7 ms·

Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering crim

Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering criminal dictators; it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap.

pjc50 4y ago
There's an "EU Chips Act" happening as well: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/a-revitalized-semiconductor-industry-will-drive-europes-digital-future/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/a-revitalized-semicon... It makes sense. ASML are in the Netherlands, as are NXP. ST are in France. Germany has quite a bit of semiconductor production for the automotive industry. It'll be slow and expensive to get there though. There's not many places in the EU where you could simply drop a Shenzen in, demolishing historic buildings and natural environment along the way.
- AdamN 4y ago
  They're not going to build a fab in downtown Heidelberg :-) There are plenty of industrial parks available near transportation, water, and electricity in Europe to build this out. This also aligns with how the modern chip ecosystem works where the fab components are coming from Europe, the advanced chips are coming from Taiwan, other chips are coming from across SEA, and final assembly is happening in China. What I suspect will happen is that Europe will start printing advanced chips and most of them will be shipped to China for integration. If a conflict/dispute breaks out, switching to European assemblers will be expensive but totally doable with a short-term investment (2-3 years??)
- Animatronio 4y ago
  Yes, those pesky medieval castles all over the place. And narrow cobbled streets, only two riders abreast. Those are the major problems of Europe, not bureaucracy and indecision at the highest level.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Both can and are part of the problem.
- steve1977 4y ago
  Also, there are laws to protect the environment in Europe. We’ve conveniently outsourced the dirty work to China etc.
  - Rinzler89 4y ago
    How did we outsource it? We still have semiconductor manufacturing in EU. It's just way behind the cutting edge, and not because it's cleaner than the one in US or Taiwan. Semiconductor manufacturing is dirty business. I live in the EU next to one such fab and whenever local environmental concerns are raised about the fab, since nasty chemicals are sometimes found in the river the plant uses, the official response is always "the exact process is confidential, we cannot allow external inspectors inside, but we can pinky swear we conform to all regulations via self audits" and the government rolls with that as the unofficial response is "stop bothering us about the environment or we relocate production to Asia and you're left with a bunch of unemployed engineers and tax hole in your city coffers".
- Rinzler89 4y ago
  > ST are in France. Yeah, about that: "STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland" The lengths French and Italian corporations will go to to avoid taxes and red tape in their home countries, it's almost poetic. Even Airbus is now headquartered in Leiden, Netherlands instead of it's original place of Blagnac, France.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Why would you want to pay more taxes and become uncompetitive if you can avoid it?
    - Rinzler89 4y ago
      I get that many individuals and companies see taxes as wasted money or theft, but taxes pay to fund the education of the workforce that will work for said corporations and fund the infrastructure used by said corporations to build and transport their goods, including stuff like courts which companies can use do protect their IP or military force projection to protect their assets and investments abroad. Without the skilled workforce or infrastructure the company will for sure not be competitive. What most big companies are now doing to get insanely wealthy is have most governments foot the bill for the infrastructure, protection, and education of their workforce, while all the profits from the fruit of their labor go directly to shareholders and the governments don't see a dime in taxes so stuff like education, healthcare and infrastructure is falling apart while corporate profits have never been higher.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        > see taxes as wasted money or theft, You are mixing chicken and eggs here. We had education and skilled people before huge governments stealing massive amounts of taxes from people existed. The disposable income from the population gave rise to bureaucrats who love to tax everything under and pretend that they world cannot run without them. That's pure twisted logic.
Aromasin 4y ago
Already being planned by Intel. They're building a new leading edge fab in Magdeburg, Germany [1]. This is backed by the new European Chips Act [2]. Wheels have started turning very quickly with regards to home-grown semiconductors in 2022. [1] https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/newsroom/news/eu-news-2022-release.html https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/newsroom/news/eu-n... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_729 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...
- xiphias2 4y ago
  If Intel is not good enough for US, why would it be good for EU? It's clear that EU did what US wanted instead of what would be in its interest.
  - totalZero 4y ago
    Intel is making the right capex moves to position itself for a future situation where Taiwanese production could get interrupted. Intel is right alongside TSMC and Samsung at the leading edge and it would be an exaggeration to suggest otherwise. Marginal differences in road map and quality over the short term don't tell us the full picture in a business where course-corrections take years and years to bear fruit. 20B in Ohio: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-announces-next-us-site-landmark-investment-ohio.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-... 20B in Arizona: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-breaks-ground-two-new-leading-edge-chip-factories-arizona.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > If Intel is not good enough for US, why would it be good for EU? Who said they're not good enough? They're slightly worse than TSMC, but still put out competitive chips for desktops, laptops and servers. Slightly more expensive, slightly higher power consumption but still, perfectly acceptable and still the market leader in some areas. > It's clear that EU did what US wanted instead of what would be in its interest. No, it's not clear. Why would the EU do that? They did the best they could given the very limited choice present.
