SoCs and modems in the mobile space 10 years ago? I was talking to a former Dutch manager who had a stint there and his reply dropped my jaw: "Yeah, that merger was never meant to ship any chips that can beat Quallcomm, it was just a vehicle designed to suck up as money as possible and funnel it into the right pockets, while some managers pad their resumes so they can move up at other companies later." Source: Former EU semi engineer.

DSingularity 4y ago
That’s called interest on the Marshall plan.
nosianu 4y ago
Right... "TSMC, Samsung want slice of America's $52b chip subsidies" -- https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/tsmc_samsung_chip_subsidies/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/tsmc_samsung_chip_sub... "Intel and Micron pushing hard for subsidies from the US government" -- https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-and-micron-pushing-hard-for-subsidies-from-the-us-government/ https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-and-micron-pushing-hard-for-su... "Subsidy Tracker: Intel" -- https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/intel https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/intel "Intel boss presses Congress for manufacturing subsidies" -- https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/intel_chips_subsidy/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/intel_chips_subsidy/

dagurp 4y ago

Does fab mean factory here?

_Microft 4y ago
Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...

klelatti 4y ago

Open question. Will this be enough to support an ecosystem of related companies close by?

hunglee2 4y ago

German investment again going to foreign companies, the very opposite of strategic sovereignty. The Trump era should be enough evidence that there are no friends in geo-politics, just temporary alliances of convenience.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mantas 4y ago
Germany and strategic sovereignty… Looking at gas pipes, they have an alternative understanding of sovereignty.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  Well, if you have any alternative than gas pipes please let us know. Germany is already pushing for green techs. And, gas coming from another part of the continent is always more expensive than neighboring countries? Yes, they shouldn't have dismantled Nuclear Power. But after an incident in Japan, many people were nuclear phobic so can't blame politicians alone? That being said, I do agree that paying 5.5bn of taxpayers money to foreign tech is silly. Such money can be easily used in investing local companies which will provide more employement and ROI to Germany.
  - mantas 4y ago
    Germany could have been using existing pipes through eastern europe. That would have been damn nice insurance from Russian aggression. And for nuclear, IMO „nuclear phobia“ was financed from the same pockets as sea pipeline.
- hunglee2 4y ago
  an unstated and unrequited aspiration for sure.
- alaricus 4y ago
  Increasing trade with Russia is a good strategy. No need to follow America to WW3 or a new cold war.

waterlaw 4y ago

Intel spent tens of billions on stock buybacks and now they're getting subsidies to build fabs. Why does the middle class taxpayer have to bail everyone out, with lower living standards due to taxation and inflation.

jakobov 4y ago
It's about national security. A fab is necessary for national security
- alaricus 4y ago
  Subsidizing an American company is not necessary for Germany's security. In fact, it undermines it.
  - julianozen 4y ago
    I mean in theory but not in practice
  - ikinsey 4y ago
    Would you mind explaining why you think this is the case?
    - PKop 4y ago
      They are dependent on and subservient to the US and its geopolitical interests. We see this right now with Germany self-sabotaging it's own economy and industrial power by cutting off cheap Russian energy at the direction of US policy interests (Nord Stream 2 was agreed upon for years between Russia and Germany but thwarted at every turn, sanctioned etc by US).
      - WoahNoun 4y ago
        It was also hated by other EU countries: >President of the European Council Donald Tusk said that Nord Stream 2 is not in the EU's interests.[19] Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have questioned the different treatment of Nord Stream 2 and South Stream projects.[19][20] Some claim that the project violates the long-term declared strategy of the EU to diversify its gas supplies.[21] A letter, signed by the leaders of nine EU countries, was sent to the EC in March 2016, warning that the Nord Stream 2 project contradicts the European energy policy requirements that suppliers to the EU should not control the energy transmission assets, and that access to the energy infrastructure must be secured for non-consortium companies.[22][23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2

mcdermott 4y ago

It's too late for Intel. x86 doesn't have a future, ARM64 SoC architectures like Apple's M1 (TSMC) are the future of computing. Just as fast (and often faster in many benchmarks) with only 20-25% the power consumption and heat. Even Microsoft is preparing for the shift to ARM, at Build 2⁰22 they announced project Voltera, an ARM Windows 11 PC loaded with Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 7 all for ARM to give devs a head start for the coming ARM Microsoft systems. Microsoft will partner with Qualcomm and have their own custom SoC like the M1. Intel is toast (because their CPUs are too hot). This is going to be a massive shift in the PC industry.

