[HN Gopher] TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP to build fab in Germany
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TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP to build fab in Germany
Author : king_phil
Score : 686 points
Date : 2023-08-08 10:48 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pr.tsmc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pr.tsmc.com)
| AdamN wrote:
| Sort of incredible that Germany is getting decade old technology
| for this much investment.
| ho_schi wrote:
| 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 ;)
| visarga wrote:
| Nowadays you need AI chips in cars too.
| croes wrote:
| But cheap ones, not the best.
| coolspot wrote:
| Each Tesla car carries 100 TFlops, same as PS5 .
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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.
| jon_adler wrote:
| 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.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| GloFo Dresden next door does 22nm FDSOI already
| r0b1n wrote:
| 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.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > 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.
| 55873445216111 wrote:
| Infineon Aurix microcontrollers on TSMC 28nm have eFlash
| and RRAM available as NVM.
| https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-
| infineon/press/market-...
| [deleted]
| r0b1n wrote:
| Didn't know that.
|
| Maybe they'll add the missing parts as chiplets?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| 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.
| luplex wrote:
| that's if we don't expect Germany to become an AI powerhouse,
| where GPUs are useful. Apparently this does not seem to be a
| priority.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Apparently this does not seem to be a priority.
|
| It isn't for anyone besides HN/Twitter/&c. tech fanatics
| tbh
| oytis wrote:
| 20 years forward - "The AI is uncharted territory for all
| of us."
| moooo99 wrote:
| To be fair, fillable PDF forms from public institutions
| still seem to be uncharted territory for large parts of
| Germany.
| LeonidasXIV wrote:
| 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.
| oytis wrote:
| Or just use fax. That's how it works in Germany
| Lionga wrote:
| But you can only fax during opening hours which are
| Tuesday 10:00 to 11:15
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| And during that time, you get an error report telling you
| the remote fax is out of paper (true story).
| numbers_guy wrote:
| 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.
| Lionga wrote:
| 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.
| Vespasian wrote:
| They won't use that technology to produce mobile phones or
| GPUs.
|
| There are plenty of application were structure size,
| performance and/or power draw doesn't really matter.
|
| E.g. Automotive / Industrial applications
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| To be pedantic, I think it does matter there, but the cost /
| benefit tradeoff is in favor of the 10 year old processes.
|
| And it can vary too, mass produced / generic chips can be
| more cost efficient if they can make more of them on a single
| wafer.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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.
|
| But that doesn't really apply to brand new fabs.
| brmgb wrote:
| 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.
| crote wrote:
| That's exactly the issue, isn't it?
|
| 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.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >The Chips Act was marketed as an attempt to bring back
| "cutting-edge chips" to Europe,
|
| You'll have to excuse me if I'm being daft, but I assume
| this is not the CHIPS Act we have here in the US?
|
| I'm aware Europe's trying (or has done) something similar,
| but if it's called the Chips Act this is the first time
| I've heard of it that way.
| Vespasian wrote:
| It is indeed called that
| https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-
| policy/priorities-...
| junon wrote:
| > Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen
| their supply lines
|
| That's great news for Germany then.
| Lionga wrote:
| If they want to produce more ICE cars for the next
| decades yes.
| WJW wrote:
| 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.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Tesla has a large factory in Germany too
| myrmidon wrote:
| 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.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| If anything, BEVs have even more older processes built in
| for high-power dc-dc conversion, motor driving, battery
| management etc.
|
| Less gigahertz and gigaflop, more kilovolt and
| kiloampere.
| croes wrote:
| Marketing vs reality.
|
| You can't tell the people you just want to subsidise the
| automotive industry.
| brmgb wrote:
| Given the delay to get cars right now, I'm guessing Europe
| has significantly less "bog-standard" fabs that you think
| it does.
| jasmer wrote:
| [dead]
| justinclift wrote:
| 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.
|
| It's not a dumb approach.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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.
| justinclift wrote:
| 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.
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| 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?
|
| Decade old technology sounds very sensible.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| A lot of the 'chip shortage' those past years was not for the
| cutting-edge stuff, but for automotive/embedded devices
|
| Not everything needs the 5nm cutting edge, and to be fair
| calling
|
| > 300mm (12-inch) wafers on TSMC's 28/22 nanometer planar CMOS
| and 16/12 nanometer FinFET process technology,
|
| old is a bit unfair
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| 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.