jwr 4y ago
> We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering criminal dictators I'm not sure we're learning, though. At the moment, it seems that we are not only still buying the energy and resources from said warmongering criminal dictators (thus funding their war of aggression), but also setting up institutions to patrol gas pipelines, so that said dictator cannot blow them up as easily and so that we can buy even more resources from said dictator. You couldn't make this up. In light of this, I have little hope for rational policy making regarding China and chip production, unfortunately.
- vetinari 4y ago
  > (thus funding their war of aggression) I see this repeated as a matra, in a way of Carthago delenda est. But it is not true. Said warmongering dictators do not need dollars or euros to wage any war. The entire chain of the war machine is in local currency, backed by local resources. They do not need anything there, that has to be bought for dollars or euros. They are not some third would countries that have to buy their weapons abroad. By repeating this mantra, we are only lying to ourselves.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > The entire chain of the war machine is in local currency, backed by local resources. Not really. There are already signs that the Russian military industry is in hot water now because there are no Russian semiconductor fabs that can supply the type of chips needed for anything beyond dumb ballistic missiles [1]. And it's not just chips, but also other basic electronic components or modules whose manufacturing has long since gone to China and other countries, some of which are under the scope of international sanctions against Russia. > They are not some third would countries that have to buy their weapons abroad. They are buying a ton of drones from Iran, for example, or Soviet-era stocks of artillery munition from North Korea [2]. > Said warmongering dictators do not need dollars or euros to wage any war. Oh yes they do. No country on this planet is self-sufficient, not even the US. And it's not just about military equipment, it's about basic necessities of life, especially medicine and food. Russia needs money to buy these abroad, and for that they need foreign currency. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hunts-western-parts-to-run-its-war-machines/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hu... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/politics/russia-north-korea-artillery.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/politics/russia-north-...
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap. Not to defend China, but the west loves their cheap manufacturing, ask Apple, to name one. You can't blame them only when it suits you.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
It's a bad idea to depend on the outside for energy and resources in general. Not just on warmongering criminal dictators. Buying US gas for a fortune is far from ideal, for example. Not blaming anyone, obviously any country will look after themselves first. If resource scarcity starts hitting hard, we won't be able to expect external countries to just send us resources as if nothing happened, even if they are free countries and good allies. And that's without even mentioning that who knows which countries will be free and which will be dictatorships in 20-30 years.
- wazoox 4y ago
  You now that back in 1300BC tin to make bronze in Egypt or Greece was imported from far away Afghanistan? Do you know that in 10000BC people traded seashells in Siberia, thousands of km away from the ocean? It's a good idea to be as independent as possible, but no country was ever entirely self-sufficient. Not even North Korea.
hahamaster 4y ago
But how? Develop advanced chip manufacturing in 5 years’ time? Impossible.
steve1977 4y ago
And it’s not even a technological dependence strictly speaking, as pretty much all of the technology actually comes from the west. It’s just manufacturing.
huijzer 4y ago
Actually, Europe is doing pretty good due to having a monopoly on making chip making machines via ASML in the Netherlands which relies heavily on Carl Zeiss in Germany. Fun fact by the way, at some point Japan and Europe were very close in state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing while the US didn’t have the capabilities anymore because it was outcompeted by Japan. At that point, the US donated funds and 20 years of research to ASML since it was better than letting Japan win the race, according to Chip War by Chris Miller.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  having a 'monopoly on making chip making machines' is not the same as having fabs.
- spaniard89277 4y ago
  Yeah, but local fabs in Europe are far, far away from Intel, TSMC and Samsung. Infineon, NXP and STM are wayy behind.
  - float4 4y ago
    Why do we even want cutting edge fabs in Europe? We have no companies that design cutting edge logic chips here. Literally none. Why invest 20 billion dollars (or what is the price of a cutting edge fab these days?) to create supply without demand? Or do we seriously expect that US companies will generate significant demand even though TSMC and Samsung are already building heavily subsidized fabs in the US?
    - justahuman74 4y ago
      > Or do we seriously expect that US companies will generate significant demand Yes I think so, presuming that there is not an over-supply of capacity. US companies would much rather rely on an EU country than one that is being threatened with invasion over a small gap of sea. US local supply will never be enough.
      - 4y ago
eastbound 4y ago
> Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. Sure! France is betting everything with investing for an Intel factory here, the non-fashionable manufacturer that is getting excluded of the market because their chip designs are outdated. If my tax revenue can be used to maintain old actors afloat and create jobs to teach the French how to do things that don’t perform, I’m more than happy.
Symbiote 4y ago
TSMC is Taiwanese with factories in Taiwan.
FieryTransition 4y ago
We are already on the way, as the EU is securing investments of 43 billion euro for the semiconductor industry[0]. We also have ASML, which TSMC are heavily relying on, since no one makes the machines they do. [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2022)733585 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BR...
CoastalCoder 4y ago
China doesn't strike me as warmongering, per se. My read is that China is expansionistic, and military power is just one tool in their toolbox.
bostonian10 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

