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EU countries team up for semiconductor push

reuters.com

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Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#341

Post by aledalgrande »

mrtksn wrote: post #330
rossdavidh wrote: post #254

So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech. That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90's, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan. I'm sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of S…

Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA/China when simultaneously are super unoptimised due to cultural/lingual differences. The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who k…

Totally agree. Want to add another European project to the list: ESA.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#342

Post by analog31 »

In kind of a similar vein, many years ago Germany decided to become kind of the silicon valley of optics and photonics (e.g., lasers and their ilk). While I don't think they are the dominant player today, they are certainly a force to be reckoned with, and they seem to have a developed a decent pipeline of ideas and people from university and government labs to a private sector that is probably subsidized.

Granted, it's a smaller business than semi, but it suggests to me that a national program to strengthen an industry isn't guaranteed to be a failure.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#343

Post by young_unixer »

bildung wrote: post #20
norwegianwhale wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One minute past the comment and it already fetched 2 downvotes. Apparently being concerned about dirigism is detrimental to the community. Pretty sure they work for the government / do badly in the free market.

Are you aware how Silicon Valley came into being? The Internet? The moon landing?

While those are fair points about the origin of Silicon Valley, the picture today is pretty different.

And there's a huge difference in values. The American ethos is "you're free to do great things, if you can". The European ethos is "You need the state to protect you from everything and you shouldn't try to be different or independent"

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#344

Post by wott »

brmgb wrote: post #77
eru wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those were put together by governments? (Airbus has pretty heavy government involved, to be fair.)

Most of the big ones in France (Thales, Airbus, Safran, Technicatome, Alstom). Until the 80s, France pretty much had a planned economy.

Yes, but each of the numerous political announcements (on the French level as well as on the EU level) of "we're going to build a giant of [this industry], this time for real" which were made since the 90s have always ended up in something ranging between complete vaporwave and utter failure. Basically all French industrial successes were recorded between the end of WW2 and the end of the 70s/ beginning of the 80s, for the last 3 or 4 decades it all has been going down. That was not helped by the motto of the 90s, when the 'glory' was to become "a company without factory"...

And whenever the planned giant at least comes to reality, even if it is as dwarf; the politicians who previously made great announcements, distributed millions, created random office, launched parties and cut the ribbon of the project in front of cameras, then don't even feed it with public commands, but give them to the very American or Chinese giants those projects were supposed to counterbalance.

I don't think anyone here believes this kind of announcement any more: there has been so many similar ones already, that are already forgotten and replaced with yet another announcement 9 months later, and again, and again.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#345

Post by mrtksn »

joelbluminator wrote: post #292
batmansmk wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France: Thomson/Thales ($18B including software dev), STMicroelectronics ($9B). Germany: Infineon ($8B), Qimonda ($1B), XFab ($0.5B), Carl Zeiss ($1.2B). From Wikipedia. ASML ($10B), NXP ($10B), ASM ($1B).

Measuring sales isn't how you do that usually, market cap is the way to go (and then ASML dwarfs the rest). But even by sales seems like NL is leading.

Market cap is a metric that can be influenced by teenagers on reddit. A meme department can be more effective investment than engineering.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#346

Post by tarlinian »

formerly_proven wrote: post #304
bazooka_penguin wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cymer is the linchpin of ASML's leadership. Other litho machine developers like Canon and Nikon almost dropped out of the industry because they couldn't develop functional EUV light sources. ASML got around that by buying Cymer. And ASML has multiple other R&D labs and offices in the US handling critical technologies like software and robotics

A quick Google search suggests ASML bought Cymer for the patent portfolio, while the tech didn't quite pan out. It seems like Trumpf is the current supplier of the EUV source.

This is most definitely not true. Trumpf makes CO2 lasers which are used by Cymer to produce EUV radiation via excitation of liquid tin droplets.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#347

Post by TacticalCoder »

mrtksn wrote: post #330
rossdavidh wrote: post #254

So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech. That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90's, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan. I'm sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of S…

Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA/China when simultaneously are super unoptimised due to cultural/lingual differences. The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who k…

> Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options?

If we have to go back to mentioning Airbus (1970) and CERN (1954) to find successful European projects, I think this show how big of a serious problem there is in Europe no!?

P.S: a lot of the young in Europe are learning english because they want to get the f--- out the EU as soon as they can. I'm european and I'm raising my kid in a british college since years for that very reason.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#348

Post by rgblambda »

mrtksn wrote: post #330
rossdavidh wrote: post #254

So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech. That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90's, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan. I'm sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of S…

Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA/China when simultaneously are super unoptimised due to cultural/lingual differences. The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who k…

>>the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it's a small country).

Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it's an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the "first" official language.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#349

Post by SSLy »

screye wrote: post #335

Genuine question - Has any major tech innovation/ product come out European industry (mainland EU) over the last couple of decades ? (not Academia) Their biggest tech companies are Spotify and Skype. That's pretty underwhelming given that Spotify's biggest innovations are in product development and Skype became a subsidiary of an American company within 2 years of its existence. Additionally, the 2 companies that see…

For a major product sure, the ASML devices. Ericsson and Nokia are pushing 5G.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#350

Post by BostonEnginerd »

mrtksn wrote: post #330
rossdavidh wrote: post #254

So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech. That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90's, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan. I'm sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of S…

Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA/China when simultaneously are super unoptimised due to cultural/lingual differences. The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who k…

Europe has actually been rather successful with IMEC, their semiconductor research organization.
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