9 ms·

For those unfamiliar with the region (Saxony, Dresden): A registered association (e.V. in German) bluntly named "Silicon Saxony e.V." (est. in 2000) with over

by dav_Oz 3y ago

For those unfamiliar with the region (Saxony, Dresden): A registered association (e.V. in German) bluntly named "Silicon Saxony e.V." (est. in 2000) with over 450 members headquartered in Dresden pretty much sums up the infrastructure and ambition.[0][1] As pointed out the process TSMC’s 28/22 nanometer planar CMOS and 16/12 nanometer FinFET process technology (fabrication will begin in 2027) is not "cutting edge" but set to satisfy the (local) demand [2] mostly for the automotive industry. I guess a good conservative foothold given the current economic/geopolitical environment, but it's not like an innovation/investing boom or something. However from a perspective of a young student, Saxony/Dresden - as for now - is pretty inexpensive as compared to Berlin, Hamburg or Munich and has ample opportunities (TU Dresden, Fraunhofer, MPI, Helmholtz Zentrum ...). [From personal experience I find the people in Saxony (Leipzig, Dresden) have a more deep-rooted skepticism towards the federal government (or any centralized entity ruling over them) which can lead to a good thing - interesting perspectives/lively discussions or depending on your position less good - leaning more to the political (far) right.] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony [1]https://silicon-saxony.de/ https://silicon-saxony.de/ [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932023_global_chip_shortage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932023_global_chi...

seeekr 3y ago
minor nitpick: "e.V." in Germany is "eingetragener Verein", "registered association" and is a form of association that's extremely common and use for all kinds of things, e.g. local sports groups, interest groups, etc, so "e.V." in and of itself doesn't have anything to do with industry, though as in the above case it can be used that way!
- _Microft 3y ago
  The Max-Planck-Society [0][1] is also an e.V. and they have a yearly budget in the order of 2.5B€ or so. e.V.s can be very diverse in their nature. [0] (de) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft [1] (en) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society
mawadev 3y ago
I guess we are the redundancy to taiwan soon...
- throwaway1777 3y ago
  One of the redundancies, and not a very high end one
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    Not high end, but literally 1,000% the volume of high end. It will be automotive / embedded, you know, the chips that are in everything that's not a laptop or gaming rig.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      And just looking at it from a strategic point of view, those are the chips you want. Your industry runs on them, the vast majority of your industrie's products runs on it. Even more important: your military runs on those chips.
- Gasp0de 3y ago
  Not really. The factory will not produce CPUs GPUs or other high end chips.
jupp0r 3y ago
Having lived there for a decade, I must point out that you are painting a very one sided picture of the region. It's also a hot spot for Germany's populist right. I've witnessed visiting Indian colleagues of mine being threatened on the street for having dark skin and racist demonstrations are a weekly occurrence. I eventually moved away (among other reasons) because I didn't want my kids to grow up in this environment. It was quite difficult to hire international talent there for the same reasons. The city itself and university are super nice though.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Question: does that mean there are no indian restaurants in Dresden?
  - mainframed 3y ago
    There are. Why wouldn't there be? There are a lot of minorities in Germany, which (sadly have to) accept daily racism. Thankfully, at this point violence against minorities (~800 right extremists violent crimes in 2022 in whole Germany) is not as high such that people consider moving away. And if you get a job there and this is your ticket into immigration, probably a lot of people will accept this to get German citizenship. Finally, this will open you access to all the working places in Europe. My hope (as a West German) is that investments like this, will increase East-Germany's economy such that they are finally equal in terms of economic wealth, which is a large factor for racism/extremism. Same with opposing climate change laws.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >There are. Why wouldn't there be? Because he said Indians are attacked on the street in Dresden. If that's the case why would you move and open a restaurant there if you're Indian? Or was he exaggerating the issue?
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        "If that's the case why would you move and open a restaurant there if you're Indian?" Because some things do not show immediately and officially all is fine in Dresden. Also the racism that was hiding for some time now shows itself very openly.
coryfklein 3y ago
In How Asia Works[0], they contrast how Malaysia tried to modernize by jumping straight to high-tech steel factoris with how South Korea modernized by starting small – basically by making shitty cars – then scaled their way up. Turns out the latter simply works much better. My take, if you want to have a bleeding edge semiconductor industry in your country, first start by trying to build a boring, vanilla, outdated semiconductor industry. If you can do that, then try incrementally making it competitive with global markets. (Yes, this requires tariffs initially to bootstrap the process, otherwise nobody will by your shitty overpriced semiconductors.) [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-w...
- s_dev 3y ago
  The car industry in Germany already makes a huge number of chips for cars -- they just aren't as sophisticated or as small as the ones made in Taiwan suitable for personal computers so by your own logic they have followed the South Korean model already.
  - ckozlowski 3y ago
    I think the analogy might not fit here too well. While Germany hasn't had a current node fab in country for a while, they have in the recent past (AMD/Global Foundries Dresden comes to mind). I don't think it's at all like they're building an industry from scratch.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Dresden actually has a history with making chips: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  You do the cheap manufacturing to get from low-income to medium-income. Once at that level you need skilled workers to get to high-income. If you don't have these, low-cost jobs will move to other countries affected you are trapped. Germany already had a highly educated workforce and is high-income. No need to go back to square one. Source: Invisible China by Scott Rozelle which does a great job explaining economic development and comparing different countries.
_Microft 3y ago
Wow, I didn't know that that many people were working in this industry there: "Silicon Saxony is a registered industry association of nearly 300 companies in the microelectronics and related sectors in Saxony, Germany, with around 40,000 employees. Many, but not all, of those firms are situated in the north of Dresden. [...] [T]he area and the union — in many aspects — represent the only meaningful European center of microelectronics.", excerpt from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony
PicassoCTs 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s As always its a little more then that..
suction 3y ago
[dead]
zaph0d_ 3y ago
The region was an excellent choice for me to get my education. It was easy to get a research assistant position throughout my studies at the various academic institutions and then advance to my career from there. Cost of living is still quite cheap compared to other metropolitan areas. Only thing that is missing is more bold risk-taking on new startups. Also the horrendous bureaucracy makes things slow-moving. Otherwise they have everything they would need for a great hub. Smart and well educated students. A great university and cultural scene.