freemint 4y ago
Intel protects itself against x86_64 becoming deprecated by investing into RISC-V.
machinekob 4y ago
But Intel is investing in ARM/RISC-V and x86 will be with us a bit longer (probably even 10+years). I would be more concerned about AMD then I'm about Intel tbh.
- bilger321 4y ago
  AMD recently acquired Xilinx, who makes ARM SoCs https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html
  - nereye 4y ago
    Intel acquired Altera in 2015, Altera has been producing FPGAs with ARM cores since 2011 at least (https://www.embedded.com/altera-integrates-arm-processor-in-fpgas/ https://www.embedded.com/altera-integrates-arm-processor-in-...). The Xilinx devices above are also FPGAs with ARM cores (a natural evolution from FPGAs with soft cores, MicroBlaze in the case of Xilinx and Nios in the case of Altera).
- 0des 4y ago
  than

DeathArrow 4y ago

Why can't everyone get a help from the German government to start a business? I want to grow cucumbers, so it would be nice for Germany to pay to help me start a cucumber growing business.

freemint 4y ago
Joke is on you. Germany kinda does that for the unemployed https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/arbeitslosengeld/existenzgruendung-gruendungszuschuss https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/arbeitslosengeld/existenzgruen... And in case you want to do something larger there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KfW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KfW which at least gives you loans.
stnikolauswagne 4y ago
I mean germany/the EU does pay subsidies to (cucumber)-farmers [0], there is literally billions each year flowing into keeping farmers somewhat afloat. [0]https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2013-11/agrarreform-landwirtschaft-eu?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.de%2F https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2013-11/agrarreform-landwirts...
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  Maybe I am an US citizen and I want to start a business in Germany.
  - stnikolauswagne 4y ago
    Okay, in that case you are eligible for a variety of loans, up to 40% of the costs of establishing the business, granted you are willing to establish it in the more rural eastern regions [0], additionally there is a wide variety of relatively lenient credits available for founding companies [1]. [0] https://www.iamexpat.de/career/entrepreneur-germany/start-up-grants-financial-incentives-businesses https://www.iamexpat.de/career/entrepreneur-germany/start-up... [1]
- Aerroon 4y ago
  The trick that he's missing is that first you hire a lawyer to figure out all the subsidies you can get and then you see whether the business is viable!

ho_schi 4y ago

Everyone is paying for chip fabs. This isn't new? Especially Intel and TSMC are in a position where they can require money for a fab. Together with Infineon, NXP or ASML we could built up own production lines but these will also cost a lot of money. Because China is doing the same. Europe just missed to do the same, strategic investment into the economy. Free trade...China never believed in and we shouldn't neither.

unfocused 4y ago

It's going to be a while before we are not depending on China. If you look at this 2020 Apple List of Suppliers: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supplier-List.pdf https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp... you can see the large variety of companies they they rely on for manufacturing. Plugging this into Excel, you get the following distribution: Country Count: China 156 Japan 40 US 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23 Vietnam 21 Malaysia 15 Philippines 15 Thailand 15 Singapore 14 India 9 Germany 8 United Kingdom 4 Austria 3 Mexico 3 Belgium 2 Brazil 2 Czech Republic 2 France 2 Indonesia 2 Australia 1 Cambodia 1 Costa Rica 1 Finland 1 Ireland 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Malta 1 Netherlands 1 Norway 1 apologies for the formatting.

throwaway4good 4y ago
However the suppliers this fab with its EU-subsidies aims to outcompete are not in China but in Taiwan, the US, and South Korea.
seany 4y ago
China 156 Japan 40 US 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23 Vietnam 21 Malaysia 15 Philippines 15 Thailand 15 Singapore 14 India 9 Germany 8 United Kingdom 4 Austria 3 Mexico 3 Belgium 2 Brazil 2 Czech Republic 2 France 2 Indonesia 2 Australia 1 Cambodia 1 Costa Rica 1 Finland 1 Ireland 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Malta 1 Netherlands 1 Norway 1
- unfocused 4y ago
  Much love! Thanks for the formatting :)
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blackoil 4y ago

N19PEDL2 4y ago

How many RISC-V research centers could be created with that money?

