This isn't quite the only fab in Dresden. GlobalFoundries (ex-AMD) even does 12nm manufacturing in the same city, at least according to Wikipedia. There are others too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony).
The video about the East German chip industry is well researched. Making the chip industry investments responsible alone for the collapse of the GDR is a bit click-baity (it was at most one contributing factor).
If it matters, in an interview he had, he said he thought China would successfully... reunify with Taiwan if it tried, and iirc, that it would happen eventually.
I think a lot of people in the Asian geopolitical theater just really don't like China because they do a lot of crappy things.
I think folks here are missing the point of a fab like this. 16nm FinFET is space age technology by embedded systems standards. Nobody's expecting CPUs as advanced as Sandy Bridge to come out of this fab, let alone some bazillion-core 8GHz monster. The smallest transistor used in an STM32xx chip today is 40nm, and AFAIK that's reserved for the really fancy DSP chips.
Actual space age tech relies on outdated, large feature process nodes for the improved radiation hardening they offer. Terrestrial embedded is light years beyond what goes into space with any expectation of long term reliability.
Yeah. Up until recently my friend was employed in designing chips in this process.
But it's not like they're designing them exactly the same way as years ago - some advancements are not strictly related to feature size and IIRC these new-old chips are considerably more power-efficient.
Certainly true, a 40nm transistor made in 2013 is not the same as one made in 2023. Likewise, a 16nm transistor made in 2017 will not be the same as one in 2027. The power efficiency on the newer wireless SoCs is unreal.
Besides older processes being "good enough" for embedded, many smaller micros depend on having a process that can handle embedded NOR flash. I'm not aware of any non-planar logic process that supports flash yet.
"with the final investment decision pending confirmation of the level of public funding for this project. The project is planned under the framework of the European Chips Act."
It's not like there exists any small player who can even imagine building a fab like that. All the small players in semiconductors exist by doing some particular niche like design or making some tool, but all of them outsource the actual fabrication - the thing that European Chips Act wants to fund - to someone else.
What would you consider to be small players when it comes to chip production? I mean, the factories cost billions. So where would small companies play a role except as contractor, supplier, etc. for the big ones?
The small players are the equivalents of VIS (Vanguard International Semiconductor) and similar. A few million 8" wafers per year, but targeting specialty processes (GaN, MEMs, etc). Cutting-edge 12" fabs are capital-intensive, but there's a huge and growing role for older processes and specialty processes.
Along with (hopefully) that french startup (Mistral) founded by the LLaMA guys, the EU is putting together the pieces they need to keep up with AI and maintain their ability to leverage their control mechanisms upon the FAANGS.
Realpolitk wise they absolutely cannot risk regulatory capture to a few select firms on the west coast of the USA.
Altman himself threatened (for a brief period) to cut off GPT to the EU after Italy rightfully brought up issues with data privacy. Microsoft made him walk that one back real quick - he probably wasn't really aware that he is now one of their employees - but it hopefully got through to Brussels about how these guys want to operate.
We'll also probably get a lot better support for languges which aren't english (especially French, I really love their stubborn nature to stick with their langauge over the anglo one), an entire other scary effect of LLMs is the potential to accelerate language death
Suppose you need automation for machinery in a cutting edge fab, that would be much further in the future? They could ship from Taiwan, so the idea that this is a back up does not sound entirely wrong. Sounds like fan-fiction, too, true enough.
AMD is already there and Intel is building in Lower Saxony. Must be something about the region, perhaps the chemistry since the Erzgebirge has a history in mining. Meisner Porcelain for example beat Venice and replaced good old China (pun intended).
> No one walked back anything.
I'm not sure about that (haven't heard this story).
My impression is that EU sticks to discretion very much, and they aren't free from corruption. The US on the other hand is not known to play nice with matters of law in international affairs (Edit: shouldn't have said "international law").
Taiwan is a partner was the point, I believe. Of course they aren't going to give away the crown jewels either.
Following Occam's razor, perhaps it's that it's just cheaper?
"The monthly pay ranking of German states is headed by Hamburg with 3,619 euros, followed by Baden-Württemberg with 3,546 euros and Hesse with 3,494 euros. The lowest salaries are received by employees in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with an average of 2,391 euros. Slightly more is earned in Thuringia with 2,459 euros and Saxony with 2,479 euros."[0]
To expand upon your comment, my German co-worker explained to me that Dresden was a high-tech / semi-conductor industrial hub during GDR / East Germany. It was mostly state planning to build unis and industry in same place. This was continued after Germany reunited. Given their lower cost of living advantages, I can understand why Dresden was selected. From a political view, I can imagine that German gov't officials wants to encourage economic development of former GDR, as it continues to lag West Germany.
TL;DR at the end of the 80's East Germany had paradoxically a more capable semiconductor industry than West Germany (not in terms of innovation, it trailed the state of the art by 5..10 years, but definitely in terms of scale), this was mainly because the Eastern Bloc was cut off from western microelectronics because of the COCOM embargo and had to bootstrap their own microelectronics industry, while Western Europe could just buy their chips on the world market from the cheapest bidder.
Those centers of technology with their attached universities were mainly located in Dresden (Robotron) and Jena (Carl Zeiss) and some smaller locations sprinkled over the southern half of East Germany.
This 'micro-electronics tradition' carried over into the 90's after the reunification and continues until the present time.
The technology is roughly 10 years behind, but in the scenario that the replacement capability becomes important is something like Trump fumbles the great power competition and US and China have a nice nuclear moment. And frankly making do with Haswell era CPUs is lamentable but as far as nuclear exchanges go not that bad.
Older generation fabs are critical. They power most of the machines around us, and often pump out low priced but capable chips. I certainly am not contesting that.
I responded to someone who seems to believe this is the great AI equalizer. This fab has no relevance to AI. And FWIW, Europe already has a number of much more advanced fabs! Intel is currently upgrading Ireland to "Intel 4" spec (which in TSMC land would be 7nm), and is building other fabs, for instance.
Ultimately this story is "German automakers want more control over supply chain of vanilla automation chips", and not much more.
As an aside, it's always interesting that we talk about Taiwan's revered chip prowess (South Korea is up there as well)...when the Dutch company ASML is really the technology key. TSMC executes extraordinarily well, but they wouldn't be doing it without ASML.
Lets just say semiconductor manufacturing is the best example of regional competencies and global trade.
Globalization has failed on many fronts and resulted in race to the bottom outcomes, but here it works well due to specialization.
Having understood that, one can also see a core TSMC strength is that Taiwanese workers are disciplined and work long hours for moderate pay, a culture that European and American labor will never accept. So all these new factories in US/EU should be treated as high cost alternatives, justifiable only for non cost-sensitive customers like defence/aerospace/high end cars.
I am no expert, but my understanding is that to get nice chips, you need both ASML and TSMC. They have very different areas of expertise and posses very different know hows.
The way I see it, things like that are critical for long term capability maintenance; having or not having fabs for mass production of simpler chips is what determines whether your country will have a workforce which would make it possible to build and run a cutting edge fab later; if you keep offshoring the cheap and simple stuff, eventually the state of art stuff goes there as well.
Here's some counter-whataboutism: what about the Korean and Vietnam wars (the Soviet Union even sent their own pilots with the jets), and countless other smaller conflicts in Africa? The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were pumping weapons into those conflicts or have been invading themselves to support "their side". Same with Russia in Syria btw.
At least the free west is upfront and open about the weapon deliveries down to the last helmet:
The main reason that propaganda and dehumanization are such a typical part of war, is that it helps prevent people from considering the weight of their own actions, let alone the perspective of the enemy. What I described is not a whataboutism, it's a hypothetical illustrating exactly what's happening today, except flipping the roles of the participants. Yet of course it feels alien enough that you instinctively want to fight against it - I must be tricking you or engaging in some sort of deceptive rhetorical device. I am not.
Whataboutism is an old Soviet propaganda technique, but AFAIK they didn't come up with the term (they must have had an internal name for it of course, but somehow I doubt they called it whataboutism)
Can you try a better developed argument than the extremely lazy Reddit-level “whataboutism” one? And look up the history of that word. It’s a Soviet propaganda term and a logical fallacy.
> They made some platitudes about really feeling for the people of Iraq, and then started sending massive amounts of supplies, including long ranged weapons, tanks, depleted uranium munitions, countless rounds of cluster bombs (!).
Not sure what the (!) for the cluster bombs is about, both Ukraine and Russia never signed the cluster bomb ban, and both Ukraine and Russia have been using cluster bombs in both this conflict but also since 2014.
This isn't anything new, the only change is that they are now being provided by America, and the American ones appear to fail less.
> Not only were these weapons effective enough to manage to kill tens of thousands of Americans, but some were even being used to carry out irregular attacks in major American cities.
I'm not sure that the provided weapons are being used to carry out any 'irregular' attacks on Russian cities?.
But even if they were, did the Russians really think they could enter this war and bomb cities into dust and never get bombed themselves?.
> That people lack the empathy to see how dangerous the path we're treading is only because the media has spent years creating this absurd dichotomy in the world where the American cause of the week is just and right, whereas the enemy - pure evil. And so in this context people seem to rarely ask themselves whether what we're doing is right or wrong, because how can doing harm to pure evil ever be wrong?
I think its perfectly morally acceptable to arm a country trying to defend itself against an imperialist invader.
I don't think the path that is being tread is in any way shape or form dangerous, why would Russia losing this war be any different to the other wars that both Russia and the Soviet Union lost?.
It is a bit off-topic, but the Biden admin hasn't done anything like that indeed. In fact, nuclear exchange is self-destruction. No one is stupid enough to do that, even Trump wouldn't be. So parent's remark is off.
For chips to be blocked going to Germany doesn't thus require a nuclear exchange. You rather should think of smth like military aggression from China towards Taiwan.
Man, I wrote several replies to this comment but decided against them all. This is silly- the U.S. and China have been playing with balloons like this for years, that one was just really big
1. Nobody would launch nukes domestically, so moot point.
2. Using nukes internationally would be a faux-pas beyond fixing. Every modern, nuclear-equipped nation understands this.
3. The United States doesn't need nuclear weaponry to dispel invaders, or even to retaliate against foreign attacks. Their nuclear weapons exist to deter other nuclear superpowers from using their weapons for petty gain.
You're free to argue that DU rounds are effectively a poisonous weapon and should be banned on those grounds. I would agree. That doesn't change the fact that depleted uranium is not a nuclear weapon.
Right, the US would totally make nuclear threats against Mexico for shooting down a ballon. Not even Trump would be deranged enough for that (well on second thought, maybe he would but nobody would take him serious, just like Medvedev's daily nuclear threat).
The Mexico example was long range weapons. If Chinese missiles were hitting American cities from Mexico (outside of the localized fighting), do you believe that has the possibility to escalate?
Maybe, but I can give a much more concrete example: Russia has nukes on Europe's doorstep in Kaliningrad which can reach Berlin in a couple of minutes, do you hear anybody in Germany, Europe or NATO whine about "escalation"?