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| 3nm is not usable for many automotive things.
|
| 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.
|
| Right tool (and process) for the right job.
| rasz wrote:
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| 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.
| rasz wrote:
| Can you point at one/two examples of companies using this
| freed up fab space? Where did all that silicon go to?
| varispeed wrote:
| MCUs are created using still relatively ancient tech and we
| still have shortages of those.
|
| Many chips don't need fancy new tech.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Easier to make low power devices on older processes too. Much
| smaller leakage currents and more robust.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| "...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.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| oplaadpunt wrote:
| 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
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| oplaadpunt wrote:
| 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
| steeve wrote:
| I wonder why they chose the country with the second worst
| electricity CO2 wise?
|
| Unless it's for cars?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > I wonder why they chose the country with the second worst
| electricity CO2 wise?
|
| Chip fab locations are about water and talent. Electricity
| sources are pretty fungible. The former not so much.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Probably because they didn't care enough compared to other
| factors?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| What irony if chips bring wealth to saxony, when chip production
| in the GDR was one of the reason it collapsed.
| murkt wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the story, can you elaborate a bit on the
| chip production being a reason of GDR collapse?
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Maybe https://www.ddr-museum.de/en/blog/2016/gdr-1-megabit-
| memory-...
|
| and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMDI ?
| weystrom wrote:
| Great video from Asianometry on this topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Not sure, but the costs for chips a lot was probably in $
| while other things were paid in (GDR) Mark, and $ was
| very scarce.
|
| [Edit] Couldn't find a research paper on GDR chip
| production and costs in $ vs. Mark.
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| (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.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| murkt wrote:
| 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).
| [deleted]
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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 Solidarnosc 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.
| Ceausescu was killed, Honecker went into exile) and for
| different reasons (although the overall driving force for
| more wealth and freedom was the same).
| nntwozz wrote:
| Just want to share these relevant videos from Asianometry:
|
| 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.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I watched a few of their videos, but I felt like it was an
| anti-china propaganda outlet.
|
| I'm def not a fan of the CCP, so I loved watching the videos,
| but I felt like I was getting brainwashed.
|
| Does anyone know how valid/factual their videos are?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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).
| nntwozz wrote:
| As factual and valid as you could hope for. I find his work
| very thorough.
|
| Here's a video about China's Gallium & Germanium Export
| Controls:
|
| https://youtu.be/J4XU-QxXJMw
|
| I didn't find it anti-China, neither are his other videos in
| my opinion.
|
| According to the transcript below Jon Y. is half
| Taiwanese/Hong Kong, make of that what you will.
|
| https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/jon-y-asianometry-on-
| semi...
| tmoneyplease wrote:
| Glad to see many fans of Asianometry.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| 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:
|
| 1. Have many fabs and derisk by diversification?
|
| 2. Keep Taiwan safe and chest-bump china?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| 28nm is 'advanced semiconductor manufacturing'? Did they use
| ChatGPT for the press release, or what?
| runeks wrote:
| Just because it isn't bleeding edge doesn't mean it isn't
| advanced.
| zsz wrote:
| 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).
| rdsubhas wrote:
| 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.
|
| Everything except simple current business need.
| locallost wrote:
| The energy costs are not skyrocketing, they've been steadily
| going down for a while now. Plus, it's not really an
| exclusively German problem.
| alecco wrote:
| This smells of government-subsidized terrible ideas. German
| energy costs, land costs, lack of water, crazy high taxes, and
| anti-business governments.
|
| OTOH Netherlands would make a much better option in almost every
| angle. And add having ASML engineers around the corner.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Strategically, if Germany gets too much on its territory the
| other EU countries should worry, especially France and Italy.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| France has Mistral, it might actually be a perfect 1-2 EU
| combo, the French do the aesthetics and the Germans do the
| engineering.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| [flagged]
| laserdancepony wrote:
| [flagged]
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| I'm complementing them both, I don't understand.
|
| 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.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| As a dumb American, can you help explain how energy costs, land
| costs, and water supply can be that significantly different
| across an open border?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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).
| arlort wrote:
| > As a dumb American
|
| 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
| r0b1n wrote:
| 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.
| jsnell wrote:
| All of those vary significantly between US states too.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Each country has their own energy and water providers, land
| taxes, etc.
|
| There are a bunch of regulations on how companies can operate
| in the economic block, but it's still a bunch of sovereign
| countries there.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I wouldn't build factories in a country that's going to sink.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| "God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the
| Netherlands"
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Most of the Netherlands is already below sea level. This is a
| non-issue.
| rs999gti wrote:
| The Dutch have beat the sea back for hundreds of years. They
| will be fine
| eldaisfish wrote:
| 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.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| cannot keep the river out - said who?
| oytis wrote:
| ASML still has engineers in Germany. And it's EU anyway.
| lispm wrote:
| > anti-business governments
|
| Germany has around Dresden one of two regions in Europe with a
| large cluster of chip industry.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony
|
| ASML buys key equipment in Germany: optics from Zeiss and
| lasers from Trumpf for EUV lithography.
|
| Intel builds up chip production in Magdeburg, Infineon in
| Dresden, Wolfspeed in Saarland, Bosch in Dresden and Reutlingen
| and now TSMC in Dresden.