MikusR 4y ago
And build those designs where?
alaricus 4y ago
A lot.
i5heu 4y ago
RISC-V research center do not build 5nm chips at industrial scale. And without 5nm chips at industrial scale, RISC-V research is useless.

api 4y ago

Sounds like a bargain given the local skill base support and industrial autonomy. The most economical solution is to hand virtually all industrial expertise and capacity to China, who not coincidentally massively subsidizes its industrial base. China's government puts its thumb on the scale. Not doing the same is unilateral disarmament.

throwaway4good 4y ago

What is even funnier is that Intel has plenty money and is profitable and dividend paying even though nearly all of Intel's fabs are in the US (and thus suffering from the high cost level compared to Asia is a part justification for these subsidies).

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
They lost $ 20 billion in the last year.
- phkahler 4y ago
  Intel earnings per share is still positive. Do you mean they made less than before?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  They made $20 billion last year.

pmoriarty 4y ago

A more interdependent world is a friendlier and more secure world. When countries are completely independent of each other they will be able to more easily shrug off economic consequences of their aggression. Economic ties also foster greater cultural exchange and understanding, so the less of those there are the insular and navel-gazing the inhabitants of such countries will tend to be, which will also increase the likelihood of conflict as people tend to fear those who they aren't in close contact with and don't understand. As bad as the world is today, it'll get much worse as countries isolate.

sofixa 4y ago
That has been the prevailing thought since before WWI, but multiple World Wars and Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year have proven otherwise. Do you know who was the biggest trading partner of Nazi Germany on the eve of Operation Barbarossa? You guessed it, the Soviet Union. It was responsible for the vast majority of imports of critical resources like various metals, oil, grain, etc. It didn't stop Hitler. Do you know who were the main buyers of Russian gas, and via which country that gas arrives to them? You guessed it, EU, and the main pipelines pass through Ukraine. On paper, yes, you're absolutely right. But you're assuming rationality where it's far from certain. Same as in the 1930s, we have a bunch of empty populists everywhere who are anything but rational, intent on blaming everything bad on "bad guys of today", be it the EU, migrants, Soros, the Jews, Nazis, have your pick. With those types of people, you can't assume rationality of actions. Brexit wasn't a rational decision, to give but one example. Poland infringing on press and human freedoms against the will of the EU, while receiving billions of aid from the EU, isn't rational.
- dv_dt 4y ago
  The difficult thing about even very good prevention is that the absence of events is difficult to prove. Is interconnection perfect? obviously not. Does interconnection prevent more conflicts vs fully independent nations? Likely yes. I think what we are seeing is societies and governments forgetting how bad wars are for stability, on a backdrop of slowing or reversing quality of life for many modern nations.

sylware 4y ago

??? Why intel??? Why not ASML???

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lkbm 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Germany would also find value in an ASML facility, but as I understand it, ASML doesn't make fabs. They make the tools technology used in fabs. They're different parts of the supply chains. Even if they were both in the same business, it's not like ordering whichever brand you want from Amazon. If ASML wants to build something in Germany, they will, and Germany can incentivize that, but it's still up to them. Germany can't just tell them to do it anyway.
- sylware 4y ago
  So the 50 billions euros fund which is supposed to be used to build a EU own top-notch chip foundry will be own and built by the US? Is this a joke?

cynusx 4y ago

Can't they just give them a subsidy to invest in a friendly country instead? This factory will die the moment the subsidies stop

kristianpaul 4y ago

This could be a good chance for some universities with Chip Lab/Fab facilities across the world to start manufacturing even at small scale is important for every country self-sufficiency.