TL;DR: Russia has Iskander missiles stationed in their Kaliningrad exclave (former Koenigsberg if Kaliningrad doesn't ring a bell), Iskander missiles can carry nuclear warheads and have a range of 500 km which is just enough to reach Berlin. Now add two and two together. Why would Russia station nuclear capable missiles in the middle of Europe without the nuclear warheads nearby?
I don't understand your point. How does it relate to my analogy of a neighbor of America getting armed and trained by a sworn and bellicose enemy of America who states openly that it's goal is American regime change and geopolitical breakup. Under this scenario, I suspect the US would roll into Mexico and end that sooner than later under the Monroe Doctrine due to the real (or perceived) existential threat. At least, I would hope so - Mexico being in a military alliance with China (and it's 2000 or so mile border) would be not good.
Russia's stated goal (according to Dmitri Medvedev, former president and now "Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation") is also to "build a united Eurasia from Vladivostok to Lisbon", yet it is very unlikely that any European nation would preemptively invade Kaliningrad over those existential threats.
Also, Mexico entering a military alliance with China is extremely far fetched, how did you even arrive at that idea?
Thanks for your suggestion. There are a lot of things I don't know, but this subject is somewhat the exception to that. The US has made no nuclear threats, on the contrary, it has done everything to remind the Kremlin, which was and is threatening all kinds of countries with nuclear blackmail, that doing so is off limits.
I will assume you were unknowingly repeating Kremlin propaganda. Please don't.
The fab is supposed to supply mainly the automotive industry, who made the mistake of cancelling their orders during Corona and were then surprised to find that the capacities were allocated elsewhere when they wanted to order again.
They will still have the same problem, but they don't think that far ahead.
It isn't even thinking ahead. It is pure, plain and simple arrogance, of the most despicable and stupid kind. The German auto producers are used to be able to strong-arm politicians and their suppliers. What they say goes, because usually they can threaten whole regions with unemployment and whole companies (the ones that produce car-parts such as seat cushions or engine parts mostly/only) with bankruptcy. Don't want to accept a mandatory 20% price reduction mid-contract? We'll just delay payment until you do, good luck surviving long enough for the courts to recognize your claim...
With chip makers, it is different, because chips can be used in lots of different products and there is lots of demand from all corners. So car makers tried their usual strong-arm tactics and failed miserably. Chips being a sellers market, after all. After which car makers went whining to their politician puppets, getting them to OK billions in subsidies for "supply chain security".
I think AI is an afterthought here, if at all. Automotive is the main target and to a degree IoT.
They couldn't build cars during the pandemic due to broken supply chains, that's when their lightbulb went on afaik.
But isn't a lot of modern automotive all about ai? Stuff like image recognition on camera's and sensors, error prediction, data-aggregation and, in future, self-driving?
Most of the stuff in a car could run on a 6502. The rest will run on something akin to the NXP i.MX8. Not at all cutting edge, but more than sufficient.
It is more than fast enough to process input from sensors and it has hardware support for video.
eh, modern ECUs, accident compute, etc are doing timing and tuning calculations in real time such that you need something a little more adequate. A 40mhz PowerPC CPU with an FPU, for example.
Aside from mandatory ADAS, most cars can definitely get away with "90s tech" but probably not "80s tech"
fwiw modern car buses have signing and authentication - using a shared bus significantly lowers car weight and increases reliability, but also introduces security challenges. signing operations are too expensive for a 6502
Most tasks in a car do not run on high speed cutting edge chips.
A few random examples:
- adjusting your side mirrors
- the control of the AC cooling unit and speed of the fans
- electronically adjustable seats
- parking sensors (the beeping kind)
- wiper controls
- engine controls (ice or BV)
- inverter (BV)
All of those require electronics most require a microcontroller but not the latest 3nm Snapdragon.
Still have a hard time understanding people who refuse to look at the data and benchmarks myself. Chatgpt was a game changer and let the cat out of the bag, but it’s not far ahead anymore.
The people most hyped on GPT are the people who see the potential for it if it continues to get exponentially better - which Altman himself pretty much said it won't.
> GPT is not some one-of-a-kind leaps-and-bounds ahead of everyone else ground-breaking technology.
GPT 3 and 4 were already exactly that, leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else.
GPT 4 shocked the connected planet and massively disrupted plans across the tech industry globally. Version 4 has been every bit as disruptive as the iPhone (which completely altered the trajectory of the phone & mobile markets).
It has been talked about from coast to coast across the globe non-stop since its release. Covered endlessly by every major media outlet in the West. GPT this, AI that, non-stop since V4 sparked enormous consumer attention and debate.
It has dozens of major companies and open source groups desperately attempting to copy it or catch up to it.
It has governments terrified of AI and attempting to quickly place regulations to control it.
It has programmers - one of the elite, highest paying professions in the world - running scared that half the software development jobs in the industry are going away in the next decade (they are).
1.3 million software developers in the US earning a median of $115,000 before benefits ($200+ billion in total annual compensation for that employee pool). Half of those jobs, at a minimum, will be eliminated by this type of AI, and it was GPT 4 that made it clear it was not just a far-off premise.
Its the first highly potent consumer AI product. Over one hundred million people quickly signed up to use it. There hasn't been anything remotely close to it so far (Siri and Alexa have been barely useful jokes by comparison).
The same people that like to pretend Tesla didn't spark the electric car revolution, and like to pretend Apple didn't spark the smartphone revolution, like to pretend OpenAI didn't just set off a revolution in AI.
> It has been talked about from coast to coast across the globe non-stop since its release. Covered endlessly by every major media outlet in the West. GPT this, AI that, non-stop since V4 sparked enormous consumer attention and debate.
The only people scared are people who don't understand it. You've obviously drank the koolaid. What OpenAI has done is impressive, but it's not a replacement for programmers or anyone who does knowledge work. The people who should be scared are people who don't produce original work. For example, journalists who just rewrite content from Reuters. Investigative journalists producing original work aren't at risk.
> putting together the pieces they need to keep up with AI and maintain their ability to leverage their control mechanisms upon the FAANGS.
from the press release itself:
> ESMC marks a significant step towards construction of a 300mm fab to support the future capacity needs of the fast-growing automotive and industrial sectors, with the final investment decision pending confirmation of the level of public funding for this project.
it's a 300mm fab.
> Realpolitk wise they absolutely cannot risk regulatory capture to a few select firms on the west coast of the USA.
not only is this 40 years too late, but the press release itself contradicts this comment.
Just weird to me that they build in Germany. Germany basically pressed "delete" on (clean) energy for the coming decades and has very little capacity to seriously expand their energy conversion.
Germany has build more PV capacity in the last three years than the total nuclear capacity it ever build, and the numbers are increasing thanks to regulatory cutbacks by the current government.
Meanwhile new nuclear reactors cost 4 times as much as renewables and take decades to build.
I don't disagree with your argument, but capacity is a useless measurement. Without considering the capacity factor you might as well be comparing apples to zebras.
What are the actual numbers? Is PV reliable as nuclear? As cheap as piped natural gas? Can VW build a profitable car and Bosch a washing machine at those rates (vs very strong competitors like South Korea)? Because that’s what keeps the German economy humming (and the EU together).
Healthy numbers. If people aren’t buying VW vehicles because the prices are higher than Hyundai due to the energy situation, that’s not good.
Germany is deindustrializing
as we speak (chemicals, auto and auto related, etc). Once you deindustrialize past a certain threshold, it’s very difficult to come back.
In 2022 Tesla was at the top, VW second and Hyundai third, so Hyunday actually seems to be losing ground against other German car brands, at least in the EV market segment:
Those are domestic numbers, I'm talking about the competitiveness of Germany on the _international_ market - that's what matters. It's hard to be competitive when your energy costs are high.
This is false. Germany is one of the few countries making real progress towards a commitment to clean energy by 2050. I think you're uninformed about the details and failing to grasp the plan beyond a couple of headlines you saw.
> I really love their stubborn nature to stick with their langauge over the anglo one
I think you're talking about the Québécois, because the french around here are swimming in a sea of _épouvantable_ mix of french and english words. But as afterthought you're still quite right, this mix usage is sliding downhill from ill inspired managers to general low class now.
That's not the only issue. TSMC has a big problem in creating fabs in the US, which is the lack of talent in sufficient numbers for the project to be successful, and the very high cost of existing talent. No surprise that they're delaying the US fab and going ahead with plants in Germany, where there is less expensive specialized labor.
> Along with (hopefully) that french startup (Mistral) founded by the LLaMA guys, the EU is putting together the pieces they need to keep up with AI and maintain their ability to leverage their control mechanisms upon the FAANGS.
These nodes are generations old and basically only in use in German cars with their abysmal 'software'. The only touching point these processors will ever have with AI is as an API endpoint to Google Voice or Siri.
Moreover, Mistral was widely seen as a joke and testimony to the catastrophic state European tech is in.
Europe is done. I have no idea why they rushed to regulate anything. In the end the U.S. startups will tell us what to do. Europe is a joke.
What abysmal software? The software in my VW is more than adequate.
Not that I see what interest I'd have in any kind of AI in my car.
Yes, these chips are for automotive and industrial use, what's the problem? Those are both important use cases.
You may think Europe is done, but who makes the EUV lithography machines used for TSMCs' cutting edge nodes? Who makes the leading ERP system used by a lot of companies around the world? Where was the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine developed?
The point is, Europe has plenty of innovation. But unlike the US, people don't go around boasting every chance they get. People just do stuff and are happy with that.
I admit that I talk to it in English the most (as it's my native tongue) but I had read here that it has gotten noticeably worse in other languages, even making grammar mistakes in linguistically-close-to-english-and-sufficently-present-in-training-data western european languages like German or French.
I do enjoy translating things into Sindarian or other conglangs from literature though.
I had a theory that giving it the custom instructions in latin might give better results, but i haven't had time to figure out how to benchmark something that's so non-deterministic and black-boxy
Not GP, but in my case, I find my conversations with ChatGPT or Copilot often being in my native language. Whereas with Google, official docs, and StackExchage it's only and always English.
Obviously, the code I write in the end is English. But explaining a domain in a native language - especially when that domain embeds cultural things - helps a lot. For example, there's a massive difference between "add_high_VAT()" in a Dutch Context from a US context. Even add_VAT(lookup_VAT("FR", "low")) demands quite some domain-knowledge about EU tax system. Which I can express in English, but is much easier in my native language.
Is the EU marketing budget now doing sponsored posting on HN? What the hell is this comment? It’s completely wrong on facts yet full of quasi praise for eu politics
Language is culture, and if the sapir-whorf hypothesis holds, different languages are literally different methods of thinking.
there are also other potential benefits, e.g. "the" in english gives little information about what noun may follow. "die/das/der" in general cut the probability space to a third.
When speakers of a dying language learn a dominant one they don't lose their way of thinking, rather they adapt the dominant language to their needs. In this way the dominant language evolves. It's why there are ~180k english words but only 1200 Sindarian words.