| spdy wrote:
| Just out of curiosity how hard would it be to re-fit such a
| foundary to modern <5nm cpu fabs with ASML/Zeiss directly around
| the corner.
| crote wrote:
| Literally impossible.
|
| 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.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| 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.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Not everything needs cutting edge chips.
|
| Heck, I can use crappy chips for every home appliance and
| home IOT device.
|
| Sure I want high end stuff for my laptop so I can do AI,
| but that is just 1 application.
| theK wrote:
| 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.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with the region (Saxony, Dresden):
|
| A registered association ( _e.V._ in German) bluntly named
| "Silicon Saxony e.V." (est. in 2000) with over 450 members
| headquartered in Dresden pretty much sums up the infrastructure
| and ambition.[0][1]
|
| As pointed out the process _TSMC's 28 /22 nanometer planar CMOS
| and 16/12 nanometer FinFET process technology_ (fabrication will
| begin in 2027) is not "cutting edge" but set to satisfy the
| (local) demand [2] mostly for the automotive industry. I guess a
| good conservative foothold given the current
| economic/geopolitical environment, but it's not like an
| innovation/investing boom or something.
|
| However from a perspective of a young student, Saxony/Dresden -
| as for now - is pretty inexpensive as compared to Berlin, Hamburg
| or Munich and has ample opportunities (TU Dresden, Fraunhofer,
| MPI, Helmholtz Zentrum ...).
|
| [From personal experience I find the people in Saxony (Leipzig,
| Dresden) have a more deep-rooted skepticism towards the federal
| government (or any centralized entity ruling over them) which can
| lead to a good thing - interesting perspectives/lively
| discussions or depending on your position less good - leaning
| more to the political (far) right.]
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony
|
| [1]https://silicon-saxony.de/
|
| [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932023_global_chi..
| .
| coryfklein wrote:
| In How Asia Works[0], they contrast how Malaysia tried to
| modernize by jumping straight to high-tech steel factoris with
| how South Korea modernized by starting small - basically by
| making shitty cars - then scaled their way up. Turns out the
| latter simply works much better.
|
| My take, if you want to have a bleeding edge semiconductor
| industry in your country, first start by trying to build a
| boring, vanilla, outdated semiconductor industry. If you can do
| that, then try incrementally making it competitive with global
| markets. (Yes, this requires tariffs _initially_ to bootstrap
| the process, otherwise nobody will by your shitty overpriced
| semiconductors.)
|
| [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-
| asia-w...
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| 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.
| mapgrep wrote:
| 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.
| s_dev wrote:
| The car industry in Germany already makes a huge number of
| chips for cars -- they just aren't as sophisticated or as
| small as the ones made in Taiwan suitable for personal
| computers so by your own logic they have followed the South
| Korean model already.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| I think the analogy might not fit here too well. While
| Germany hasn't had a current node fab in country for a
| while, they have in the recent past (AMD/Global Foundries
| Dresden comes to mind). I don't think it's at all like
| they're building an industry from scratch.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Dresden actually has a history with making chips:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 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?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| 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.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s
|
| As always its a little more then that..
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| jupp0r wrote:
| 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.
| blueflow wrote:
| I only ever see crying about racism in Dresden in the Media
| and on HN.
|
| Is this an actual thing or just something pushed up because
| victimhood is idolized too much? The blue collar workers here
| are diverse af.
| pineaux wrote:
| Very mature way of saying it: "crying"...
|
| Good flame-bait.
| blueflow wrote:
| Propose a better wording
| outside1234 wrote:
| 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.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| 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.
| Panoramix wrote:
| > I've witnessed visiting Indian colleagues of mine being
| threatened on the street for having dark skin and racist
| demonstrations are a weekly occurrence.
|
| So, like the US?
| questime wrote:
| 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.
| rospaya wrote:
| > There is nothing like the AfD in the US
|
| 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.
| questime wrote:
| 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.
| jupp0r wrote:
| The US is a very homogeneous country. I live in a very
| liberal part of it.
|
| There are probably places with similar problems although I
| can't name any. Can you?
| Strom wrote:
| I've heard Harrison, Arkansas as an example.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison,_Arkansas
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltmlvk9GAto
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Question: does that mean there are no indian restaurants in
| Dresden?
| mainframed wrote:
| There are. Why wouldn't there be?
|
| There are a lot of minorities in Germany, which (sadly have
| to) accept daily racism.
|
| Thankfully, at this point violence against minorities (~800
| right extremists violent crimes in 2022 in whole Germany)
| is not as high such that people consider moving away.
|
| And if you get a job there and this is your ticket into
| immigration, probably a lot of people will accept this to
| get German citizenship. Finally, this will open you access
| to all the working places in Europe.