LatteLazy 4y ago

I think one of the lessons the EU has learnt from the last 10 years is you cannot rely on international trade. Trump and now Putin mean the EU needs domestic weapons, chips, energy and a few other things...

bell-cot 4y ago

Wow. For those old (or well-read enough in history) enough to have a sense of just how dominant Germany once was, world-wide, in science, technology, chemistry, optics, etc. etc....this news feels kinda like a tombstone of German identity.

finiteseries 4y ago
The median age in Germany is now 46 years old, ie closer to retirement than doing anything new/risky.
audunw 4y ago
Umm, the German company Zeiss is the only company in the world capable of making the mirrors for the EUV machines used in this factory. They're still have world leaders in power semiconductors with Bosch and Infineon. This isn't the only fab in Germany btw. Global Foundries has a fab in Dresden doing advanced low-power FDSOI ICs. You can't expect a single country to lead a majority of technical fields forever. That's unrealistic. I'd say Germany is doing completely fine.
flohofwoe 4y ago
Lol, Germany was never anywhere close to being a leader in chip manufacturing (and why should it in a global market). Arguably, even East Germany had a better chip industry than West Germany in the 70s and 80s, but that was still 5..10 years behind the state of the art.
bell-cot 4y ago
For those really not familiar with the history - German's global dominance ran from roughly the early 1800's to ~1930. We're talking the era of the German Customs Union - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_customs_union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_customs_union That Union was mostly driven by the Kingdom of Prussia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia

verisimi 4y ago

Wow. These deals amaze me. Imagine you got given subsidies to live somewhere. I'm not talking about your wages - I'm talking about something extra. Well that is a direct equivalent here. How any governance structure can think this is ok boggles the mind. Is it not clear how we already live in a fascist state - where government + corporations are working together at the people's expense? $5.5 billion.

mikkergp 4y ago
Serious question - How do you propose governments encourage companies to do what they want? Yes it’s a subsidy but it also seems like the government in this case is essentially buying a service. I guess Germany would hire people to build this factory directly rather than paying a foreign company to do it? Which I imagine would be more expensive if it’s even possible to do. Do you think there are better ways to do this within capitalism or are you proposing we dismantle capitalism?
- trasz 4y ago
  >Serious question - How do you propose governments encourage companies In some countries capitalism simply works the opposite way.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Companies pay governments to do business there? I mean this sounds great, I would love my grocery store to pay me to shop there. How do we make this happen? It seems to me sometimes like waiting for these kind of things to happen is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
    - trasz 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
- verisimi 4y ago

Patrol8394 4y ago

Germany always enforce EU rules on all other members, but when it comes to them, they couldn't give two f ...

Shadonototra 4y ago

EU is funding american companies now... what a joke this is Couldn't Volkswagen build their own foundation for a sovereign and independent ecosystem?

malchow 4y ago

It will be clear that this money was wasted within ten years. What a government needs to do to attract real manufacturing entrepreneurs: - pro family policies (for people) - pro immigration (for people) - cut environmental laws (for capex make-right) - cut business taxes (for gm make-right) - cut personal taxes (for people) - fight back against china-sponsored economic maneuvering at the multilateral level (to create a competitive market)

bcrosby95 4y ago
> - cut environmental laws (for capex make-right) I'm with you on all but this. Cleaning up the environment is a very expensive, time consuming process. There's still about 20 superfund sites in Santa Clara County due to its heyday of tech manufacturing. Our local community has been fighting for the cleanup of a 60 year old disaster. That they agreed to clean up 20 years ago. But they've barely started.
onepointsixC 4y ago
And watch as your fledgling local business dies due to hundreds of billions of subsidies for foreign fabs. South Korea alone is subsidizing Semiconductors with $450Bn [1]. If you want local fabs, you need to spend money. Or you get to watch your automotive assembly lines stop because of chip shortages. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-unveils-450-billion-push-to-seize-global-chipmaking-crown https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-unv... [1 Non paywalled]: https://archive.ph/9Gs8q https://archive.ph/9Gs8q
IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
Germany hasn't been doing any of that except immigration, and it has fared exceptionally well over the last decades. Taiwan's chip industry is the result of massive subsidies that got it started.
rat87 4y ago
I'm not saying this won't be wasted but in also skeptical of your policy? And why do we care so much about manufacturing anyway?
4y ago

Linda703 4y ago

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Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

I was under the impression that this would count as direct government investment in a private company and would breach EU competition rules?

adventured 4y ago

> Whether or not additional funds are available from the EU is not known. Fine it out of Google, give it to Intel.

tester756 4y ago

Nice, I hope I'll be able to get job there What kind of skillset is needed there?