While I agree that cultural loss is tragic, consider that it is inevitable. Homo Sapiens have existed for ~200,000 years. We only have SOME traces of SOME cultures for say 10k of those years. So from that lens, the vast majority of human culture has already been lost.
From a practical point of view it is probably good to have an international lingua franca, most likely a variation of English not only due to its current popularity but because it has accommodated a lot of simplifications [1,2] to make itself easier to learn. But for local cultures it would be an awful lot of work to translate centuries of tradition and literature into a global language, or a lot to lose by forgetting it. There is also a natural human tendency to modify and evolve the language that we use, while an international language has to be more stable or changes regulated lest it fragment as Latin did 1500 years ago.
Kids cannot use foreign language tools to their full abilities. However, if ChatGPT is good for english only, it might stimulate some competition for providing similar service in the local language. I won't mind it, tbh.
It's also all coming together: it's about Germany, which a lot of Europeans don't have a positive opinion on (to put it mildly), then it's about East Germany which a lot of West Germans don't have a positive opinion on (to put it mildly), and finally it's also about the EU's / Germany's governing model which most startup-scene-hipsters on HN don't have a positive opinion on (to put it mildly).
There's hardly a topic like this where almost everybody finds something to complain about ;)
It varies. They have a bit of a rep and stereotypes, much like France, for example.
The thing is that germany has the history of racial genocide, along with a number of nasty features. The german economy has done well. Maybe too well. They refuse to buy non-german products to spread the prosperity with EU.
Germany as a country has some cultural feature that are not fun. It's riddled with busy-bodies. Germans have too many of the type of people that can be a pain to work with due to their relentless pursuit of... constant improvement? perfection? idk what it is.
Then you have the countries stance towards outsiders, the disabled, people that are different that isn't always the most welcoming. Germans can be sooo snooty and pretentious.
Example from trip to Berlin. I did not realize how hard the clubs were to get into. You have to do this whole song and dance where you prepare to look cool, somewhat edgy, but not too edgy! while simultaneous pretending not to care about any of it.
Everything must be just right! Don't come alone (no one wants weird loner), or in a large group (big groups can be too much). Don't be foreign (this is an unwritten rule they pretend doesn't exist). You pay for tickets too, even if they don't let you in. All this for a techno club, which is unheard of, even blasphemous where I'm from.
Also the genocide / Nazi thing. I'm really sick of people acting like germany should just be over it by now. It's the same people living there that did it basically. Some of those same ideas exists (see before mentioned policies that exclude foreigners and people with disabilities)
So yeah, I get the hate. Definitely, the French tend to feel this way, but it seems like the Italians get it too... and UK and Spain, lol. It's really hit or miss, and often just a mild dislike.
Who cares about positive opinions from other people who feel entitled? Obviously TSMC , Bosch, Infineon, NXP management does not. It makes sense. Put it in Germany because it's a stable country (unlike Hungary due to Orban and Poland, Romania or Bulgaria due to the war plus other political factors like right wing hardliners or corruption), put it in Dresden because of cheaper workforce, higher unemployment and also fund it with EU subsidies.
Just look around in the comments here, you'll find plenty of stereotyping. One thing is important though: Berlin is neither East nor West (never has been after WW2), it's entirely it's own thing culture wise. Your experience in Berlin won't really tell you anything about the rest of Germany.
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.]
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.
Still living here I must point out that you are pointing an equally one sided picture.
While all of what you say is true and problematic, there are people from all over the world living in Dresden and some parts (especially Neustadt) are politically rather left leaning.
That's not how it works. There can be a lot of good people, but all you need is one in-your-face racist encounter to ruin your decade. It's like how even a rumor of a shark will keep you firmly on the beach.
Indeed. One single racist encounter of mine ruined my past 2 decades. I can’t help but think about it all the time till this day. It’s honestly wondrous how a simple insult of 2 words could destabilize my mental health and even pushed me over the tide to harming myself seriously once, thankfully I was rushed to the hospital fast. I’m still getting nightmares every other day, the blurry face of that stranger waking me up in cold sweats (I couldn’t properly see her because it was night). I even got recently diagnosed with terminal cancer due to chronic stress, and my obesity didn’t get any better since the incident. All because some random stranger shouted me 2 random words at some random hour of the night on some random street.
Edit: The very act of writing this comment traumatized me so much that I died of a heart attack. Fortunately the graveyard is near a cell tower, I can get LTE signal.
I'm a little confused -- how do we get from "it takes one homophobic reaction to deeply affect someone", to "if someone is deeply affected by one homophobic reaction from a population, we should be a jerk to the entire population?"
I think the point wasn't that Saxony and Saxons were terrible people in general, but rather that if you're non-white you might get smashed in the face or murdered on the street if you're unlucky, and the odds of this happening being higher than in other parts of Germany. Which seems fair to me given recent history.
You seem to be on some mission on this thread, maybe you should take a step back and reflect the discussion and arguments.
1. Hate crimes are hugely different from battery/assault, so I'm not sure how your reference adds anything
2. Police data is not a trustworthy source, as police is biased too. Just check some news articles about police refusing to even take in a report about hate crime, where this is more likely to happen, and consider what this means for the stats you're quoting
Believe it or not, hate crimes do exist in Germany. Maybe not as a legal term, but that's a legal thing and a political decision. You cannot forbid the term to be applied single handedly. And if a political decision was made to not count something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
However, based on your cliché populist statement of distrusting any media because it's biased, I don't see a point in continuing.
Ethnic Germans are just as much a threat to LGBT people than fanatic Muslims are, and it's not just the former GDR where reactionary and fascist attitudes bloom.
I had to spend half a year in the ass cracks of Niederbayern... not something I'd like to repeat. People openly talking "something like that (i.e. LGBT) wouldn't have been a thing under Hitler" over their beers or someone shouting Sieg and the full pub responding Heil ("Sieg Heil" was the verbal Nazi salute) is common there.
And then, these very same people have the audacity to complain that "the gays" lure their children away to the cities... no you moron, you shouting Nazi salutes in a pub does.
No, i was giving a hint that parent was fearmongering, which i consider to be some bad thing. So i paralleled it with the fearmongering of the AfD because i think everyone agrees that this is bad.
And you backed them up with even more fearmongering. Why is a self-proclaimed antifascist using fascist methods? "Its justified when *I* do it" my ass. The AfD is problem enough, don't add to it. Bring your points across without fearmongering against groups of people.
> And you backed them up with even more fearmongering.
What fearmongering?! FFS. Just look at the election results of the 2021 elections, it's not by chance that the AfD is stronger in the rural areas - they were 2nd in Straubing, which is the area where I lived.
I know better that this is not true since i experience first-hand that wehrabooism and homosexuality (including mine) are living by each other with no issues. What you are doing is scaremongering against some group.
Neustadt is marketed as some left leaning paradise to outside investors of Saxony's liberalism. But as Indian guy in Germany around 2 years back, that was exactly my experience in Saxony. I have lived across all of Germany over the past few years, and nowhere did I face any hostility compared to Saxony and East Germany in general.
While your statement, put that generally, is certainly true, i wonder if you're familiar with leftism in Germany or in Europe in general (honest question). Antiracism and Antifascism are almost part of the core DNA of many of these circles or at least their self-perception. Doesn't mean that they necessarily live up it, of course. However, the term "left" means something quite different in Europe than compared to the popular usage of that term in the US where, i believe, a large chunk of the audience here is based.
For real, plenty of authoritarian leftists in the world who think the only path to socialism is through an autocracy with a heavy sprinkle of ethnic nationalism. But I think the commenter meant the more lib-left in europe, the kind who would be friends with anarchists.
I was literally pointing out another aspect on top of what GP said of that region and ended with saying that the city is "super nice". I love visiting and still have many friends there.
Sorry to hear that. I wasn't trying to downplay the issue, I was just recounting from own experiences just visiting the cities (Leipzig, Dresden) multiple times.
>The city itself and university are super nice though.
Isn't this a rampant problem across Europe thought?
I went on a beach vacation with some French friends and was sort of stunned/apalled at the sort of non-stop "it is all the muslim/immigrants" fault talk.
What is this comment down voted? I think that the post makes a valid point. Not speaking about France, but I am always stunned when people think that they can make obviously Islamophobic comments in front of me. I always try to push back, but they regularly push back harder. I'm tired of it. It is bizarre, anti-social behaviour in 2023. I guess that during the 1930s in some of parts of Europe were similar for Jews/Romani. "Normal" daily discrimination was a way of life.
To be fair, the social and economic divisions between white French natives and immigrants is large. There is a excellent article in Financial Times about it: <<French riots show how entrenched inequalities have become / The gulf between immigrants and those born in the country is larger than in almost any other developed nation>>: https://www.ft.com/content/25eda9f0-8bd3-41e1-948c-89cc7c0ec...
The solution is to keep talking about it, and continue studying the issue.
Oh, come on. Are you trolling me? Do you really think that Jews and Romani are facing "normal" daily discrimination _in the same way_ as the 1930s? I beg to differ.
In Europe it's the muslims, in the US it's the mexicans, in $place it's $group.
French people are known to be rather nationalist though (In the same way US Americans are), but a rampant problem? I have to disagree, it's just like the rest of the world, people need their scapegoat.
What are countries less racist than the United States or Germany? I've found Canada to be incredibly racist against French Canadians. Casually mocked in the streets. If we did that in the USA you'd lose your job
Woah, I never heard about this before. Can you share more examples about discrimination against French Canadians? I assume you are speaking from outside Quebec province. Also, can any F/Cs comment from their own perspective? If true, it is a bit disappointing. Canadians that I meet are, on the whole, more balanced and reasonable that Americans. (Yeah, I'll probably get -5000 for that comment. Strictly personal experience.)
> 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've lived in Texas for 30 years and I've haven't seen anything like what you see in Europe in terms of racist demonstrations and blatantly racist political organizations. The few weeks of my life I spent in Germany felt far more discriminatory. There is nothing like the AfD in the US. The funny thing is while Racist Xenophobia is a huge issue, there is a ton of Xenophobia against various eastern europeans as well.
Because white nationalism is more and more becoming part of the mainstream. GOP is perfectly capable of hosting moderates and quazi-nazis at the same time.
I don't believe this at all - the GOP is getting more and more diverse and there is no explicitly racist GOP policy. This is untrue for European ethno-nationalist parties. Sure there maybe a couple of closet ethno nationalist in the GOP but they would be thrown out if they said the stuff their Euro counterparts say in the open. There's also the fundamental reality that because of the 2 party system and the demographics of this country that the GOP could never become an ethnonationalist party. Maybe unless PoC become white supremacists themselves like the Chapelle show skit :D.
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.
"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.
> 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
Is this a bad joke? Is it possible that you actually don't comprehend the ramifications of eternal human labor trafficking?
He's referring to the difference in wealth between East and West Germany which is arguably the cause of many political and social issues in Germany. The influx of money into the region could reduce the disparity.
