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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

#481

Post by lamp_book »

monkeydust wrote: post #319

Can anyone recommend a good primer on the semiconductor industry - background, history, players, trends, view on future state?

I hope others will chime in with followup sources, but if you want a book for historical background The Idea Factory covers the creation of the transistor and touches upon Shockley, the Traitorous Eight, and Fairchild Semiconductor which is sort of the inception of the US semiconductor industry. It's not exactly the focus of the book, but everything it covers is tied together.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#482

Post by blibble »

brmgb wrote: post #109
ducktective wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on "UK's sabotages"?

But certainly, the UK has been against any kind of concerted efforts by the EU which might go further than the single market for as long as they were a member. They lobbied heavily to be left out of the common agricultural policy and tried to diminish as much as they coud, were against Maastricht and were not a member of the Eurozone, pushed heavily for enlargement ensuring they would be no political cohesion in the…

> the UK has been against any kind of concerted efforts by the EU which might go further than the single market for as long as they were a member.

Conservative politicians were the driving force behind the creation of the single market in the first place

> They lobbied heavily to be left out of the common agricultural policy

the UK is still part of the CAP

> were against Maastricht

which is why the UK signed it

> pushed heavily for enlargement ensuring they would be no political cohesion in the union

this is a common conspiracy theory, but it has no basis in fact

> Leon Brittan as a trade commissioner was a staunch opponent to any kind of state aid in the 90s and single handly significantly weakened the European industry.

yes, you make your industry stronger by protecting it from competition by providing it with taxpayer subsidy... right?

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#483

Post by gostsamo »

Daho0n wrote: post #428
guai888 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China CCP is a snake. Get in bed with them and they will bite you one day. It is just their nature. Apple will learn one day.

No more so that any other big country. At least they don't bomb thousands of people a month.

Yep, they keep them in concentration camps, which is totally different.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#484

Post by rowland66 »

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…

>> Besides, what are the other options?

How about fund university research in related technology, reduce regulation that inhibits free enterprise, open financial markets to support capital formation, lower taxes on capital gains, enforce anti-trust regulation, and cross your fingers and hope some comes from it in 20 years.

You could also spend trillions of dollars on a high tech military industrial complex. That helps also.

This is not going to do it.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#485

Post by pompeirules »

m000 wrote: post #442
romanoderoma wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English isn't an official EU language anymore, the only country that chose it was UK. https://www.politico.eu/article/english-will-not-be-an-offic...

Do you have any references of English actually being phased-out in EU? The Politico article was written just a few days after the Brexit referendum, and 4 years later I can only take it for empty sabre-rattling.

> Do you have any references of English actually being phased-out in EU?

It's not clear yet if it will be used in official documents after Brexit agreements will be signed, but UK was the only country who chose English as an official language.

There's an hard requirement in EU to translate every official document in every language spoken in the EU, if English is not an official language, that requirement will cease to exist and slowly there will be no official document in English anymore because it's also a very costly operation.

Unless Ireland or Malta apply for English as primary language.

It's also a political stand, Macron is pushing to use French more and more in the EU institutions.

It doesn't mean that it won't be taught in schools or that it will fade as the most spoken language in EU, it still is by a large margin, but that it will move away from UK English and will become more similar to the English 75% of the > 1 billion English speakers in the World speak as a second language.

Native English speakers not understanding or not being understood by non-native speakers it's already a thing, the gap could widen in the future.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#486

Post by jansan »

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…

*> maybe as the UK is out of the EU 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).

I have not looked at it this way, but maybe you are right and this is the big chance for the EU. It would make the EU so much more efficient.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#487

Post by joelbluminator »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #413
ur-whale wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just Austria which is a comparatively small country. In the larger ones (DE, FR) labor laws are a nightmare.

Labour laws are a nightmare in every country due to bureaucracy but that doesn't mean it's always difficult to fire people. Most companies be it in FR, DE, wherever, have good lawyers on the payroll to advise them o the easiest legal path possible to get rid of undesirable employees. If a company really wants you gone, they'll make it happen one way or another. France was famous for their approach of making an employ…

> If a company really wants you gone, they'll make it happen one way or another.

Well they usually do it by compensating the employee quite heavily. Psychologically torturing an employee isn't that good for team morale, even if the employee was underperforming. I also don't think it's as culturally prevalent as you imply.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#488

Post by tristor »

photonios wrote: post #472
tristor wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What factors make you want to get out? As an American who's spent a lot of time in both the US and Continental Europe (and elsewhere) I don't see any terrific suck. At the risk of speaking out of turn, I've traveled extensively outside the US and befriended a lot of folks and had discussions on this topic with them. I would summarize my findings as such: 1. Economic Mobility: In Europe economic mobility, on average…

> The tech industry is a major factor in this, where senior-level positions in non-FAANG companies can make upwards of $150k/yr in the US, and the PPP equivalent European salary is around half of that. Why does this matter so much when there is affordable healthcare, lots of social programs to save you in case things don't go so well? I am honestly asking. I am in Europe and my salary is half of what I could make in…

> Why does this matter so much when there is affordable healthcare, lots of social programs to save you in case things don't go so well?

Because when things are going well it means you lose out on a lot of economic opportunity and not everyone feels the same way about the probability of things not going well, or who has the responsibility to cover them in the case that things don't go well. As I said in another comment, increased medical costs which impact uninsured or underinsured people in the US basically don't exist for tech workers who have high-quality employer-paid medical benefits in the US. So those factors don't detract people from moving here if they see other benefits to go along with the economic benefits.

Certainly, it is the case that this has it's trade-offs. I'm not making any value judgement on what the correct decision is for anyone but myself, but just trying to share some of the reasoning I've heard (from a probably biased subset of people).

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#489

Post by neolog »

rowland66 wrote: post #484
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…

>> Besides, what are the other options? How about fund university research in related technology, reduce regulation that inhibits free enterprise, open financial markets to support capital formation, lower taxes on capital gains, enforce anti-trust regulation, and cross your fingers and hope some comes from it in 20 years. You could also spend trillions of dollars on a high tech military industrial complex. That help…

> lower taxes on capital gains

How does that help semiconductor development?

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#490

Post by joelbluminator »

ralfn wrote: post #474
eastendguy wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"corrupt politicians"... really? Do you have any examples of large scale corruption inside EU? I don't. I think the majority of EU politicians are doing fine.

>Do you have any examples of large scale corruption inside EU? It doesn't happen with the one large corruption scheme taking all of the money. Its hundreds of small corruptions like a locust. Here is a fair and neutral attempt to catalog all the schemes in play: https://www.oecd.org/gov/ethics/prevention-fraud-corruption-... In return: Do you have an example of where the EU paid anywhere below 200% of industry standa…

> Turned out we had excluded big commercial labs from consideration because we had represenatites of the 'small artisinal labs' in our taskforce lobbying.

Do u have a link to that story?

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