Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU countries team up for semiconductor push

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 665 posts

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#361

Post by petra »

yaantc wrote: post #218
y04nn wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no need for advanced nodes for micro-controllers. Typically even advanced µC use 40nm, planar, where the TSMC leading node is 5nm FinFET. ST also does FD-SOI 22nm if I remember well, but that's the densest node they have and nowhere near the current state of the art at TSMC. 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…

ST does 22nm FD-SOI at globalfoundries , not their own fab.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#362

Post by Apocryphon »

young_unixer wrote: post #343
bildung wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

It sounds like what this initiative is doing is Europe trying to create a Silicon Valley (probably far from the first time), not sustain it indefinitely. They have to learn to crawl before they run. So the focus on origins is valid.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#363

Post by norwegianwhale »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #347
mrtksn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

If there ever is a promising project from europe

(a.1) it bootstraps / gets venture capital

(a.2) Leaves after 2 years for the US / gets acquired and the fiscal headquarter moves to Delaware (Stripe)

(b) Gets absorbed by an old blue chip, like Siemens, Telefonica, and dies a slow death.

(c) Becomes highly stymied by bureaucracy, and the initial momentum wanes without winning much market share (Zalando, Deliveroo, Idealista).

It's called the market of lemons problem. Only the least productive projects want to have their hands tied and financed by the government.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#364

Post by ddulaney »

herodoturtle wrote: post #352
analog31 wrote: post #342

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, i…

> it suggests to me that a national program to strengthen an industry isn't guaranteed to be a failure "Isn't guaranteed to be a failure". Sorry, I struggle to interpret sentences like this. English isn't my first language. Please clarify? Are you saying that "it is not definitely a failure"? I can't figure out if it's the above, or if it is this: "won't necessary fail" More specifically, I'm not sure if the implicat…

For me (Eastern US) “is not definitely a failure”, “won’t necessarily fail”, and “isn’t guaranteed to be a failure” all indicate that something would be expected to usually fail, but might not.

To me, they can be optimistic or pessimistic based on what the baseline is. I read the GP’s post as optimistic, as they come from a perspective of these kinds of government programs always failing. However, from a baseline of these kinds of government programs often succeeding, any of the three versions would be pessimistic.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#365

Post by mrtksn »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #347
mrtksn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Not at all, those are simply the biggest ones that would be recognised by Americans. Another recognisable project would be the Erasmus program or interrail, or ESA(remember the cute spacecraft philae, yep that was not NASA but ESA https://twitter.com/philae2014?lang=en).

EU has tons of projects with smaller or even larger scale, usually in areas that are not supposed to yield profit but has large impact to trade and life quality of the citizens, preserve peace and food security. Mostly boring stuff, EU is not a for profit company that will design the next iPhone, it's this organisation that does the stiff that individual countries or companies are not willing to do or simply cannot do but it needs to be done.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#366

Post by freeflight »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #87
jeromenerf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Is there anything impactful that is somehow European (not from a single European country, but as a collaboration between) with the exception of airbus and CERN? It’s not that there aren’t skills and talents in space, cars, pharma, construction, energy, etc. Edit: clarification.

A lot of the Euro banking industry is collaborative, both in terms of financial instruments and infrastructure. In information technology, ARM is ostensibly British but key parts of their portfolio were Euro collabs that became acquisitions or whatever (Keil, Adelante, EuroMIPS etc.) In space technology there's a fairly strong Euro theme. E.g. i live near Glasgow, Scotland. There's a few really cool Space firms here…

> ARM is ostensibly British

Which is still European, sure there is Brexit on the horizon, but even then it would still be European just not European Union.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#367

Post by Apocryphon »

norwegianwhale wrote: post #363
TacticalCoder wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

If there ever is a promising project from europe (a.1) it bootstraps / gets venture capital (a.2) Leaves after 2 years for the US / gets acquired and the fiscal headquarter moves to Delaware (Stripe) (b) Gets absorbed by an old blue chip, like Siemens, Telefonica, and dies a slow death. (c) Becomes highly stymied by bureaucracy, and the initial momentum wanes without winning much market share (Zalando, Deliveroo, Ide…

Sounds like what happens in Canada, too. One wonders if this is a global phenomenon.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#368

Post by lumost »

It’s interesting to see a return to national “strategic” industrial development. This type of activity used to be common throughout the west until the 70s and 80s and served in part to ensure that there was always competition in “core” industries.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#369

Post by skummetmaelk »

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…

If your definition of "tech" is so narrow that it only includes web app companies then yeah, you're right.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#370

Post by norwegianwhale »

mrtksn wrote: post #365
TacticalCoder wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Not at all, those are simply the biggest ones that would be recognised by Americans. Another recognisable project would be the Erasmus program or interrail, or ESA(remember the cute spacecraft philae, yep that was not NASA but ESA https://twitter.com/philae2014?lang=en ). EU has tons of projects with smaller or even larger scale, usually in areas that are not supposed to yield profit but has large impact to trade and…

> Erasmus program or interrail

By which upper middle class kids get a free year of holidays abroad at the taxpayer's expense. No results expected.

Finishing studies, getting a job and family formation can be postponed to early thirties.

Our young generations are having so much success in the job market, housing, and family wise.

Post reply on HN