My guess is that you are referring to the difference in wealth between India and Germany. I'm not sure that the pearl clutching was helpful. It would have been better to clarify your assumptions or If indeed you were talking about Germany internal issues then clarify how labor trafficking is a factor here. We'll all be better for it.
> The influx of money into the region could reduce the disparity.
Money in the region would help but I don't see it happening since Poland is just a few km away and a more lucrative target for attracting investments from west Germany due to having less red tape, and lower taxes and regulations.
East Germany can't compete with that so it seems it be forever be this "desert" in between west Germany and Poland where nobody wants to live and invest.
I see this as a fault of the German gov for not making east Germany an attractive place for investors.
This post is literally about building a "large" factory for highly specialized workers in East Germany. The influx will be there, whether that's enough to solve the issue it's a different topic. Anyway, I was referring to the original commenter's intention, not my personal opinion.
>The influx will be there, whether that's enough to solve the issue it's a different topic.
It's not. I've seen this play out before in my poor home town that become a hotspot for tech investments in the span of 10 years.
All those new jobs in the semi industry will require some skills and education, and people who have that kind of skills and education, are (usually) not racists to attack people on the streets based on their color and go to racist protests, but the contrary, tend to be well spoken and liberal.
It will simply increase the inequality between the uneducated racist locals and the well educated foreigners who come for those well paying jobs and raise rent prices and cost of living, throwing more fuel on the racist fire, and pointing the target on the foreigners for being to blame for making life more expensive for the locals.
This issue is solved through education and career re-orientation opportunities, not by bringing some high end jobs that are out of reach for those locals anyway.
Bavaria is right next to the Czech Republic and should have the same problems, yet isn't exactly a 'desert' as you call it.
Large scale outsourcing (and investments) to Poland, the Czech Republic and the rest of Eastern Europe had already happened during the 90s, after that it was China. Everything that can be outsourced in Germany has already been outsourced during the last 30 years, yet the sky hasn't fallen so far.
Poor nations are exceptionally good at destabilising themselves - as a person from one of them. The idea that they are getting mistreated would be music to the ears of our ruling elites - perhaps hinting that they might get their "virtual slaves" back from Europe.
Apart from just your statement this is the first time I hear about this. I mean there is trafficking everywhere but you statement makes it sound like it’s on a much grander scale. Care to provide more info?
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.)
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.
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.
How do they know the latter works out better vs South Korea just executed better?
Like what if SK & Malaysia took the opposite approaches? How do we know that SK wouldn't still have been the successful one, and we'd be saying everyone should take the opposite approach because that's what SK did and it worked?
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.
Ahistoric nonsense. Its just that south-Korea is at a empire gradient. One empire borders another empire. Which either means you gets you eternal proxy wars - or you get propped up, by the competition of the empires and can milk that sweet soft-power gradient for benefits. You get preferable trade-agreements, even if you use protectionism. You get other sweet deals. Look at all the countries who made it, dwelling along the fault lines of the past and the present. Germany. Turkey. Austria. Italy.Hungary. Greece. Japan. China. South-Korea. Soon Ukraine. The list goes on and the reason has little todo with strategy. You cant plan for location.
No comparison between the excellent economic growth of South Korea and that of Greece, Hungary, Austria, or Italy going back to either cold war or post cold war days, despite this hypothesis of "empire gradient". If you google "World Bank GDP growth <countryname>" you can find charts back to 1961.
South Korea exports consumer goods to the large US market, this has been a massive fuel for their growth. They followed in Japan's footsteps (and China, for a time at least, followed in theirs). I can't think of a single manufactured product out of Greece, Hungary, Austria and few from Italy to the US.
Being on an "empire gradient" is just an arbitrary way to look at a country.
You know who else is on an empire gradient? North Korea. Afghanistan. Belarus. You're not even specifying which side of the empire gradient. Maybe being on the authoritarian, communist side did not work out so well for many countries?
I think what matters for South Korea is moving steadily toward more democratic governance, embracing capitalism, and proximity and historic ties with Japan (not always pleasant, obviously, but ties nonetheless) at a time when Japan was developing robust trade with the US and when Japan's own consumer sector was booming, providing another market for Korean firms.
Korea has absolutely followed the pattern of moving steadily up the value chain, for example in consumer electronics, in autos.
Your post was very good. I take issue with one part:
I can't think of a single manufactured product out of Greece, Hungary, Austria and few from Italy to the US.
I would strongly disagree with Austria, and modestly disagree with Italy. Austria is a low population manufacturing powerhouse. They are not making consumer goods. They are making "widgets" that other manufactures use to create finished products. B2B vs B2C, if you like. The northern half of Italy is similar, but less extreme. I also struggle to name more than a few consumer or high value products from Austria, but I recommend to look at their median income or GDP per capita and you will say "Wow, that is a rich country".
That’s interesting about Austria, thanks for that! I may have underestimated them. (I did check their growth rate and for whatever reason not as strong as S Korea…)
About growth rates: The higher your median income, the harder it is to have high growth rates. Think about it from the perspective of economic competition: You need to find new markets (hard at this point) or outcompete existing competitors in other countries to grow. It is crazy hard to grow once you are fully developed and rich, like Austria. It does not surprise me that Korea has a higher growth rate than Austria -- they are less developed.
Edit: To be clear: Please do not read this post as bashing Korea. I think they are doing an amazing job in the last 50 years growing themselves out of poverty. It is a crazy and amazing story.
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!
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. [...]
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.
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.
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.
People who don't understand what OP just wrote should look at what just happened to the South Korean semiconductor market. over 36% plunge in exports[] and that samsungs memory profit dropped 95%[].
Yes, they depend on ASML, but ASML itself was dependent on IP from TSMC engineers. TSMC already announced that they will stop applying for subsidies from the Chip Act[] in the US recently because the US keeps changing what confidential data needs to be shared with the US.
They seem to be at least slowly understanding that this is a dangerous game.
And for the people that keep talking about ASML you might well want to remember that not long ago the leadership was mocking China's capability to build their own domenstic supply chain only to flipflop shortly after saying that it would be foolish to abandon the Chinese market likely indicating that they might be concerned that their domestic supply chain might end show up faster than expected.
Taiwanese media last year was plastered with news about how the US hollowed out the Japanese semiconductor industry with its agreement in 1986 and how that will be potentially the fate of Taiwan.
But the sibling comments are correct about the potential blowback, let's not forget that the US has been talking about bombing TSMC themselves[]. I guess that probably explains why they just announced a delay to the construction of the Arizona fab.
> the leadership was mocking China's capability to build their own domenstic supply chain
Well, ASML is primarily and rightly very concerned that once "China" has their machines they'll attempt to reverse engineer them, ignore any western patents and IP and try to build 'Chinese chip machines'. It's happened to many industries, from Lego to fashion to hi tech. Hell, apparently there's even Chinese Knock-off Movies.
So, above everything else, there's a legitimate concern for ASML that once they move or deliver too much into China, they'll enable their own competition.
There's over a 100K parts, several of them from exclusive suppliers. You'd have to recreate several industries from scratch or somehow bribe all suppliers. You will absolutely fail to recreate the parts at all but even then if you hypothetically would, you can't put the machine together as if it's just a few bolts. It requires a team in the know months to do it, but you're not in the know. The tolerance for error is near-zero. Installing, configuring, running the machine, both hardware and software is extraordinarily complex.
None of this is a secret. The Chinese government announced a multi-billion dollar program to try and recreate such a machine from scratch. Expected timeline is 20 years with a highly uncertain outcome.
ASML does not have a concern to export to China, they want to export to China but are pressured to not do so by the US government.
> ASML's EUV machines cannot be reverse engineered.
Probably not as carbon-copy. But certainly important parts, or older versions.
ASML isn't just selling a millions-dollar-machine, they sell maintenance, support, upgrades, refurbishing. All these pieces are important in themselves, not just the whole assembled machine. Any single piece that can be reversed-engineered can be a danger to their moat.
This isn't just ASML, this is any hi-tech industry. I worked in power-plants, where ABB didn't just sell us gas-turbines, they sold a package, from Swiss engineers coming twice a year to help us tune them to "we now have these nozzles that make them 1.2% more efficient in hot weather, we can come replace them".
Or the story on the HN frontpage recently, where Russian airlines are running out of brakes: just imagine being, say, a Russian factory that makes, say, brakes for Tupolevs and you can reverse-engineer Airbus brakes and start making them. High margins guaranteed.
So yes: ASML is rightfully very careful with Chinese competion and espionage¹
All what you said may be true, but ASML would still be foolish to trust and export to China, given that the latter is hell bent on copying and reverse engg its products, even if unsuccessfully for now.
Dont assist even your incompetent adversary. Competition 101.
Of course there is a plan somewhere for this kind of thing, that's how war works.
But an idiot fringe congressman spouting such things does not make a credible threat or say anything about the actual intentions about the country, just a good way for somebody to get attention or some points from one hardline group or another.
You can say this about any US policy, until it is officially announced. It turns out that the US gov has made all the moves to weaponize Taiwan and make it the center of a war against China, so what is the surprise that they will bomb Taiwan if needed?
Because of the geography of Taiwan, the idea is to turn Taiwan into a porcupine. Make it prohibitively expensive and deadly to try and invade. Taiwan armed to the teeth with modern American weaponry will go a long way to accomplish that.
> People who don't understand what OP just wrote should look at what just happened to the South Korean semiconductor market. over 36% plunge in exports[] and that samsungs memory profit dropped 95%.
Is demand for electronics finally dropping? I want to be able to buy a 3 year old Nvidia low-range GPU at below MSRP...
Why would people not just buy AMD GPUs instead ? It's not like they are much worse, in fact last I checked it was Nvidia GPUs that were problematic if you had Linux in mind !
The stated reason for delaying the fab construction is a lack of skilled labor in the USA, which does make sense - that's what happens when you hollow out domestic manufacturing in the name of increased corporate profits from outsourcing.
> "“There is an insufficient amount of skilled workers” with the expertise to build a chip factory, TSMC chairman Mark Liu complained during a call with analysts. The executive warned the company might have to fly in “experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers for a short period of time.”"
Insufficient at the price TSMC is willing to pay for all those hours.
The neighborhood around ASU in Tempe, AZ is chock full of fabs that have been built or expanded recently. Please take the “hollowed out workforce” to a different discussion where it actually applies.
All this while demand is not growing like it once was. Lot of these projects will bomb. And the west doesnt have docile easy to dominate labour that east asia has. They will never achieve the same margins. And as soon as China-Taiwan chapter is over, corporate robots will happily return.
No offense but there's no possible comparison between the two, and comparing the situations only highlight your lack of understanding of the situations:
- Hong Kong belonged to China already, it just had a special status that was supposed to expire at some point, Xi “just” went ahead of schedule but there wasn't anything to stop him from doing so (no independent HK government, no army, etc)
- Taiwan is a complete state, with a government and an army, a navy and an air force equipped with Western and mordern home-grown equipment, cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles and so on. Without a Western direct armed intervention, Taiwan is almost always expected to fall after a few weeks by Western military analysts (though the same analysts also expected Ukraine to be unable to match Russia on conventional battles), but even the current predictions on Taiwan suggests that China will pay a signifiy cost in terms of casualties and and material even if they succeeded eventually. And again the success assumes no military actions from the West. Of course Xi may take his chance anyway, but the situation would still be incomparable to HK.