There's an "EU Chips Act" happening as well: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/a-revitalized-semiconductor-industry-will-drive-europes-digital-future/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/a-revitalized-semicon... It makes sense. ASML are in the Netherlands, as are NXP. ST are in France. Germany has quite a bit of semiconductor production for the automotive industry. It'll be slow and expensive to get there though. There's not many places in the EU where you could simply drop a Shenzen in, demolishing historic buildings and natural environment along the way.

AdamN 4y ago
They're not going to build a fab in downtown Heidelberg :-) There are plenty of industrial parks available near transportation, water, and electricity in Europe to build this out. This also aligns with how the modern chip ecosystem works where the fab components are coming from Europe, the advanced chips are coming from Taiwan, other chips are coming from across SEA, and final assembly is happening in China. What I suspect will happen is that Europe will start printing advanced chips and most of them will be shipped to China for integration. If a conflict/dispute breaks out, switching to European assemblers will be expensive but totally doable with a short-term investment (2-3 years??)
Animatronio 4y ago
Yes, those pesky medieval castles all over the place. And narrow cobbled streets, only two riders abreast. Those are the major problems of Europe, not bureaucracy and indecision at the highest level.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Both can and are part of the problem.
steve1977 4y ago
Also, there are laws to protect the environment in Europe. We’ve conveniently outsourced the dirty work to China etc.
- Rinzler89 4y ago
  How did we outsource it? We still have semiconductor manufacturing in EU. It's just way behind the cutting edge, and not because it's cleaner than the one in US or Taiwan. Semiconductor manufacturing is dirty business. I live in the EU next to one such fab and whenever local environmental concerns are raised about the fab, since nasty chemicals are sometimes found in the river the plant uses, the official response is always "the exact process is confidential, we cannot allow external inspectors inside, but we can pinky swear we conform to all regulations via self audits" and the government rolls with that as the unofficial response is "stop bothering us about the environment or we relocate production to Asia and you're left with a bunch of unemployed engineers and tax hole in your city coffers".
Rinzler89 4y ago
> ST are in France. Yeah, about that: "STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland" The lengths French and Italian corporations will go to to avoid taxes and red tape in their home countries, it's almost poetic. Even Airbus is now headquartered in Leiden, Netherlands instead of it's original place of Blagnac, France.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Why would you want to pay more taxes and become uncompetitive if you can avoid it?
  - Rinzler89 4y ago
    I get that many individuals and companies see taxes as wasted money or theft, but taxes pay to fund the education of the workforce that will work for said corporations and fund the infrastructure used by said corporations to build and transport their goods, including stuff like courts which companies can use do protect their IP or military force projection to protect their assets and investments abroad. Without the skilled workforce or infrastructure the company will for sure not be competitive. What most big companies are now doing to get insanely wealthy is have most governments foot the bill for the infrastructure, protection, and education of their workforce, while all the profits from the fruit of their labor go directly to shareholders and the governments don't see a dime in taxes so stuff like education, healthcare and infrastructure is falling apart while corporate profits have never been higher.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      > see taxes as wasted money or theft, You are mixing chicken and eggs here. We had education and skilled people before huge governments stealing massive amounts of taxes from people existed. The disposable income from the population gave rise to bureaucrats who love to tax everything under and pretend that they world cannot run without them. That's pure twisted logic.