|
| My hope (as a West German) is that investments like this,
| will increase East-Germany's economy such that they are
| finally equal in terms of economic wealth, which is a large
| factor for racism/extremism.
|
| Same with opposing climate change laws.
| OO000oo wrote:
| > _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?
| mainframed wrote:
| > Is it possible that you actually don't comprehend the
| ramifications of eternal human labor trafficking?
|
| Probably not. I don't even know what it means/you mean.
| OO000oo wrote:
| When rich nations destabilize poor nations and
| incentivize cheap labor to migrate to the rich nation.
| t43562 wrote:
| 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.
| zymhan wrote:
| You might get more traction calling it "brain drain",
| since that's the more common term in at least the US.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > eternal human labor trafficking
|
| What does this mean? Are there people being trafficked in
| eastern Germany?
| OO000oo wrote:
| Yes, and it's nothing new.
| martimarkov wrote:
| 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?
| rojosewe wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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.
| rojosewe wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> There are. Why wouldn't there be?_
|
| Because he said Indians are attacked on the street in
| Dresden.
|
| If that's the case why would you move and open a
| restaurant there if you're Indian?
|
| Or was he exaggerating the issue?
| pavlov wrote:
| There were 13,000 Jews in Leipzig in 1933. Surely
| antisemitism wasn't a problem because so many of them
| chose to live there.
|
| (In 1989 the city's Jewish population was 30.)
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "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.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There are, but why is that related? You mean because they
| all did not burn down yet, proofs the racism is not so bad?
| krater23 wrote:
| Oh there are. When you want a really good one, just go to
| the one on the Alaun Park.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| 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._
|
| Then, I hope this will get more widespread :)
| jupp0r wrote:
| I wasn't implying you downplayed anything, just wanted to
| add nuance to your insightful comment.
| flo123456 wrote:
| 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.
| fakedang wrote:
| 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.
| jupp0r wrote:
| 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.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "there are people from all over the world living in Dresden
| and some parts (especially Neustadt) are politically rather
| left leaning."
|
| Nu, nu. But do you talk with them about their experiences?
|
| And sure, you will be fine with a dark skin in the Neustadt
| and Hechtviertel and co.
|
| But move out of that bubble and you have to be prepared to
| face a different culture.
| xgl5k wrote:
| Left leaning and racist aren't mutually exclusive.
| mattnewton wrote:
| 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.
| gramadat wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Herring wrote:
| 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.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > all you need is one in-your-face racist encounter
|
| does this also go for an encounter with someone who
| judges people based on their point of view? On their
| politics? On their religion, or lack thereof? On their
| handedness? On their hair colour, length, foot size,
| athletic ability or any other similar attribute?
|
| _All you need is one in-your-face accusation of being a
| Nazi /racist/homophobe/transphobe/ableist/bible-
| thumper/southpaw/ginger/proudfoot (proudfeet!)/YT/... to
| ruin your decade_? $Deity knows many of us will have been
| called something like that, in 99.999(*)% of the cases
| without justification yet most of us just shrug it off
| and go on with our lives, ignoring the labeller for the
| non-entity she tends to be. That is how it works, at
| least in my experience.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| [flagged]
| blueflow wrote:
| Do an s/racist/homophobic/ and you have a justification
| for being a jerk to muslim immigrants.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 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.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| sure, bavaria is as bad as egypt or saudi arabia for gay
| people, suuure
|
| god this place has gone down the shitter
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The person I replied to was talking about Muslim
| immigrants to Germany, which our far-right blames for
| being anti-LGBT.
| blueflow wrote:
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [1] https://www.bundestagswahl2021.bayern.de/ergebnis_reg
| ierungs...
| blueflow wrote:
| This is my problem with you, your focus is entirely on
| the baddies, and not whether your behavior makes you one
| of them. Be better.
| blueflow wrote:
| 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.
| m_a_g wrote:
| How does this comment fly on HN? This person is basically
| calling all Muslim immigrants homophobes, which is so far
| from the truth.
| blueflow wrote:
| I was paralleling parents argument with an populist
| trope, to make it easier to understand that its not a
| good thing to say.
|
| Be careful not to read more into my sayings than what i
| wrote. Its not an agreement, its an accusation.
| nxobject wrote:
| 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?"
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| that is exactly the point being made about saxony...
| _Microft wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that that many people were working in this
| industry there:
|
| _" Silicon Saxony is a registered industry association of
| nearly 300 companies in the microelectronics and related
| sectors in Saxony, Germany, with around 40,000 employees. Many,
| but not all, of those firms are situated in the north of
| Dresden. [...]
|
| [T]he area and the union -- in many aspects -- represent the
| only meaningful European center of microelectronics."_, excerpt
| from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony
| mawadev wrote:
| I guess we are the redundancy to taiwan soon...