If there was a spark of integrity left, a whole generation would step back from there posts in lock and file out of the building. Not a grey hair to be found after the whole Neo-Lib-Con episode.
You don’t see how that would immediately produce blowback? Is Congress going to say “oh shucks” and authorise another weapons deal? Or might they redirect those dollars domestically while reducing patrols of the Taiwan Straits?
My impression is that TSMC is a Taiwanese company, why this would not be onshoring, but offshoring.
The more appropriate term is probably foreign direct investment (FDI) in Germany from TSMC.
I find it funny that western people have issue with the idea that Asian companies can indeed also invest in western countries. It is akin to some discussion about Lega here on HN where some people talked about it as "onshoring" when they made a US factory – Lego is a Danish comapny.
More like the opposite, by making ties with other countries, Taiwan will win some geopolitical points.
TSMC alone has no control over if the Chinese government will commit such aggression, if they would do their whole company strategy based on fearing the CCP, there's no way they can be successful.
I think this is true. China is working really hard to get it's domestic semiconducter industry up to speed.
They are willing to burn a lot of money and time to reach their overall political goal of annexing Taiwan even if it takes a very very long time.
Ultimately it's unrealistic to assume that a country of 1.4 Billion people can not catch up eventually espescially if they would otherwise have to rely on a global competitor (US) or a military target which factories are rigged to blow (Taiwan).
The best thing Taiwan can do (once their semiconductor lead is no more) is to make themselves into a strategic ally located on Chinas doorstep.
China is willing to point a firehose of resouroces at development targets, but that doesn't guarantee success. Semiconductors are really stinking hard!
East Germany famously tried really hard to develop a native capability, but failed and wound up smuggling parts from the west and running years behind western firms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s
China is more willing to both reward and hold senior stakeholders responsible, as long as they aren't too closely allied with Xi
> it's unrealistic to assume that a country of 1.4 Billion people can not catch up eventually
Why? By 2100, each of Pakistan, the D.R.C. and Kenya are forecast to have larger populations than America [1]. Is it unrealistic to assume they won’t be at parity with the west in eighty years? (Note: not saying dismiss entirely. Just baselines.)
China has a lot going for it in semiconductors. Demography isn’t one of them. The population is aging and shrinking. That, ceteris paribus, reduces surplus capital for R&D.
> By 2100, each of Pakistan, the D.R.C. and Kenya are forecast to have larger populations than America. Is it unrealistic to assume they won’t be at parity with the west in eighty years?
Pakistan has the best chances to rise, at least assuming religious / ethnic tensions can be somewhat placated, it doesn't become a hotbed of natural disasters like last year's floods and they don't either get into open war with India or suffer from some sort of coups by the military or secret services.
Kenya and especially Congo? That's a different game entirely. Climate change, utter poverty and endemic corruption are just a couple of the hurdles to pass.
Because PRC is not systemically comparable to those countries just like Japan isn't comparable to a larger Nigeria.
Only the most cognitively challenged demographic determinists argue larger population = more capability. Useful demographic analysis more than naive reading of demographic pyramid, it's recognizing unlike most developing countries, PRC has established record to upskill/cultivate and coordinate human capita at scale. And is projected to have multiple times more skilled talent than US by 2050s, moving from current 25% high skilled workforce to 60/70/80% to reflect workforce composition of advanced economies over time.
>Demography isn’t one of them
More than anyone, demography is PRC's greatest advantage for semi and other high tech industries in relevant timelines we're talking about. The workforce for high skilled talent is exploding for another 30+ years. Short/medium term PRC has by relevant measures, the greatest skilled demographic divident ever, and even in stagnation they'll be settling with largest (or second largest relative to India) pool of skilled workforce, with again proven ability to coordinate (i.e. not India performance).
Even 2100 PRC working age population is still ~2x of 2100 US if you tally up pyramid projections of 20-65 yr olds. Except PRC's 2100 workforce will likely have more than 2x current skilled talent instead of being dragged down by 100s of millions of farmers and surplus informal workers who will age out post 2050s to be replaced by better educated/more productive cohorts. Same way other Asian tigers grew despite "bad demographics" - by continuously upskilling % of workforce initially dominated by peasants over time.
This is why current analysis of US semi workforce project 80k short term shortage to balloon to 300-400k medium term. SKR, TW both have current/short term 50-100k shortage. The TLDR is SKR, TW (and JP) have nearly satuated their workforce in terms of skilled talent, and can't replace at parity. US expanding fabs as rate their talent pipeline can't catch up, and the ability to import/brain drain is limited because they'll be taking from other CHIP4 partners also undergoing shortage. Which leaves PRC, who after elevating semi to first-level dicipline in 2018 is pumping out about 30k IC graduates per year. They're still about 200k short, ~520k/720k (400k in 2018) out of what IC talent 2018 white paper estimated PRC needed for completely indigenous semi industry, which US isn't currently even trying to pursue, still ultimately relying on east asian semi supply chains. Long term US may to get there, but right now only PRC is sent to close semi labour force gap within the decade. Ultimately, talent is just as important in industrial policy as money. PRC has both. Their biggest shortcoming is being behind, which will likely be addressed by investing sufficient talent and money.
Onshoring is impossible for most countries. TSMC had an annual capital budget of >$50B, there are only like 30 countries with >$100B in total government revenue:
These fabs are going to be built, with or without TSMC. I do have a bit more confidence in the long term success of US fabs, compared to the EU one, but there's a good chance that both will succeed, to some extend.
The Taiwanese government can attempt to prevent TSMC in participating, but what good will that do? Might as well ensure that TSMC at least have a hand in it and avoid customers leaving for another manufacturer. TSMC can then offer fabrication, maybe it's in the EU, maybe it's in Taiwan, the important part is keeping the customer and not allowing competitors to establish themselves.
This in Germany and the one in the US are both Megafabs.They produce chips for special industries with strategic importance. In the US for military and defense, in the Europe for automotive industry and automation.
Having so much reliance on advanced semiconductors from an island that's potentially going to be invaded by China doesn't seem like a great plan for the US and Europe. It absolutely makes sense for both the US and Europe to incentivize production in their own countries to diversify. If the fabs in Taiwan were to be damaged without building up this domestic capability we'd have a tough time defending Taiwan after a while anyway.
I don't think it's that simple, because the effort necessary to employ the different choices are very different.
Stopping cargo going out of Taiwan is rather cheap. Unguided rockets and aircraft from your homeland can do a lot. And then they just have to defend near their home land while waiting for their opponent to run out of resources.
At the same time, as we can see here, it takes 4 years to go from acre to functional fab plant after planning and negotiations. And any kind of war to regain control of the chip supply lane is a significant drain on the chips and systems reliant on the chips you have.
We are talking about potential WW3, and you are worried about world loosing 2 years of progress due to war. Currently, Samsung is 2-3 years behind and Intel is 3-4 years behind and the gap is shrinking as we approach EUV limit.
Millions of lives would be lost if not more if it will be a full scale war. A chip fab is nowhere the same level of importance to be even discussed on the table.
I'm wondering if these offshore fab announcements from TSMC are more like unserious offers intended to delay other countries from pushing harder to establish local semiconductor industries. TSMC is already delaying the Arizona plant in the US. Maybe that was their intent from the beginning?
"But they've spent X billions of dollars." Yes but this is irrelevant when facing off an existential threat to their business and the overall economy and security of Taiwan. Taiwan, like Israel, is run by cunning folks. They wouldn't have survived this long otherwise.
It is not just Taiwan's advanced manufacturing that is critical to the free world — an enormous amount of shipping for Japan also goes through the Straits Of Taiwan. This is just part of the reason that the US Navy frequently runs freedom of navigation exercises through those waters.
Mere reduction of the criticality of Taiwan's advanced manufacturing will not eliminate Taiwan's geostrategic importance.
Plus, the CCP's insistence on being an expansionist authoritarian state is reason enough to contain that expansion, to prevent further resource gains.
Sure, if you ignore their military actions and treaty violations in Tibet, Turkistan (Uyghurs), border conflicts around the Himalyas and India, Russia (border conflict), Korea, Vietnam, everywhere on the "9-dash line", Canada and the US (where they are putting up remote "police stations" to intimidate anyone expressing opinions they dislike)...
CCP has a highly consistent history of being as aggressive and untrustworthy as they can get away with. Anyone trusting them is a fool.
You're wrong, your parent is correct. NL government had to block sales of ASML EUV machines to China on the US's request since they didn't want to enable China build advanced chips.
ASML definitely wanted to sell to China to increase their quarterly revenues but couldn't because the US owns the IP for the EUV tech and ASML's EUV light sources are made by CYMER in the US, which ASML bought but they're still under US trade restrictions.
So no, ASML and the NL government have to dance according to the moves dictated by the US gov as they own the keys to EUV tech, not ASML/NL.
In the grand scheme you are correct - there is enough US corporations' tech in ASML machines so that the US government has enough leverage to force ASML to comply with its export restrictions.
But your details aren't exactly right, I think. Cymer builds light sources for DUV, not EUV. The EUV light sources are built by Trumpf in Germany, at least as far as I know.
You're incorect. Trumpf doesn't make EUV light sources, just lasers. Cymer builds the EUV light sources, by blasting microparticles of tin with said Trumpf lasers to generate EUV light.
> at least as far as I know.
You could have also googled this to factcheck before posting if you were unsure ;)
Since ASML builds/integrates the machine, is there any reason why they couldn’t just pull out the EUV laser from the machine, but keep the trumpf lasers, zeiss mirrors and everything else. Then China could just copy the “shooting tin droplets with a laser at 50khz” part.
Because then the Us would get Germany to ban Zeiss and Trumpf and even if they wouldn't, the whole "shoot lasers at tin droplets" bit is insanely difficult to replicate that Canon and Nikon dropped out of the EUV race.
They already have a light source[1] which they are collaborating with Imec to get ready for EUV, apparently within 2 years[2]. It will be interresting to see how far ASML will go to get around export restriction contracts, since there are billions to be made in chinese lithography. I didn’t know that the US had the capability the control who europeans companies choose to export their products to.
ASML has suppliers in the US, so if the US does not like what ASML/NL are doing they could block exports of certain components to certain destinations.
Also remember that a lot (all?) of the circuit design software is US-based, so the supply chain could be squeezed from that direction as well.
Europe is still doing it, and when they don’t the us applies pressure through its closest European Allies. The us is very much still involved in classic Cold War stuff in Europe. The Ukrainian war has been very good to American exports of arms and liquid gas.
It is still exported, right? Calling it a donation does not suddenly make the arms free/gratis. The money still comes from somewhere and is ... exported.
Couldn't TSMC cease or hinder operations if their HQs is threatened and their partnering countries do nothing? Seems like more leverage and ally building than the opposite to me.