jupp0r 4y ago

It's really common for chip companies to shop around and start a bidding war to see where they can get the highest subsidies.

paganel 4y ago

Stupid move by Germany, giving even more money to the US corporations. In fact, the EU as a whole is presently doing just that, those Next Generation EU funds will, for a great part, find their place in the coffers of the big US tech companies. It goes like this: EU gives billions of dollars to EU national governments but with many strings attached -> an important part of those strings is related to digitisation -> the EU national governments redirect the money they received from Brussels to digitisation implementations -> US tech companies get even more wealthy, as there's almost no local European competitor that can compete when it comes to the cloud, hardware and even software (just think of all the EU funds that will go almost directly to paying Oracle licenses). Similar thing happens with re-directing EU money into China's coffers, as most of the EV batteries are now produced in China and there's a big push at the EU level for us, EU, citizens, to purchase EVs.

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alfalfasprout 4y ago
It's not very well stupid though if there isn't a great viable alternative, is it? The issue with there being no good local competitors is a more fundamental one-- it's extremely difficult to spin up a viable tech business in the EU, period. In part, this boils down to regulatory issues including tech companies needing to abide by a myriad of complex regulations but also things like fairly costly labor regulations.

omega3 4y ago

> It has been suggested that already-allocated funds from the €95.5-billion Horizon Europe budget could be re-purposed. EC president Ursula Von der Leyen has said that, in addition, she’ll find €12 billion from public/private sources. The rich get richer and stay rich. It's hard not to get cynical about the fact that the whole of Europe is working so that a couple of countries ensure their continuing wealth.

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clivend 4y ago

good luck to Russia to make its own chip fab now that no one will buy its gas

leonry 4y ago

Why Magdeburg? I have a really hard time to find an argument that puts the city in an advantageous position relative to other competitor places (like Dresden, Munich agglomeration, Rhein/Main area, Hamburg agglomeration).

FinnKuhn 4y ago
Cheap place to build, cheap place to live, cheap labour, pretty good infrastructure. All of the cities you mentioned are very expensive to built in, but also to live in.
wafriedemann 4y ago
If the government pays subsidies they will combine it with strengthening economically weaker areas. No one needs more high quality jobs in the overcrowded and overly expensive Munich area.
davidktr 4y ago
Why not? Cheap, Uni Magdeburg is pretty good in STEM, water (yes that is an issue!), close enough to Berlin and Wolfsburg (Volkswagen), good transportation.
dmitrij 4y ago
Already prepared grand space for industrial use with energy, water and public transport; 100% carbon neutral wind energy and very soon also water-neutrality were a few of the reasons given.
- leonry 4y ago
  True, space is a selling point.

cwkoss 4y ago

Elon Musk would be way cooler if he built 10 chip fabs instead of buying twitter

tester756 4y ago
doesn't one state of art fab cost more than that?
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Ah, some estimates put it as high as $20B, some as low as $3B. Still, two nice fabs would be cooler than twitter.
fomine3 4y ago
SpaceX is really cool work for national security. Starlink helps communication, Falcon helps trip to ISS without Russian ship.

Zigurd 4y ago

I have to wonder if deglobalization and expensive onshoring is as much of herd mentality as glocalization and offshoring have been. Sure, if the no college white males of the US get their demographic last hurrah and elect a populist isolationist who pulls America out of NATO, then, yeah, it's bad times for a rational set of international interdependencies. Or, if the Taiwan and Korean foundries are the best on the planet, everyone should contribute to the international stability it takes to maintain access to those resources. Almost every part of the tech industry benefits from global low-friction trade. Brexit regret is a solid majority opinion in the UK. The US recently lowered trade barriers to solar panels from China. Hopefully sanity prevails. While it is possible to overdo the offshoring and JIT inventories, increased trade volume makes everyone more prosperous.

robk 4y ago
39/47 regretting brexit is not a solid majority. https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
- Zigurd 4y ago
  Regret https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-boris-johnson-lies-b1980372.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-b...
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Brexit regret is always a solid majority in the minds of the diehards, who claimed the day after the 2016 referendum (seriously) that a) millions of Leave voters already regretted their votes, so b) a do-over was the only right and proper thing to do.