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Not really. The factory will not produce CPUs GPUs or other
| high end chips.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| One of the redundancies, and not a very high end one
| demondemidi wrote:
| Not high end, but literally 1,000% the volume of high end.
| It will be automotive / embedded, you know, the chips that
| are in everything that's not a laptop or gaming rig.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| seeekr wrote:
| minor nitpick: "e.V." in Germany is "eingetragener Verein",
| "registered association" and is a form of association that's
| extremely common and use for all kinds of things, e.g. local
| sports groups, interest groups, etc, so "e.V." in and of itself
| doesn't have anything to do with industry, though as in the
| above case it can be used that way!
| _Microft wrote:
| The Max-Planck-Society [0][1] is also an e.V. and they have a
| yearly budget in the order of 2.5BEUR or so. _e.V._ s can be
| very diverse in their nature.
|
| [0] (de) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Planck-
| Gesellschaft
|
| [1] (en) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society
| baybal2 wrote:
| 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.
| Vespasian wrote:
| They are getting 5bn to build this fab. That gives the
| government some leverage.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Which are these ASIC friendly nodes?
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| crote wrote:
| > 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.
| sirius87 wrote:
| Wonder if the Taiwanese govt at some point will step in and block
| these onshoring measures as a matter of national security.
|
| If countries are less reliant on manufacturing within Taiwan, its
| one less reason to stand up to Beijing's one China principle.
| christkv wrote:
| A much better strategy is to work slow :). Drag out every
| phase.
| christkv wrote:
| Also ASML has a super long backlog I think so even if they
| build it they would have years to wait to even get and
| install the equipment
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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.
| DrBazza wrote:
| TSMC buy the fab equipment ASML based in the Netherlands.
| throw0101b wrote:
| NL could block it on national security grounds.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Depends on what the US tell NL to do, as we've seen before.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| These days are over - they ended with the war in Iraq. In
| the 80s the US said "Jump!" and western Europe asked "How
| high?".
| throw0101b wrote:
| 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.
| christkv wrote:
| 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.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > The Ukrainian war has been very good to American
| exports of arms
|
| By "exports", do you mean donations?
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64656301
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There's been plenty of sales as well.
|
| For example, last year the US sold $6 billion-worth of
| Abrahams tanks to Poland. Overall, paid-for exports to
| Europe have exploded.
| the-dude wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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.
| Slartie wrote:
| 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.
| foobiekr wrote:
| You might want to read the situation and history in
| ASML's own words:
|
| https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-
| to-...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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 ;)
| mathiasgredal wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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.
| mathiasgredal wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]: http://www.transientek.com/cpzx/jcxnmgtjgq/jzwckgy/3
| 5.html
|
| [2]:https://thechinaproject.com/2023/08/03/beijing-
| pushes-china-...
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, to an extent.
|
| But as we saw with the Evo Morales grounding incident htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
| there's still a certain amount of jumping.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| 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.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| It's game theory no?
|
| Having this beefy reliance on a small island that gives china
| the middle finger
|
| -OR-
|
| derisk the reliance on taiwan
| tetha wrote:
| 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.
| 01100011 wrote:
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| mordae wrote:
| So far they don't feel that expansionist. More likely they
| just don't want US to be able to cut them off from the rest
| of the world by naval blockade.
| toss1 wrote:
| "don't feel that expansionist"?!?
|
| 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.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| 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.
| Vespasian wrote:
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population
| _grow...
| dirtyid wrote:
| >Why?
|
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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.
| guiriduro wrote:
| Climate change is already having the bigger impact on
| Pakistan - aside from 48C Karachi, last year saw
| incredible flooding.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Even endless money is no guarantee of a success, especially
| with a rampant corruption and preference for loyalty as
| opposed to competency.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| 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
| crote wrote:
| Not for this fab. The technology is quite old, so it doesn't
| directly change anything about our reliance on Taiwan's
| cutting-edge fabs.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| 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.
| madsbuch wrote:
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governm...
| manojlds wrote:
| How many of those countries are going to protect Taiwan?
| bluecalm wrote:
| But only like 5 countries matter for Taiwan national security
| and those have the budget.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| 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?
| sealeck wrote:
| It's extremely unlikely for the US to do that as if China
| takes Taiwan it will be a huge blow to the US and to the
| value of being a US ally.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| They probably figure it's better to be the one doing it than
| someone else.
| coliveira wrote:
| 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.
| brobinson wrote:
| "that is theirs by international treaties"
|
| The PRC has never, not even for a single day, controlled
| Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, etc.
|
| The continued existence of the ROC (1912-present) truly
| causes tankies to lose their minds.
| t43562 wrote:
| 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.
| coliveira wrote:
| This doesn't make Taiwan less critical for China. They will
| continue to defend Taiwan as part of China for the
| foreseeable future.
| t43562 wrote:
| 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.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >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 Communiques 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China#United_States_policy
| junon wrote:
| 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.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| 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.
|
| [] https://www.koreatechtoday.com/south-koreas-semiconductor-
| ex...
|
| [] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/27/samsungs-
| profit-...
|
| [] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/11/tsmc_chips_act/
|
| [] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4886681
| oblio wrote:
| > 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...