The USA has guaranteed the demise of Taiwan by making it the next target of a global war. Everyone knows that China is not going back on a territory that is theirs by international treaties, and the US has practically declared they will fight to separate Taiwan from China. The only thing that remains for Taiwanese companies is to move from homeland into other countries as a way to survive. Actually, this is probably what the US gov wanted in the first place, so they destroyed another competitor.
>Everyone knows that China is not going back on a territory that is theirs by international treaties
When you said China, which China are we talking about?. the fact is, Taiwan and China is still in a Civil War.
The United States did not explicitly state the sovereign status of Taiwan in the three US-PRC Joint Communiqués of 1972, 1979, and 1982.
The United States "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
U.S. policy has not recognized the PRC's sovereignty over Taiwan;
U.S. policy has not recognized Taiwan as a sovereign country; and
U.S. policy has considered Taiwan's status as unsettled.
To make Taiwan less critical makes it less attractive as a target - China won't be able to damage the US so much by taking Taiwan. It will be harder for China to force other people to accept their action.
Not less critical but you see if they steal something the rest of the world needs then they can hold the world to ransom but if the rest of the world has alternatives then they can't. That has to change their calculations about when and how they will make a move.
Why do you think Taiwan reuniting with China would steal anything from the rest of the world? Nothing in Taiwan is owned by the rest of the world, Taiwan itself owns what they have. And the Chinese government will not stop selling what Taiwan produces.
Oh, I see, you're trying to excuse the Chinese for being arseholes now because someone else did something in the past. It's irrelevant because it's not in the interests of the rest of the world for Taiwan to be gobbled up.
Only logical if you accept the CCP as a legitimate government, which barely any politician in Europe, the USA and the rest of the west does (privately).
Not only CPC is a legitimate government, but it is effectively supported by the West. Do you mean that practically all governments of the world have agreements and deals with an illegitimate entity? They would be otherwise collectively gilt of making ilegal dealings.
Deals are made out of practicality. For instance the US did deals with Osama Bin Laden once upon a time. Doesn’t mean anyone wants them taking over a country that has a democracy. If ROC wanted to join China, let them vote to elect the CPC, eh?
Genuinely curious how these events fall in place. I'd like to know how long a selection process like this takes, were there other cities in the running, and how did Dresden become the choice. Is the best similarity with how car companies like VW and Honda choose cities in the US?
Dresden is kind of a semiconductor hotspot in Germany. AMD and Infineon have factories there for example which also attracted suppliers and related technology to the area.
Like with the Arizona fab question where will they find the skilled workers?
Putting up four walls and a roof, with some chip fabbing equipment doesn't make an efficient fabrication location. When you have American TSMC worker complain about long shift hours i imaging it wouldn't be any better in Europe for TSMC.
This feels more like TSMC grabbing from subsidies pots where it can hoping this will please the NATO nations and that TSMC hopefully survive long enough te reenter the mainland again on time before the mainland goes completely domestic with chips fabrication.
Dresden is already a major microelectronics hub in Europe (and has been for over 50 years), and Germany traditionally has a good vocational training system. Of course - as everywhere - the German industry always cries about not finding enough skilled workers, but what they actually mean is they don't find enough skilled workers at the wages they want to pay, but "the market will take care of that" ;)
The population of _all_ of Arizona is only 7.2 million. Just within 100km of Dresden you've got 5 million. Add in a much easier, faster immigration policy (esepcially from the rest of Europe) and a higher (although still not high) unemployment rate and they're probably gonna have an easier time of it than Arizone does.
Not sure how the state population is relevant, the vast majority of people living in Arizona live in the Phoenix metropolitan area which is where these new fabs are being built. The population size for that area is also around 5 million. Also, how is immigration between countries in Europe easier than immigration between states in the US. That is simply not possible when the US has no language/cultural barriers.
Nothing wrong with state subsidies, EU has just not been good at them historically (e.g. Galileo), and there is reasonable doubt that it is going to be better this time, as what they invest in is far from being a cutting edge technology.
And will be, should the US for whatever reason decide to limit access to GPS or reduce resolution in certain parts of the world. Transport in the EU would break down.
Exactly. All the big economic success was due to state coordination and intervention, not (neo-)liberalism. Liberalism might work for a smaller country that becomes a trading hub (like Singapore), and uses low taxes as a sort of parasitic strategy; that's why it cannot be replicated by large countries.
I am glad that Germany is coming to their senses and finally rejecting neoliberalism. Now if only Eurozone leadership (which was created during neoliberal heydays) would do the same across the EU.
Eurozone leadership will never do that, because of national egoisms. Just look at how Airbus builds its airplanes, because everybody wants a slice, so they fly each airplane body halfway across the continent and back... And Airbus is just 4 nations (FR, DE, ES, UK). Collaboration across all of the Eurozone or all of the EU would be a mess of ITER-like proportions.
If one was designing a European aircraft manufacturer from the ground up one would not choose the Airbus model… but that’s not what happened. They were all going to require state subsidy, presumably the total subsidy is less than if each state were subsidising their own aircraft manufacturer to compete with each other. And if they had settled on one location and the other sites had shut down you and I well know the governments would just be subsidising jobs in some other industry.
“National egoisms” is a nebulous phrase. The fact is that they would have been punished by their political systems. The governments handed out the subsidies that were necessary to not be punished. That’s democracy.
Even with privatisation in the 90s and many on the left disputing this, Germany is still considered a social market economy ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft").
Second, why do you think a country like Germany (where the ratio of government expenditure to GDP is around 50%) can be classified as “neoliberal” in the sense you mean it?
Maybe because they replaced lots of social security features by private company insurances.
Health care and pensions cover hardly all your needs and need to be supplemented by private insurances.
They privatised or try to privatise essential services like postal services, telecommunications and railroads.
They got rid of government experts in favor of external private company "experts". In combination with construction contracts being put out to tender this leads to failures like the BER airport.
All these private companies weren't able to built and airport that complies with the building regulations. So they either aren't as effective as neoliberlism claims or they exploited the lack of governmental oversight to get more money.
Not to mention the millions politicians like Ursula vin der Leyen gave to companies like McKinsey to advise on the modernisations of the Armed Forces which lead to the opposite.
They are neoliberal, it's just isn't so easy to sell it to the people as something positive. That's why the SPD was needed to implement a wage raise killer like Hartz IV, because people thought of the SPD as a social party working for the workers.
Neoliberalism: Free trade and globalization is good, state ownership and state economic investment bad.
Germany was certainly less damaged by neoliberalism (which is an ideology, actual practice might be different) than the US and UK, who were the major proponents of neoliberalism. I think the reason was that Germany has tripartism, which makes union-industry negotiations less antagonistic.
But, the Eurozone was built according to neoliberal principles (and associated austerity policies), and the results were catastrophic for the EU. That's why we (I am Czech) need to snap out of it.
Ha-Joon Chang and George Stiglitz describe the problems of neoliberalism as a strategy of economic development in their books.
The automotive industry made the mistake of cancelling their orders during Corona and were then surprised to find that the capacities were allocated elsewhere when they wanted to order again.
So they whined at the government to subsidise the fab.
What about the AstraZeneca sending "best effort" vacc doses to the UK with ~100% but "best effort" the EU got ~30% of what it ordered? (sure I guess the EU will not again sign contracts that contain "best effort").
Not to mention that the AstraZeneca vaccine was developed by the Oxford university and they planned to release it with costs until the Gates foundation convinced them to sell it.
If enough of these pop up Taiwan is cooked right? Is there anything Taiwan is doing to try to stop these efforts? Also in terms of the world security which is preferable:
Im rather sure Robert Bosch and Infineon are aware of what chips they need. Obviously not the Zen 5, M3 or Meteor Lake.
Germany needs CPUs for the industry. Cars, machines, planes, wind turbines and so on :)
But you cannot build Personal-Computers with them? That failure is caused by Siemens (Siemens-Nixdorf) and AEG. In GDR/DDR they were close to build a 386 compatible CPU. The remaining knowledge is still somewhat available, Global Foundries in Dresden.
But the CPUs for PC? Yes. Yes. Okay. Intel will build a Fab there, too ;)
It's actually a little fun. HN is always quick to point out when someone is over thinking software architecture, but for chips we're apparently blind to the fact that most of the chips in the world are pretty underwhelming, but gets the job done.
The Chips Act was marketed as an attempt to bring back "cutting-edge chips" to Europe, and to promote research and innovation. In the end it turns out to just be a huge government subsidy for a bog-standard fab which is at least a decade behind what TSMC is building in Taiwan.
Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines, but pretty pointless when it comes to doing what it was actually supposed to do. Europe already has plenty of fabs like these which did not require billion-euro handouts.
Bear in mind that this could be a "thin edge of the wedge" situation. Where they get this "older" node stuff up and running, and if it turns out to be going well then they can think about newer process/node sizes.
> Bear in mind that this could be a "thin edge of the wedge" situation. Where they get this "older" node stuff up and running, and if it turns out to be going well then they can think about newer process/node sizes.
I think that would be more credible if Global Foundries didn't already have "Fab 1" up and running that has a mature 22nm process.
But Global Foundries doesn't have the ability to do newer/smaller node sizes, so they can't "level up" at a future time. That is, unless Global Foundries makes some massive investments. Which they've not demonstrated any willingness to do, nor competence at doing.
This deal with TSMC at least seems like it provides a way forward with people that know how to execute. One that the Global Foundries option can't credibly provide.
Nothing is stopping GloFo from licensing 7nm and beyond from Samsung, like they did for 14nm. Except indeed those massive investments.
But TSMC isn't willing to make those investments in Europe either. It's their goose that lays golden eggs, and keeping it all in Taiwan makes a lot more sense from a geopolitical perspective. The only reason they are now building this fab in Germany is because it is ancient technology to them and they are basically getting a free fab out of it.
The problem with that is that this is essentially just a TSMC fab. If they wanted to, they could have easily used a newer node. And there isn't even significant technology transfer involved with TSMC having a 70% stake and there already being fabs with this level of tech in Europe at GlobalFoundries and others.
There is pretty much no way forward for this. You'd have a point if a European company managed to sign a technology transfer for last year's node, but that's simply not what is happening here.
No. Its irrelevant if you produce electric or combustion vehicles (or even household electronics in general): The biggest demand is for chips on an efficient (read: older) process.
You are not going to use some 3nm EUV boondoggle process just to pump out voltage regulators or sub-100MHz microcontrollers, but you need tons of those for pretty much every application.
Sure there might be four or five CPUs on a modern process in a modern car, but there are COUNTLESS simpler/slower/cheaper chips required that are made on an older process and this is not gonna change anytime soon.
1. They do want to produce ICE cars for several more decades, yes.
2. It's not as if BEVs are chip-free, and most of the chips used aren't ultra-high performance things that require the very latest generation fab equipment.
> the cost / benefit tradeoff is in favor of the 10 year old processes.
