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Italy, Intel close to $5B deal for chip factory
- throwaway1777 4y agoThat’s small. The Arizona and Ohio ones are 20B+
- amelius 4y agoSalaries are lower in EU.
- yaantc 4y agoArizona and Ohio are silicon chip fabs, in Italy it would be a packaging fab taking silicon dies from other Intel fabs to produced packaged chips. Packaging can be pretty high tech and challenging nowadays, but it's not the same cost as silicon dies production.
- rr888 4y agoWe're going to be drowning in a glut of chips in 5 years.
- scrlk 4y ago..and the feast and famine cycle of the semiconductor industry continues. I suspect in 10 years time a lot of these factories will either be mothballed, closed, or the original plans scaled back.
- alephxyz 4y agoNot unless local governments keep subsidizing them to try and maintain domestic production.
- TrueSlacker0 4y agoWill we really be though? Chips are getting put into everything now and will only continue to expand as they get cheaper. Amazon and others putting Alexa or equivalent into everything. Necessary or not. Coffee is done, pings a phone. Dishwasher, etc. Not to mention vehicles. I wonder how long until my drill needlessly records how many holes it has drilled over it's lifetime. Or so that I can rent it and pay per hole drilled. Make more and they will be used. As much as I will personally miss dumb equipment that just worked.
- stevesearer 4y agoEven Febreze has a plug-in product that apparent uses a chip: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210203005168/en/Scent-Just-Got-Smarter-with-New-Febreze-Fade-Defy-PLUG%E2%84%A2 https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210203005168/en/Sce...
- kube-system 4y agoIf you have a battery powered drill, it probably has at least one chip for the battery management and one for the speed control. Silicon ICs have been commonplace in appliances for decades now, “smart” or not. My appliances are all dumb as bricks and there are probably a couple dozen ICs in my kitchen.
- rr888 4y agoPlug-in drills are much better than battery. :)
- galdosdi 4y agoNot if you're using it on a job site. A battery operated drill is a lot lighterweight than having to lug around a gas or diesel generator to plug your electric corded drill into.
- kube-system 4y agoIf it were 2005, I'd agree with you.
- Ekaros 4y agoWhat node size are these new fabs aiming for? And exactly for what are they geared for? CPUs? GPUs? Ram? Flash? Other chips?
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoNot really. Intel, Nvidia and AMD have learned to ramp supply up and down depending on demand to ensure they keep their margins very healthy. Even if their costs come down due to fab oversupply, don't expect them to pass their savings along to you and me. They have near monopolies in their sectors so have no incentive to lower prices too much.
- dyingkneepad 4y agoI don't know. With all these threats of war between China and Taiwan, I would imagine the exact opposite scenario is also a real possibility, where a conflict arises and then for some reason TSMC is unable to operate for at least a while.
- politelemon 4y agoPlease educate me! I often hear 'billions' quoted in chip factory related deals. What is it about chip manufacturing that's costing so much, which requires such a scale of investment? Is it the R&D, or are the factories too sophisticated, or are there too many people involved, or something else?
- amelius 4y agoSome of the machines are already 100s of millions of $.
- Cyph0n 4y agoAll of the above. You need thousands of highly skilled engineers to operate an advanced fab. You need extremely advanced and expensive specialized equipment - look up ASML for a general idea of what this equipment does. You need a huge, purpose-built cleanroom that is many orders of magnitude “cleaner” than an operating room. You need a structure (and location) that has virtually zero vibration or noise. You need an constant, high-volume supply of a bunch of resources including water, power, and sand. And the list goes on. Edit: Good video on ASML and semiconductor fabrication equipment in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSVHp6CAyQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSVHp6CAyQ8
- tpmx 4y agoIs it true that it's common TSMC practice to use PhD:s to continously babysit and tweak manufacturing processes? Does Intel handle that aspect differently?
- 4y ago
- sylware 4y agoWhy intel? Aren't EU supposed to become independent about top-notch chip manufacturing? Scam? Oh, and node size?