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Is demand for electronics finally dropping?
|
| Unfortunately, it is likely to be limited to flash storage.
| The $/GB value has fallen to historic lows for all manner
| of solid-state storage devices.
| nottorp wrote:
| I've been forwarded this piece of apparently bad news
| recently:
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/report-nvidia-has-
| practic...
|
| So I wouldn't hold my breath.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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 !
| stefanfisk wrote:
| One reason is CUDA.
| mordae wrote:
| I have "ancien"t Vega 64 and I enjoy a lot of recent
| games with Lutris and Steam.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the US has been talking about bombing TSMC themselves[]_
|
| The U.S. said nothing of the sort. One Congressman, in the
| minority no less, did.
| coliveira wrote:
| 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?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Isn't Taiwan planning to bomb itself if China invades ?
| martin8412 wrote:
| 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.
| colechristensen wrote:
| 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.
| pokepim wrote:
| [dead]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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.""
|
| https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/tsmc-complains-cant-find-
| enou...
| coredog64 wrote:
| 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.
| pokepim wrote:
| [dead]
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| 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.
| berkes wrote:
| > 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.
| dahwolf wrote:
| ASML's EUV machines cannot be reverse engineered.
|
| 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.
| gsatic wrote:
| 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.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > And as soon as China-Taiwan chapter is over
|
| That's a very strong prerequisite though... It may not be
| over for several decades to come.
| gsatic wrote:
| After what happened to hong kong, its hard to believe
| that.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| 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.
| baybal2 wrote:
| [dead]
| strbean wrote:
| Wasn't there a whole DRAM price fixing cartel that blew up
| recently?
| nabla9 wrote:
| TSMC is not building GIGAFAB outside Taiwan.
|
| 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.
| rsynnott wrote:
| TSMC is a big buyer of fab equipment from European and US
| companies; that could quickly become a _very_ ugly trade war.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Silicon valley started by billions and billions of state money
| pumped into companies before, during and after WW2 (e.G IBM
| opened in San Jose in '43).
| js8 wrote:
| 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.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Singapore's economy is also significantly planned, despite
| the opposite being the common knowledge.
|
| Same with South Korea.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Also Singapore has 17% corporate tax, compared with 12.5%
| in Ireland.
| dtf wrote:
| I was kind of shocked to find this out too. For instance:
|
| "As of 2020, 78.7% of Singapore residents live in public
| housing, down from a high of 88.0% in 2000."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
| js8 wrote:
| Yeah, that only strengthens my argument that neoliberalism
| has failed.
| croes wrote:
| It's a perfect example of neoliberalism.
|
| 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.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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").
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| r0b1n wrote:
| 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.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Even with privatisation in the 90s and many on the left
| disputing this, Germany is still considered a social market
| economy ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft").
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| First, what is your definition of neoliberalism?
|
| 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?
| js8 wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| oytis wrote:
| 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.
| ko27 wrote:
| What are you talking about? Galileo is a big win for the EU,
| even after taking into account the initial problems.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm just curious but what about it is a big win?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| sharts wrote:
| Why does it always seem major projects like this start about 10
| years after people realize we need major projects like this?
| qlkjwenf wrote:
| 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.
| qwytw wrote:
| Considering majority of the funding comes from the government
| it doesen't seem like a bad deal...
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Great to see they coming to Germany. If Tesla could build a car
| factory here from scratch, I'm sure that they can build chips
| too.
|
| Curious why they've chosen Dresden though.
|
| Anybody knows how much the government is willing to invest?
| Missing some tangible figures.
| chrizel wrote:
| > Curious why they've chosen Dresden though.
|
| 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.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Had no idea about it. Thank you for the valuable information!
| luplex wrote:
| 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.
| Vespasian wrote:
| 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.
|
| Edit: see bellow for corrections
| zatarc wrote:
| Intel will settle in Magdeburg. The "AMD" Fab in Dresden
| belongs to GlobalFoundries (AMD sold its last GlobalFoundries
| shares in 2012).
| Vespasian wrote:
| Thank you for correcting me :)
| [deleted]
| r0b1n wrote:
| 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".