Aromasin 4y ago

Already being planned by Intel. They're building a new leading edge fab in Magdeburg, Germany [1]. This is backed by the new European Chips Act [2]. Wheels have started turning very quickly with regards to home-grown semiconductors in 2022. [1] https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/newsroom/news/eu-news-2022-release.html https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/newsroom/news/eu-n... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_729 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...

xiphias2 4y ago
If Intel is not good enough for US, why would it be good for EU? It's clear that EU did what US wanted instead of what would be in its interest.
- totalZero 4y ago
  Intel is making the right capex moves to position itself for a future situation where Taiwanese production could get interrupted. Intel is right alongside TSMC and Samsung at the leading edge and it would be an exaggeration to suggest otherwise. Marginal differences in road map and quality over the short term don't tell us the full picture in a business where course-corrections take years and years to bear fruit. 20B in Ohio: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-announces-next-us-site-landmark-investment-ohio.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-... 20B in Arizona: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-breaks-ground-two-new-leading-edge-chip-factories-arizona.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...
- sofixa 4y ago
  > If Intel is not good enough for US, why would it be good for EU? Who said they're not good enough? They're slightly worse than TSMC, but still put out competitive chips for desktops, laptops and servers. Slightly more expensive, slightly higher power consumption but still, perfectly acceptable and still the market leader in some areas. > It's clear that EU did what US wanted instead of what would be in its interest. No, it's not clear. Why would the EU do that? They did the best they could given the very limited choice present.

jwr 4y ago

> We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering criminal dictators I'm not sure we're learning, though. At the moment, it seems that we are not only still buying the energy and resources from said warmongering criminal dictators (thus funding their war of aggression), but also setting up institutions to patrol gas pipelines, so that said dictator cannot blow them up as easily and so that we can buy even more resources from said dictator. You couldn't make this up. In light of this, I have little hope for rational policy making regarding China and chip production, unfortunately.

