211–220 of 665 posts
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And yet the US military essentially safeguards Taiwan, and will continue to do so for the American business interests in TSMC.
... in 2020. What will happen in 2040, when the Chinese economy is double the US one?
Unfortunately, does anyone even takes the EU serious nowadays in tech? The more I follow the European tech scene, the more disappointed I become. EU's biggest tech company aside of ARM is Spotify... Almost every second startup I read about in https://www.eu-startups.com/ is a fintech/budgeting app which is trying to "disrupt" banking. Revolut is the biggest player, yet they are literally throwing money to achieve a m…
> EU's biggest tech company aside of ARM is Spotify Only if you have a very narrow definition of tech. What about Infineon, ST, Siemens, Schneider, Dassault Systèmes, NXP, etc.
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Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML The US companies do what they do best: innovate business models and find ways to vendor lock in and own the market. But who's been doing all the research keeping moore's law alive? Lithography? For a country as small as the Netherlands, you can wonder if we could afford from a geopolitical point of view to be producing a…
> It will end up in the pockets of friends and families of politicians that will be in "the management". 100% agree. Considering the incredible education system and engineers we have, the 2 only things restraining Europe from reaching Silicon Valley level are corrupt politicians and risk-adverse VCs.
Semiconductor sector usually has a No. 1 player which takes more than 50% of the market share of a specific application or business model. It is a very crowded field and very difficult to catch up to current leaders. Unless Europe has a game changing technology or business model, I am not optimistic about the outcome. They should think about working with Taiwan or South Korea instead of going alone. US end up persuad…
I guess their goal isn't necessarily to make a world leader but rather to ensure they're not left behind if the geopolitical climate keeps worsening.
Sadly, at this point I wouldn't even expect a solid strategy, it's gonna be blatant actionism. But maybe that's just the cynic in me hoping to be proven wrong
Why isn't Netherlands mentioned btw? What semiconductors companies did Germany , France and Spain built so far? Netherlands has ASML, NXP and ASM...
>The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. GER and FR are just bigger names
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what's weird is that Europe has never been that bad, there are ST Microelectronics MEMS and MCUs everywhere.
Exactly my thought, ST Microelectronics is producing microchips in Grenoble, France, not far from where I live. And ST Micro chips are heavenly used in IOT. Maybe it's more than the semiconductor sector and includes telecommunications, networks equipment, phone/pc CPUs.
Makes you see ST in a new light.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet the US military essentially safeguards Taiwan, and will continue to do so for the American business interests in TSMC.
... in 2020. What will happen in 2040, when the Chinese economy is double the US one?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's weird is that Europe has never been that bad, there are ST Microelectronics MEMS and MCUs everywhere.
Exactly my thought, ST Microelectronics is producing microchips in Grenoble, France, not far from where I live. And ST Micro chips are heavenly used in IOT. Maybe it's more than the semiconductor sector and includes telecommunications, networks equipment, phone/pc CPUs.
The thing is, micro-controllers do not need advanced nodes. They don't have a lot of logic (it's all relative, but compared to a PC CPU or smartphone SoC), so would be "pad limited" on advanced nodes: the area of a chip depends on the logic (and memory), but also on the I/O pins or pads, which take area. So if you used a too advanced node for a chip with (relatively) little logic and still enough I/O pads, some die area would be wasted as the minimum area would come from the pads. It's a situation you want to avoid, as there's no point paying for a more costly finer nodes (with more leakage) to waste it by not using the silicon area.
Another factor is that micro-controllers also embed Flash on their die, to have a very integrated solution with logic, RAM and Flash storage on a single die. This puts a limit on the node density. Flash is OK down to 40nm. Then from then one must move to more advanced, and still young and costly, alternatives (MRAM).
So if your business is driven by micro-controllers, there's no real point in pushing toward node density ("low" nodes). ST does process optimization as everyone, but at "medium" nodes best suited for µC. There's no business drive for them to chase TSMC.
It's similar for other Eurpeans silicon makers: they tend to be on specific segments where going for "low" nodes like 5nm simply doesn't make sense. The relatively advanced fabs in Europe are from Intel and Global Foundries (both US). And GloFo stopped the race to advanced node at 14nm, as it was too expensive.
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>The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. GER and FR are just bigger names
I think GP's point is that when you consider their output they're really not the bigger names.
Why isn't Netherlands mentioned btw? What semiconductors companies did Germany , France and Spain built so far? Netherlands has ASML, NXP and ASM...
Don't know about the others.