I thought a big part of the reason why that's the case in general is because the old fabs that house those old processes have already been depreciated - customers basically only pay for maintenance and the of raw materials.
R&D is a significant part of what you have to amortise. I'm guessing they are going to pay the machinery significantly less than if it was brand new. Part of it might even be relocated from another fab. Yields should also be better. That leaves the building but I'm guessing the German state must be generous here and that should help offset that.
3nm has already hit mass production. Considering this fab won't be ready for at least another two years, 2nm will have hit mass production already.
22nm dates back to 2012, and TSMC has been doing 14nm FinFET mass production since 2014. So yeah, a decade behind cutting-edge can indeed be called "old" when the entire point of the Chips Act was to catch up with Asia and become a center for innovation.
Considering the sheer magnitude of the cost of building out a bleeding edge fab, wouldn't it make sense to start with a somewhat older (but still incredibly useful) process node, develop domain expertise and then iterate? Going from 0 to 2nm is sure to yield little more than a boondoggle. Catching up is going to be a decade long process - if not longer. But you do have to start somewhere.
Plus, the only vendor of EUV lithography machines is likely 100% committed for the foreseeable future. DUV machines are much easier to get - you can go to ASML, Nikon, Canon and I assume a few others - while you find some space on the EUV order books.
They are not coming from zero. This joint venture is 70% TSMC, so it is essentially guaranteed that they are basically just going to copy/paste an existing TSMC fab. There is not going to be any "catching up" when the company you want to catch up with it literally yourself.
Besides, there are already plenty of fabs in Europe at these nodes at companies like GlobalFoundries. Getting another one isn't going to be very useful in trying to catch up, especially when it is one from just before a huge paradigm shift. It's not going to teach them anything about EUV, so they would be trying to catch up from 7-8 nodes behind without even using the technology needed to reach the cutting-edge.
It just cannot take the voltages involved and fabbing switching regulators or CAN bus transceivers on a 3nm process would be a waste. Especially when a cheaper and higher voltage capable 180nm or 300nm process is available.
and zero of the shortages were caused by lack of fab capacity - companies cut orders for over a year. Old stocks got depleted, prices skyrocketed, then companies reluctantly put new orders and started selling at those inflated prices.
That's not exactly what happened. Manufacturers gave up their fab capacity at the start of the pandemic to hedge for a potential economic kerfuffle. That capacity was immediately resold to other parties, and by the time the folks who gave up their fab space realized things were going to be okay and came back, it was too late. It really was a fab supply shortage, but a situation of their own making too.
The likes of Bosch/Infineon/NXP are not interested in bleeding edge fabs, they sell embedded CPUs from very old fabs they still have. So this is an advancement for them, and totally sufficient for embedded stuff.
No, TSMC 22 has no eFLASH, expensive SRAM, lacking of analog capability, lacks high temperature tolerance, and is tied to multiple patterning design flow.
TSMC 40 on the other hand is the last portable node, with MRAM, eFLASH, high temp, some mixed signal, RF, no MP, and everything else your soul desires.
Silicium chips and transistors are used for so much more things than cutting-edge computing. Germany is not really in that business (yet) so this is more a move to get their current supply-chain for automotive, machinery, etc. more independent.
The biggest concern for Germany is chip supply for the industry, especially the automotive sector, machinery, military and so on. 28/22 and 16/12 chips are still going to dominate in that sector for a long time.
On the other hand: Why fill out PDF forms if you can just send HTML forms and submit them directly to the administration. This is how the Danish system works.
What lacks in Germany is not GPUs. In fact cluster time is abundant for researchers at top tier research institutes or unis. What lacks is private investment. The whole economy is controlled by a bunch of old fucks who have no clue about any kind of tech and no appetite for risk. Because of the lack of private investment there are also no jobs in the field.
The older tech is a great deal. Instead of paying a huge premium for smaller nodes you get low cost and keep the margin for yourself.
Having the bleeding edge tech sounds great, but where are the customers that are going to pay for bleeding edge output and the countless billions of investment it takes to get set up to produce it?
They're building it for today's needs tomorrow. Sadly by the time this will come online plus another year or two in service the market might have already moved on to much higher performing embedded chips for EV products, which at the end will be sourced from Asia again.
It's all good and nice if private companies want to do this, they should know best after all. Spending another 5 billion on taxes on this is flabbergasting, especially in an area of the country that is incredibly foreigner-unfriendly (to say it mildly).
Is this fab dependent on ASML's lithography tech? Given the backlog for their machines, perhaps going back a few generations an not being bleeding edge might make the fab much more feasible to get running sooner?
They require functional safety. Certification can be very expensive and take a long time. What seems old within the consumer electronics market isn’t necessarily old within the automotive industry.
Habeck and his kleptomanic friends and family will get a nice kickback later in life. Who cares if TSMC uses it for the things they do not want to have back home anymore as they are clearly getting to EOL.
You don't re-fit a fab, you build it from scratch. There is very little technological overlap where it matters due to the shift to EUV. You'd essentially have to scrap >75% of the fab to fit in the new equipment.
Not only that, but the fab undergoing the 2 - 5 year refit would also not be in full production capability.
So there is the revenue loss in addition to everything else.
and suddenly just building new makes even more sense.
There is a YouTube channel called asianometry which did some videos about UV lithography. Form what I remember the processes vary significantly in each generation so that there probably is little to no real overlap.
I'm no expert though so might be off by a mile here.
“…begin construction of the fab in the second half of 2024 with production targeted to begin by the end of 2027”.
It’s good to see new fabs in Europe, but I think it’s a bit late and with “old” technology. On the other hand there are many other areas in need of chips that will benefit from this in the coming years.
Modern is better, but many industries are fine with "old" technology. As the pandemic showed, the problem (for industry and mass market consumer electronics) was not Intel/AMD/Nvidia high end chips but chips for washing maschines (had to wait 7 (!) months for a dishwasher b/c Miele had no chips) and cars.
Is modern really better? If you are waiting on a compile, or running the latest game or - other performance critical task of course it is. However for embedded systems older processes are likely to result in chips that operate longer under harsh conditions and so may be better. It depends on the application.
I know where I work we have customers that run our products at -70C and +50C, we can't run a lot of modern chips because they fail our tests at those operating temperatures.
It isn't necessarily, especially if your chip involves some analog or RF design, or must be robust. It is only for increased compute power where the smalles nodes shine
Smaller nodes also do not inherently have better performance for all tasks. They bring performance penalties in some regards, extra costs, and more complexity, which might make something older like 65mm a far better choice
While that video from Asianometry contains interesting historical information, it does not include any evidence for their thesis that the GDR's mismanagement of their semiconductor industry was a greater contributor to the country's bankruptcy than their mismanagement of all the other branches of the economy.
If they would have directed some of the resources spent in attempts to modernize the semiconductor industry to any other economic activities, at least the same fraction of the resources that were wasted in the semiconductor industry would have been wasted elsewhere.
So there is no proof that this choice has been worse than others. On the contrary, even if in GDR their efforts did not result in the desired production capabilities, at least they taught many engineers and technicians, so that this made Dresden attractive after reunification as a place where to invest in this field, until in the present with this fab planned by TSMC.
While they could not export towards Western countries, semiconductor devices formed a significant fraction of their exports to the Soviet Union and to the countries dominated by the Soviet Union, i.e. to the other members of the Comecon.
If the GDR had not used most of its resources for a greater development in the domains of semiconductor devices, precision mechanics and optics than most other members of Comecon, it is likely that they would not have been able to export much except food, which they did not have enough even for themselves, while needing to import a lot of resources that they did not have.
If Asianometry had made a video with the similar title "How Semiconductors Ruined Intel", that title would be closer to the truth, because during most of the last decade the performance of Intel in developing semiconductor manufacturing has been much worse than that of the GDR.
Hopefully the woes of Intel will end this year with the launch of the "Intel 4" process, but before that Intel has succeeded in 6-7 years to transform an advantage of 2-3 years in semiconductor manufacturing against all others into a handicap of 2-3 years compared to the top competitors.
By contrast, GDR has started with a handicap of at least 10 years against USA (the US semiconductor industry has been created in the middle of WW2, for the fabrication of radar diodes) and after some 35 years it still had about the same 10 years of handicap.
While GDR and the other communist countries have never been able to reduce the technological gap between them and USA, they also never had any such tremendous fall behind, like Intel, where it seems that the management methods and the internal cooperation between divisions have not been better than those that were rightly criticized for GDR.
Unfortunately bad management is not an exclusive feature of the "planned" communist economies, but it becomes more and more frequent in the present economies that have become dominated by quasi-monopolies everywhere.
(I have no clue about the stuff you say about Intel)
I again couldn't find a lot of data on the exports you've mentioned, but I do guess if it's CPUs it was mainly reverse engineered, illegally produced Z80 ("U880").
It looks like the GDR did reverse engineer a 80286 ("U80601") and started limited production in 1989, in very low numbers because of production problems (The West was using 486 at that point). So it is unclear how reverse engineering of CPUs would progress
Z80 8.5k transistors
286 134k transistors
386 275k transistors (+ 120k for 387)
486 >1200k transistors (the 486 had an FPU)
(As the GDR also illegally cloned DEC MicroVax systems, there is a "U80701" MicroVax clone with 130k transistors, same like the 286 clone. This doesn't seem to have gone into production)
The reason the GDR could not pull it off where manifold. First the Eastern block countries tried a different concept in IT in the 50s and 60s compared to the West, that proved not as practical. Second the GDR lost time by reverse engineering and spending money on smuggling CPUs and machines. Third the West had a huge network of companies building a supply chain for production of semiconductors. The GDR (or Eastern block) would have needed to bootstrap the whole supply chain by it's own. The Western supply chain in semiconductors was probably 1000x the value and people the GDR did or could spend.
The collapse of the GDR has many reasons, mostly it ran out of money during the 80s. There have been several reasons for running out of money, e.G. taking on massive credit in the 70s to produce more consumer goods and build flats (the reason Honecker was very popular after his coup against Ulbricht), which it had problems to pay back in the 80s. Also minor things like spending millions on importing coffee (all experiments to replace coffee with something else failed - Vietnam is one of the worlds biggest coffee exporters because of GDR investments that came too late).
Another reason was Russia cutting cheap oil during the 70s after the oil shock. The GDR had imported cheap oil from Russia, was refining it and selling it with high margins to the West for $/Deutsche Mark. That source of money dried up in the 80s.
With sparse resources, the GDR was between a rock and a hard place. For modern production it needed chips, reverse engineering western chips e.G. Z80s (reverse engineered chip called U880 in the GDR) or smuggling chips was very expensive (~5-10x the price). Building chips on their own was also expensive. But they decided to invest billions into home grown chip production (they smuggled a whole factory via Austria, see "Red Fini") leading to the famous 1mbit chip "U61000" - which was old at that time, also the Japanese produced the same amount of chips in a day that the GDR was able to produce in a year. So things went nowhere.
But those billions were not available for other things.