vetinari 4y ago
> (thus funding their war of aggression) I see this repeated as a matra, in a way of Carthago delenda est. But it is not true. Said warmongering dictators do not need dollars or euros to wage any war. The entire chain of the war machine is in local currency, backed by local resources. They do not need anything there, that has to be bought for dollars or euros. They are not some third would countries that have to buy their weapons abroad. By repeating this mantra, we are only lying to ourselves.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > The entire chain of the war machine is in local currency, backed by local resources. Not really. There are already signs that the Russian military industry is in hot water now because there are no Russian semiconductor fabs that can supply the type of chips needed for anything beyond dumb ballistic missiles [1]. And it's not just chips, but also other basic electronic components or modules whose manufacturing has long since gone to China and other countries, some of which are under the scope of international sanctions against Russia. > They are not some third would countries that have to buy their weapons abroad. They are buying a ton of drones from Iran, for example, or Soviet-era stocks of artillery munition from North Korea [2]. > Said warmongering dictators do not need dollars or euros to wage any war. Oh yes they do. No country on this planet is self-sufficient, not even the US. And it's not just about military equipment, it's about basic necessities of life, especially medicine and food. Russia needs money to buy these abroad, and for that they need foreign currency. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hunts-western-parts-to-run-its-war-machines/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hu... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/politics/russia-north-korea-artillery.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/politics/russia-north-...

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap. Not to defend China, but the west loves their cheap manufacturing, ask Apple, to name one. You can't blame them only when it suits you.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

It's a bad idea to depend on the outside for energy and resources in general. Not just on warmongering criminal dictators. Buying US gas for a fortune is far from ideal, for example. Not blaming anyone, obviously any country will look after themselves first. If resource scarcity starts hitting hard, we won't be able to expect external countries to just send us resources as if nothing happened, even if they are free countries and good allies. And that's without even mentioning that who knows which countries will be free and which will be dictatorships in 20-30 years.

wazoox 4y ago
You now that back in 1300BC tin to make bronze in Egypt or Greece was imported from far away Afghanistan? Do you know that in 10000BC people traded seashells in Siberia, thousands of km away from the ocean? It's a good idea to be as independent as possible, but no country was ever entirely self-sufficient. Not even North Korea.

hahamaster 4y ago

But how? Develop advanced chip manufacturing in 5 years’ time? Impossible.

steve1977 4y ago

And it’s not even a technological dependence strictly speaking, as pretty much all of the technology actually comes from the west. It’s just manufacturing.

huijzer 4y ago

Actually, Europe is doing pretty good due to having a monopoly on making chip making machines via ASML in the Netherlands which relies heavily on Carl Zeiss in Germany. Fun fact by the way, at some point Japan and Europe were very close in state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing while the US didn’t have the capabilities anymore because it was outcompeted by Japan. At that point, the US donated funds and 20 years of research to ASML since it was better than letting Japan win the race, according to Chip War by Chris Miller.

LegitShady 4y ago
having a 'monopoly on making chip making machines' is not the same as having fabs.
spaniard89277 4y ago
Yeah, but local fabs in Europe are far, far away from Intel, TSMC and Samsung. Infineon, NXP and STM are wayy behind.
- float4 4y ago
  Why do we even want cutting edge fabs in Europe? We have no companies that design cutting edge logic chips here. Literally none. Why invest 20 billion dollars (or what is the price of a cutting edge fab these days?) to create supply without demand? Or do we seriously expect that US companies will generate significant demand even though TSMC and Samsung are already building heavily subsidized fabs in the US?
  - justahuman74 4y ago
    > Or do we seriously expect that US companies will generate significant demand Yes I think so, presuming that there is not an over-supply of capacity. US companies would much rather rely on an EU country than one that is being threatened with invasion over a small gap of sea. US local supply will never be enough.
    - 4y ago

eastbound 4y ago

> Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. Sure! France is betting everything with investing for an Intel factory here, the non-fashionable manufacturer that is getting excluded of the market because their chip designs are outdated. If my tax revenue can be used to maintain old actors afloat and create jobs to teach the French how to do things that don’t perform, I’m more than happy.

Symbiote 4y ago

TSMC is Taiwanese with factories in Taiwan.

FieryTransition 4y ago

We are already on the way, as the EU is securing investments of 43 billion euro for the semiconductor industry[0]. We also have ASML, which TSMC are heavily relying on, since no one makes the machines they do. [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2022)733585 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BR...

CoastalCoder 4y ago

China doesn't strike me as warmongering, per se. My read is that China is expansionistic, and military power is just one tool in their toolbox.

bostonian10 4y ago