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| >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?
| rasz wrote:
| Gift. Here is how it worked in Wales:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hijJ_4H08RM
| Lionga wrote:
| You have to subtract 10% or so in kickbacks that will
| later flow back to the politicians handing out the money
| generic92034 wrote:
| > Anybody knows how much the government is willing to invest?
| Missing some tangible figures.
|
| 5B, according to German news:
| https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/tsmc-dresden-100.html
| nottorp wrote:
| > If Tesla could build a car factory here from scratch,
|
| Did Tesla ever finish that German factory? Last time i read
| about it no one wanted to work there...
| thiago_fm wrote:
| I live nearby, it is finished and it is producing Teslas.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Other companies with offices there are AWS' EC2 (Kernel dev,
| Gravitons, etc), and Xilinx.
| zensayyy wrote:
| 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)
| Kelteseth wrote:
| > Curious why they've chosen Dresden though.
|
| Because many foundries are located there like GlobalFoundries
| and Bosch
| pipo234 wrote:
| Eindhoven (NL) would have been obvious as well (NXP, ASML,
| Infineon, Philips)
| AdamN wrote:
| Germany wouldn't have subsidised that one though - this was
| German money.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Germany is a big player (politically and financially) in
| the EU and the Eurozone and it's benefitial to have them on
| your side.
|
| (Also such a large economy can offer better (aka larger)
| subsidies if they want to)
| TotempaaltJ wrote:
| Eindhoven is also still growing:
| https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/dutch-smart-
| photonic... Much smaller though!
|
| It's probably good for the EU in general to have multiple
| silicon hubs.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Eindhoven also has a recent influx of PhDs from Philips
| looking for a new place to work...
|
| although imo Eindhoven isn't exactly the most... attractive
| place to live for many people. Dresden on the other hand
| seems like it's somewhat en vogue
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Makes sense. Thank you!
| JanSt wrote:
| Dresden is a huge chip hub with lots of talent
| dustypotato wrote:
| Maybe because East Germany is cheaper?
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| 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
|
| Very nice to see.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Altman himself threatened (for a brief period) to cut off GPT
| to the EU after Italy rightfully brought up issues with data
| privacy.
|
| This wouldn't be a big deal. GPT is not some one-of-a-kind
| leaps-and-bounds ahead of everyone else ground-breaking
| technology.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Still in denial?
|
| I have a hard time understanding the people who visit this
| website and havent used the technology.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 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.
| adventured wrote:
| > 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.
| sangnoir wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| I don't think you're disagreeing with gp
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| You're in a bubble: https://trends.google.com/trends/expl
| ore?geo=US&q=ChatGPT&hl...
|
| Trends on ChatGPT interest are clearly going down.
|
| It's almost as if it isn't the Magic Beans the charlatans
| claimed.
| sharts wrote:
| [dead]
| martin8412 wrote:
| 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.
| deadbunny wrote:
| You sound like a cryptobro 5 years ago. Everything you're
| citing is pure hype.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| 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.
| Nux wrote:
| 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.
| berkes wrote:
| 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?
| qwytw wrote:
| You're not going to run that AI on chips made in fab which
| will be already outdated by 15+ years when it's opened.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Not really.
|
| 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.
| martin8412 wrote:
| 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.
| parl_match wrote:
| 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"
| martin8412 wrote:
| The 6502 in my argument was meant for something like
| controlling seats or mirrors.
|
| The ECU obviously needs more compute power. That said
| 6502 was an over exaggeration.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| r0b1n wrote:
| 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".
| thenaturalist wrote:
| The nice thing about this situation and one that is not
| appreciated by enough people in the economy is that it's
| not a zero sum game.
|
| Two things can be true at the same time!
| ferongr wrote:
| I don't know why this is downvoted but it's more or less
| correct regarding the industry here in Europe.
| croes wrote:
| Yes, the german automotive industry is used to extort and
| exploit their suppliers.
|
| It must have been a shocking experience for them that chip
| manufacturers have alternative buyers.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Aren't LLMs potentially great to ward off language death due to
| their significant abilities to transpose ideas into different
| languages?
| oblio wrote:
| > Aren't LLMs potentially great to ward off language death
| due to their significant abilities to transpose ideas into
| different languages?
|
| What do you mean?
| berkes wrote:
| 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.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| 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
| enigma20 wrote:
| Why would be the language death bad. Imho, from practical point
| of view it doesn't make sense to have multiple languages, or?
| gostsamo wrote:
| 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.
| scythe wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English
|
| 2: Contrast particularly major rivals French and Mandarin
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| 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.
| kmlx wrote:
| > "the" in english gives little information about what noun
| may follow
|
| for us non-native english speakers, this is an understated
| blessing.
| fomine3 wrote:
| imperialism
| bboygravity wrote:
| 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.
| meesles wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Lol keep burning that biomass and calling it green.
| j-pb wrote:
| 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.
|
| So stop spreading FUD.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| 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).
| t43562 wrote:
| VW is using renewables for building it's EVs.