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoAs an European, because outside of ASML and a few other small but important suppliers to the semi industry like Zeiss and Trumpf, we don't have any high margin giant dogs in this fight the size of Intel, GloFo, Samsung or TSMC that can extract huge profits. And that's before we go into top fabless companies (AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm) where the US just mops the floor with all EU companies put together. The EU in general is just weak, old fashioned and too risk adverse and when it comes to heavily investing in cutting edge tech. And defense. And paying competitive wages. And resistance to offshoring. And energy independence. And being proactive on Russian threats. And sticking up to China. And border security. etc. At least we have Airbus. cries in €60k/year senior engineer salary
- trumbitta2 4y agoYou get 60k? I get way less.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIn a high cost country, as a mid-senior, before the 45% taxes, where a decent small apartment is >400k€ and a house is nearly one million €. Also, don't compare yourself with random people on the internet. No matter how much you make, someone will always make way more than you with less experience and less work. It's a never ending vicious cycle towards depression and self loathing.
- bagacrap 4y agoyeah the EU (governing bodies) doesn't seem to like or understand tech too much
- bee_rider 4y agoThis is a packaging and assembly plant, so it probably isn't poaching the sort of talent that the EU would need to, say, implement a new process node if they were going to try to do something like that.
- mercy_dude 4y agoInteresting choice but Italy doesn’t seem to be a great choice to me. In fact most of Southern Europe has endemic economic problems that can degenerate them completely to bankruptcy and other larger societal problems. If you have not followed the latest Italian politics I recommend you do so because they are (and have been for a while) in a mess. If a brexit like event happens, which I think if ever happens, Italy and Spain (along with Greece) would be the first to break up from EU. I think countries such as France and Germany would be more stable choices but corporations are going to leverage workers lower wages to do anything and this is another case even if that means risking long term stability.
- scandox 4y agoWell countries like people need opportunities even when things are not going well. If we take your logic once a country is on the down slope we would just abandon them? Personally I'm glad to hear of positive news coming out of Italy.
- udev 4y agoHave mercy, my dude! If you really follow Italian politics you'd know it's been like that for 200+ years -- that's how the place operates. And with all that going on they managed to create a world-class automotive industry, ship-building industry, industrial equipment industry, etc. I have the feeling you are talking about Italy through the lens of western media, and not through first-hand knowledge or experience. Industrially, Italy is much more like South Korea than Greece or Spain.
- mercy_dude 4y agoOh I know that. Italians are brilliant people and much of what we have today including art, literature (not just technology) we owe it to them. But you must acknowledge economic grievances have consequences on the health of a nation and its populace. Italy is a favourite spring travel destination for me and over the decade I have seen how the people in that place, especially in South, have become poorer, become increasingly pessimistic and in general have turned to nihilism (not all but significant). Wage is and has been low and the cost of living has been rising rapidly and young people (not all but many) are subscribing to very dangerous ideologies (both left and right). This stifling will only get worse, even in the middle of a tightening cycle, ECB is insisting they have to keep buying Italian bonds to keep them afloat, what signal does that send? Even euro dollar market is taking a hit partly because of the political turmoil in Italy. There is a huge migrant population that are “ghettoized” so to speak and there doesn’t seem to be a long term plan with them.
- clove 4y agoHonest question: Why are all these chip companies building fabs in first-world, expensive countries (e.g., Japan, the US, Italy)? Wouldn't building a fab, say, somewhere in Africa, be a lot cheaper?
- webmobdev 4y agoNo. You also need stable government and good infrastructure (electricity, water supply, transportation etc). Most importantly, you need highly educated human resource in this field. (Importing workers from other countries doesn't make sense as you would have to pay high wages, negating the cost advantage you are seeking). Note also that you need supportive government policies - fabs consume huge amount of water and the treated water released back still is unfit and polluting. Water is a really a tricky issue in many countries because you need it for agriculture and everyday use, and this can often become a contentious political issue. Most governments are not willing to standup to farmers and ordinary citizens if there is a water shortage as they know that's a battle they can't often win politically.
- sloucher 4y ago> You need stable government So yes, Italy is the obvious choice :-).
- clove 4y agoThanks for your answer. So for the first-world countries, what makes the current counties being targeted the chosen targets? Why Italy instead of Israel? Why Japan instead of Germany?
- KoftaBob 4y agoIsrael has an Intel fab already
- Throwawayaerlei 4y agoWikipedia's list of fab lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... has 4 in Italy, 3 Intel ones in Israel and 2 by an Israeli firm named Tower Semiconductor, which on its page has 2 in the US plus there's a joint venture with more. To get an idea about how this can go in the less cutting edge market, all but one of their fab lines was purchased from another company or in one case acquired through a merger.
- aj7 4y agoThis apparently is not a fab. It is packaging/assembly. Can’t figure out why it’s this expensive, unless it’s absolutely huge. Can’t figure out why Italy for something done usually in Penang, Costa Rica, etc. Please enlighten me.