by dav_Oz 3y ago

seeekr 3y ago

minor nitpick: "e.V." in Germany is "eingetragener Verein", "registered association" and is a form of association that's extremely common and use for all kinds of things, e.g. local sports groups, interest groups, etc, so "e.V." in and of itself doesn't have anything to do with industry, though as in the above case it can be used that way!

_Microft 3y ago
The Max-Planck-Society [0][1] is also an e.V. and they have a yearly budget in the order of 2.5B€ or so. e.V.s can be very diverse in their nature. [0] (de) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft [1] (en) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society

mawadev 3y ago

I guess we are the redundancy to taiwan soon...

throwaway1777 3y ago
One of the redundancies, and not a very high end one
- demondemidi 3y ago
  Not high end, but literally 1,000% the volume of high end. It will be automotive / embedded, you know, the chips that are in everything that's not a laptop or gaming rig.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And just looking at it from a strategic point of view, those are the chips you want. Your industry runs on them, the vast majority of your industrie's products runs on it. Even more important: your military runs on those chips.
Gasp0de 3y ago
Not really. The factory will not produce CPUs GPUs or other high end chips.

jupp0r 3y ago

Having lived there for a decade, I must point out that you are painting a very one sided picture of the region. It's also a hot spot for Germany's populist right. I've witnessed visiting Indian colleagues of mine being threatened on the street for having dark skin and racist demonstrations are a weekly occurrence. I eventually moved away (among other reasons) because I didn't want my kids to grow up in this environment. It was quite difficult to hire international talent there for the same reasons. The city itself and university are super nice though.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Question: does that mean there are no indian restaurants in Dresden?
- mainframed 3y ago
  There are. Why wouldn't there be? There are a lot of minorities in Germany, which (sadly have to) accept daily racism. Thankfully, at this point violence against minorities (~800 right extremists violent crimes in 2022 in whole Germany) is not as high such that people consider moving away. And if you get a job there and this is your ticket into immigration, probably a lot of people will accept this to get German citizenship. Finally, this will open you access to all the working places in Europe. My hope (as a West German) is that investments like this, will increase East-Germany's economy such that they are finally equal in terms of economic wealth, which is a large factor for racism/extremism. Same with opposing climate change laws.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >There are. Why wouldn't there be? Because he said Indians are attacked on the street in Dresden. If that's the case why would you move and open a restaurant there if you're Indian? Or was he exaggerating the issue?
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      "If that's the case why would you move and open a restaurant there if you're Indian?" Because some things do not show immediately and officially all is fine in Dresden. Also the racism that was hiding for some time now shows itself very openly.

coryfklein 3y ago

In How Asia Works[0], they contrast how Malaysia tried to modernize by jumping straight to high-tech steel factoris with how South Korea modernized by starting small – basically by making shitty cars – then scaled their way up. Turns out the latter simply works much better. My take, if you want to have a bleeding edge semiconductor industry in your country, first start by trying to build a boring, vanilla, outdated semiconductor industry. If you can do that, then try incrementally making it competitive with global markets. (Yes, this requires tariffs initially to bootstrap the process, otherwise nobody will by your shitty overpriced semiconductors.) [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-w...

s_dev 3y ago
The car industry in Germany already makes a huge number of chips for cars -- they just aren't as sophisticated or as small as the ones made in Taiwan suitable for personal computers so by your own logic they have followed the South Korean model already.
- ckozlowski 3y ago
  I think the analogy might not fit here too well. While Germany hasn't had a current node fab in country for a while, they have in the recent past (AMD/Global Foundries Dresden comes to mind). I don't think it's at all like they're building an industry from scratch.
hutzlibu 3y ago
Dresden actually has a history with making chips: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron
ajmurmann 3y ago
You do the cheap manufacturing to get from low-income to medium-income. Once at that level you need skilled workers to get to high-income. If you don't have these, low-cost jobs will move to other countries affected you are trapped. Germany already had a highly educated workforce and is high-income. No need to go back to square one. Source: Invisible China by Scott Rozelle which does a great job explaining economic development and comparing different countries.

_Microft 3y ago

Wow, I didn't know that that many people were working in this industry there: "Silicon Saxony is a registered industry association of nearly 300 companies in the microelectronics and related sectors in Saxony, Germany, with around 40,000 employees. Many, but not all, of those firms are situated in the north of Dresden. [...] [T]he area and the union — in many aspects — represent the only meaningful European center of microelectronics.", excerpt from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony

PicassoCTs 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s As always its a little more then that..

suction 3y ago

[dead]

zaph0d_ 3y ago

The region was an excellent choice for me to get my education. It was easy to get a research assistant position throughout my studies at the various academic institutions and then advance to my career from there. Cost of living is still quite cheap compared to other metropolitan areas. Only thing that is missing is more bold risk-taking on new startups. Also the horrendous bureaucracy makes things slow-moving. Otherwise they have everything they would need for a great hub. Smart and well educated students. A great university and cultural scene.