Without money ($, Deutsche Mark), in the 80s to pay back credits to western banks a lot of vegetables, fruits and consumer products like clothing and washing maschines were exported to the West (most of the fruit production of the GDR around West Berlin went to West Berlin, many products in the West German QUELLE catalogue - like Sears - were made in the GDR). These products were missing in local shops, shelves were often empty, especially outside the large cities like Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden.
Additionally factories in the 80s in the GDR were in a very bad state (my father in law was head of production in a large machine factory in East Berlin during that time), lots of stuff was being stolen on a constant basis, maschines were old and lacked computer support (see above). This again reduced available consumer goods.
Because consumer goods were scarce, when things were available people bought more than they needed, leading to more scarcity (as seen during the pandemic). It is said that every household in the GDR had a second car as spare parts (another example are agricultural factories hoarding harvester spare parts, so when broke down, spare parts where hard to get).
Missing consumer goods in the GDR led people to leave their jobs in factories whenever something was available, e.G. rain boots, which reduced productivity even more.
In the end so many things were missing that people mass fled the GDR when Hungary opened the border.
All this together made the Central Committee believe everything is lost (book to read in German "Das Ende der SED - Die letzten Tage des Zentralkomitees" with meeting notes from the Central Committee), and the Russians not willing to come to help with tanks this time [0] (like they did in 1953 to kill Germans to keep the communists in power in East Germany) power was transfered to the people leading to reunification.
[0] For comparison: When Poland went bancrupt in 1980/1981 Russia and the GDR were near an invasion - which Poland prevented with a military coup.
Thanks so much, really informative! I need to read up on economies of Warsaw bloc countries. For some reason I’ve never even heard about a Poland bankruptcy in 1980-81, and I’m from Ukraine (so I’m more than familiar with goods deficit, sadly).
Yes do! I think too many different things have been lumped together in "the fall of the iron curtain". Every country of the "Warsaw Pact" (NATO speak) was in a different state with different problems, e.G. Poland had a strong opposition with the Solidarność movement, the GDR had some opposition with a environmental movement (which later became the freedom movement) (I don't know about Bulgaria and Hungary etc).
What unified them was the threat of the Soviet Union to intervene on behalf of their governments if there would be danger to the state.
When that threat broke away with Gorbachev, the states collapsed at the same time in different ways (e.G. Ceaușescu was killed, Honecker went into exile) and for different reasons (although the overall driving force for more wealth and freedom was the same).
Neither of these are in the EU and won't solve the problem for the EU, they'd still be dependent on other countries. The point is to bring the production to the EU.
This is quite a surprise. Germany is currently reeling from poor economic conditions including high inflation rates, skyrocketing energy costs, a measure of pessimistic disillusionment vis-a-vis their elected leadership, etc. This is also related to a general sense that businesses are exiting the German market due to burdensome regulations and rising cost of doing business (in large part due to spiraling energy costs). I am no expert, but this announcement stands in stark contrast to said premises--and I can't help but wonder if this move might not be at least in part politically motivated. The facts as they currently stand: Germany considers itself a trading partner with China, but is aware of the rising imbalance in competitiveness (significantly due to phasing out of ICE vehicle manufacturing, where they held a significant lead, and simultaneous phasing in of BEV manufacturing, where China holds significant advantages, both in accrued institutional knowledge and access to requisite raw materials). At the same time, the German leadership coalition has been frustrated by the rising pushback against the Green transformation of the German economy, which they view as non negotiable, but is objectively a non-trivial factor of the economic malaise.
Let's say TSMC does manage to build a fab before 2027 (the year China is expected to complete the modernization of their military and launch their campaign against the island of Formosa's governing body, aka the Taiwanese government). How might such an extravagant outlay of investment funds (which could significantly improve the economic outlook in Germany and take a lot of pressure off the existing government) impact Germany's relationship with China in the crucial near term (the next few years)?
Let's not forget, for decades the CCP worked strategically on bringing about the reverse: isolating the ROC government by engaging in lending practices that sometimes resulted in situations where they could use this leverage to promote a gradual deprivation of the ROC's status as an officially recognized governing body (which has shrunk over the years to a mere 11 or even fewer nations).
Of course it isn't as if Germany's support would significantly affect the CCP's (meaning, Xi Jinping's) plans of Chinese Rejuvenation (wherein bringing Taiwan under heel is a non negotiable component), considering that even the US' increasingly overt support has had no effect on what the CCP has always viewed as an inevitability. Conversely, as the Ukraine debacle has indisputably demonstrated, even indirect support (especially from a Western ally) has a profoundly disruptive effect on the expected development and eventual outcome of any military engagement.
Also, as some may still remember, one of the principal factors that led to China's significant manufacturing modernization was a somewhat similar deal, wherein China "bailed out" a prominent US manufacturer (Boeing?) that was close to bankruptcy, by agreeing to purchase several billion dollars' worth of civilian airplanes, and in return being handed the high precision tooling infrastructure that's indispensable in the manufacture of high tech machinery (because of the military/national security implications, this required political support at the highest levels of government, meaning presidential and bipartisan support). I am suggesting this could be analogous, differing chiefly in the type of benefit that is gained by the other party, as a result. For China, it was high precision tools, while for the 23 million inhabitants of the island of Formosa (who as a group, if not a sovereign nation already dominate the semiconductor industry) it may well be a tactically swift reversal in international standing (something that barely registered at all until very recently, but then rapidly expanded into an all encompassing existential crisis rivaling their defeat at the hands of the Chinese communists, 70 years prior).
You have talked about everything: climate, inflation, energy, green, politics, Germany, china, US, past, future, rejuvenation, taiwan war, ukraine war, boeing, partisan, communism, western allies, etc etc etc.
That's an interesting development. I can't fathom how TSMC would've let Infineon+NXP into the deal without some level of positive, or negative coercion.
For Germany, it's an insurance against TSMC possibly bailing out in the future.
The 22nm node is also a very strange choice. It's absolutely not a thing which most of German industry needs, which are microcontroller, high voltage, mixed signal, niche memory, and ASIC friendly nodes.
> I can't fathom how TSMC would've let Infineon+NXP into the deal without some level of positive, or negative coercion.
Easy: Infineon is German, NXP is Dutch, Bosch is German. Germany is not exactly going to give a massive subsidy to a foreign company, but giving one to local companies is "bolstering local economy". And TSMC gets a fab at a 50% discount out of it.
40nm-ish. IO logic doesn't really scale, so going much beyond that doesn't really make sense when the price per mm2 keeps increasing with every node. If your logic is simple enough that it doesn't really benefit from the increased transistor count or power savings, IO is going to be the main factor when it comes to node selection.
The region is known for its semiconductor industry, at least in Germany. Quote from Wikipedia about Dresden:
> Silicon Saxony Saxony's semiconductor industry was built up in 1969. Major enterprises today include AMD's semiconductor fabrication spin-off GlobalFoundries, Infineon Technologies, ZMDI and Toppan Photomasks. Their factories attract many suppliers of material and cleanroom technology enterprises to Dresden.
So it just makes sense to build fabs in Dresden because there is already a lot of know-how there.
I wonder how much the decision was influenced by the general lack of opportunity in the east, and the rising alt-right movement as a consequence. I really want eastern Germany to have a better economy.
Dresden has been a semimanufactoring hub in Eastern Germany for quite some time.
I believe this started in GDR times and continued (at massively reduced capacity) after the reunification.
Intel, AMD, Infineon and others operate (or plan to build) factories in Dresend (or saxony in general) and its reasonable to assume that experienced workers and local suppliers make the area a preffered location.
Given Eastern Germanys weak economic situtation these are very welcome investments.
5 Billion Euros of public money out of a total of 10 Billion invested. So it is more like "the German state builds a fab, with TSMC and others also investing a little".
>The planned joint venture will be 70% owned by TSMC, with Bosch, Infineon, and NXP each holding 10% equity stake, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions.
I wonder what them "providing" 5 billions as news reports put it actually means. Is this a loan, a gift, or some other type of deal?
Dresden has a really good university when it comes to computer engineering, too. Plus it realtively cheap compared to other regions in Germany (like Munich)
HUGE mistake for TSMC! Don't forget that german authorities hate entrepreneurs and they will do whatever possible to make their life as excruciating as possible. Communism ideology founders (Marx, Engels etc.) were all born in Germany and this is not a coincidence.
All those are regional monopolies by law or by fact. You cannot move land, so land prices will always be regional. Energy and water networks are local monopolies, usually owned by the municipality or a local company monopoly. With electricity, you might have some choice, that is, you rent the power line from the local monopoly and buy the electricity from one of several companies. However, the choice is limited to companies serving your area, and the exact rules and companies strongly differ between European nations.
I would assume land costs are higher in NL, as there is less (I don't think Tesla paid a lot for the land) water in Germany depends on the region (but even Tesla in a dry region seems to do fine, although there are protests), there is more water in the south and less in the north, but again more near the coast (where I live), Netherlands has 26% corporate tax, Germany has 23% to 32% corporate tax, depending where you are (federalist state, some portion is determined by municipalities).
Energy prices are currently high b/c a lot is produced by gas powered plants, but as Germany peaked renewables at 82% lately, and new renewables are very cheap (there are solar plants popping up everywhere here), energy should not be a problem (chip production is not aluminium or fertilizer production).
The main reason TSMC builds there is that there are already lots of chip makers and knowledgeable staff to hire (and state subsidies, which if correctly used can be a good thing, Bavaria made the transition from an agricultural country to a high tech country with state subsidies, money transfers from the richer states in Germany to Bavaria - of course if used badly are just lost without effect).
This is one of the most annoying openings to a sentence you could device, just fyi
As to the why. (With the premise that the comment you're replying to is overstating it)
An open border is pretty irrelevant to all of the above, more relevant is that both are in the EU. So you can somewhat imagine them as US states on steroids. They set their own taxes with a large degree of freedom, devise their own policies with a large degree of freedom etc
- energy costs are a factor of market price and taxes, the electricity market is the same but taxes on energy can impact differently
- land costs are fully dependent on factors that have nothing to do with open borders or the EU, just local/national taxes and zoning etc
- water supply depends on the geography/geology of the area. I don't know if they're that different but I don't see why they couldn't be
Mistral will go nowhere. They will be bankrupt in a few years, and investors will lose most of their investments. No, it's not due to lack of CompSci and AI talent. It's rules, regulations and inability to find anyone willing to use whatever product they come up with.
Yes, It's a sterotype to say that the French have great aesthetics/are good at "art" and Germans have great engineering/are good at "maths and science", but it's a positive one for both.
they can keep the sea out but they cannot keep the river out. Climate change will lead to flooding and ice melt on the upstream Rijn and most of that water ends up in the netherlands.
How Semiconductors Ruined East Germany
https://youtu.be/cxrkC-pMH_s
Why Europe Lost Semiconductors
https://youtu.be/5ZdmS-EAbHo
Europe’s Lost Decades in Semiconductors
https://youtu.be/PpSdytrNEBg
It's great to get chip manufacturing back to Germany after all the struggles, even if it's not cutting edge.