| cpursley wrote:
| Best of luck to them, they're gonna need it.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| The fab is for chips that are something along the lines of 4
| generations old, and that's ignoring that they won't start
| manufacturing until 2027...
|
| This has absolutely nothing to do with AI or LLMs. Generally
| these are automation chips for machinery or vehicles.
|
| "Microsoft made him walk that one back real quick"
|
| This sounds like a weird fan fiction. OpenAI openly negotiates
| with EU governments. No one walked back anything.
| posterboy wrote:
| 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.
| logifail wrote:
| > Must be something about the region [snip]
|
| 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-Wurttemberg
| 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]
|
| [0] https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/business/pay-in-
| germany-...
| _Microft wrote:
| The focus on electronics there goes back to the times of
| the GDR already when the "VEB Kombinat Robotron" was
| located in Saxony.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron
| logifail wrote:
| > The focus on electronics there [..]
|
| Can you expand on this claim?
|
| (I'm deliberately resisting quoting sources listing
| German regions top exports!)
| yk wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| Yeah, and the Biden admin hasn't done anything at all that
| might provoke a nuclear exchange...
|
| I'm always amused that some people never grow out of the
| "our team is infallible" mentality.
| exceptione wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| Shooting down the Chinese ballon and arming Ukraine with
| long range weapons aren't potentially acts of provocation
| against nuclear powers?
|
| Reverse the roles. American ballon. Mexico getting armed
| against the US by a foreign superpower and sworn enemy.
| Would the US tolerate those acts?
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Would the US tolerate those acts?
|
| Yes? What about their nuclear policy from the past half-
| century convinces you otherwise?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| In the last 50 years US never had anything on _their_
| border.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Even if they did, it wouldn't change much.
|
| 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.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Absolutely agreed. The US military is so well funded and
| capable that they could finish the job without needed to
| resort to nukes.
| [deleted]
| sharts wrote:
| Doesn't the US make regular use of depleted uranium
| munitions? Particularly in the middle east?
|
| Definitely seems nuclear.
| djur wrote:
| Depleted uranium is not a nuclear weapon.
| exceptione wrote:
| > Reverse the roles. American ballon
|
| Ok. American balloon over China will be shot down. You
| know the rules about air space, water etc?
|
| Sincere advice: don't assume you have insights and
| knowledge that is deeper than those from the experts.
| This is a pitfall for us HN'ers.
| cpursley wrote:
| People forget that JFK nearly nuked the USSR over the
| Cuban missile crisis (which was a response to NATO
| missiles in Turkey, ironically enough).
| djur wrote:
| The missiles at question in the Cuban missile crisis were
| nuclear. That's not a reasonable comparison to the non-
| nuclear confrontation in Ukraine.
| ToDougie wrote:
| Might want to take a peek at a map of Eastern Europe.
| exceptione wrote:
| 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.
| yk wrote:
| And where did I write anything about Biden?
| cpursley wrote:
| > Trump fumbles the great power competition
|
| Your bias is clear here. I was trying to balance it.
| tekla wrote:
| Such as?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| 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.
| samat wrote:
| 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.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Yes, that is intentional. There's more to the CPU market
| than the next gaming platform.
| zpeti wrote:
| 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
| kmlx wrote:
| > 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.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > it's a 300mm fab.
|
| 300mm wafer diameter, yes. That's state of the art, with some
| vendors looking at 450mm with little to show for now.
| oytis wrote:
| > it's a 300mm fab.
|
| 300mm is larger than a vacuum tube!
| ablated_maquis wrote:
| > "The planned fab ... [is expected to produce] wafers on
| TSMC's 28/22 nanometer planar CMOS and 16/12 nanometer FinFET
| process technology"
|
| These are not leading node semiconductors that will be used for
| training AI. These are commodity chips that will be used in the
| automotive industry.
| nabakin wrote:
| > Microsoft made him walk that one back real quick - he
| probably wasn't really aware that he is now one of their
| employees
|
| Source?
| nottorp wrote:
| What does a low tech (for chips) chip fab have with AI?
| coliveira wrote:
| 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.
| tuyiown wrote:
| > I really love their stubborn nature to stick with their
| langauge over the anglo one
|
| I think you're talking about the Quebecois, because the french
| around here are swimming in a sea of _epouvantable_ 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.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > 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.
| martin8412 wrote:
| 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.
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| Why there? Germany has some crazy labor laws, they will be in for
| a surprise long term.
| mrweasel wrote:
| They aren't that crazy, where else would you build them...
| France, Italy? German labor laws are pretty average for western
| Europe.
|
| You need stability, skilled and productive workers and it
| wouldn't hurt to have a chemical industry, Germany has all
| that.
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| USA (and yes, I know they are building some here already).
| Maybe UK as well.
| zhengiszen wrote:
| [flagged]
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