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EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

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Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#101

Post by m4rtink »

ginko wrote: post #77
imtringued wrote: post #64

I'd like to see more government investment into domestic industries, however I believe that the semiconductor manufacturing market is already heavily saturated. R&D is welcome but beyond ensuring independence from foreign manufacturing there are not that many benefits that you would expect from this example of government stimulus. This industry primarily hires high skilled workers but unless they also directly fund t…

>however I believe that the semiconductor manufacturing market is already heavily saturated Is it? It seems to be headed for a TSMC monopoly as far as I can see.

Not to mention the current supply issues for gaming console chips and GPUs - unless it's a very temporary blip it looks like insufficient production of the most cutting edge chips & all that on top of the TSMC monopoly.

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#103

Post by Nokinside »

skrebbel wrote: post #71
Nokinside wrote: post #35

EU has the tech. ASML is #2 company in EURO STOXX 50 index with 5.69% weight. ASML is the world's largest photolithography systems manufacturer and the only one producing extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. These EUV scanners are expensive as hell. Last years model costs $120 million per piece and you need 10-15 of them for TSMC gigafactory. TWINSCAN NXE:3400C (7 and 5 nm nodes, >170 wafers per hour) is probabl…

ASML is impressive for sure, but having the litho doesn't mean you can make good chips. As a mediocre analogy, you don't expect to be able to write good novels because you got your hands on a printer. I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. I don't yet see any other chip company (eg NXP etc) suddenly be the next Intel or AMD yet (let alone the next App…

ARM IP, even full architectural license, is relatively small percentage of the cost of a semiconductor. Know-how for fables microarchitecture designs is widely distributed. Most fabless work goes to specialized asics.

It's the inability for SMIC to obtain EUV lithography equipment for their sub-7nm process technologies from ASML that prevents China from getting into high-end semiconductors, not the domestic microarchitecture know-how.

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#104

Post by rapsey »

yvdriess wrote: post #74
scotty79 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how we got to the current cutting edge. Research of most important technological inventions of the past century was funded by beaurocrats. Market is only good at figuring out how to make things cheaper and in volume. Both very important things. But true scientific breakthroughs that push the business over next decades happen on taxpayers bill as distributed by beaurocrats. It sucks a bit that it's this way but…

Yep, this cannot be repeated enough. Government funding is how a lot of innovations happen, but it's not as visible as a private company bringing that innovation to market. To put in optimization terms, private companies are good at following the gradient. Government funding is necessary to escape the well and find new minimas.

Government funding is extremely wasteful and will generally go into the pockets of the well connected. The problem is this game has been played for a long time and it has diminishing returns. The players have had decades to get the exploitation down.

Yes sillicon valley exists because of government money. But that was like 70 years ago. The world has changed and corruption is more severe. You will get no such bang for your government grant buck now.

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#105

Post by hydroreadsstuff »

bayindirh wrote: post #16
xiphias2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could get into chip dev for that amount of investment money. But of course EU will just waste the money as always.

> But of course EU will just waste the money as always. As someone working in HPC and EU projects related to this subject, I don't think they'll waste it. Current HPC and processor push is very real now.

As someone who worked in HPC Projects in the EU, I'd say the vast majority of the grants is wasted. E.g. on

- obscure software and programming paradigms/libraries

- one-off's

- projects that create only reports, papers and recommendations

- endless recreations of the same software over the years and decades

- plain dumb projects

- attempts at recreating other people's software (e.g. U.S.)

There is also a large amount of overlap in work/content between projects, and lots of time is appropriated for unrelated work e.g. employees working on their PhDs.

On the other hand the industry takes a lot more money and plays similar games.

Project partners do not take the right path, because it's not conducive to fulfilling a grant, getting the next grant or increasing your citation count. The incentives are wrong.

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#106

Post by m4rtink »

Roritharr wrote: post #2

So, we're getting an Airbus for Chips? Or will it more be like our Ariane missiles?

>Or will it more be like our Ariane missiles? It's rude to call it a missile just because they launched one on the wrong azimuth recently. ;-)

Also given the success rate of the related Vega rocket, it would not be a very dependable missile anyway.

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#107

Post by mschuster91 »

baxtr wrote: post #30
simias wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a tiresome and self-defeating mindset. If the EU does nothing it's useless, if it does something it's just corruption. Of course politics and lobbying will play a role when we're talking about hundreds of billions of euros, but that doesn't mean that it can't end up being a net positive for the union. Ask for transparency and keep tabs, don't assume that it's already lost.

Can you name examples of EU initiatives on that level that delivered the desired results? EDIT: I am asking because I seriously want to know. I haven’t made up my mind yet what to think about the whole thing. I am not familiar with successful EU initiatives. I’m open in believing this can work if there were successful examples in the past.

> I am not familiar with successful EU initiative.

The EU Cohesion Fund is one. Since 2007, ~133 billion € got invested in the poorer countries of the EU to improve trans-european traffic infrastructure (TEN, aka road, rail, waterways) and environmental projects (e.g. villages hooked up to proper sewage pipes with treatment plants at the end, instead of dumping sewage to the groundwater / into rivers and seas).

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#109

Post by m4rtink »

WanderPanda wrote: post #94
agumonkey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Airbus was one.

You mean that resource wasting shop, that is sending huge airplane parts all across Europe for political reasons? I don’t even want to start about the subsidies considered illegal by the wto...

Well, it seems to be competitive with Boeing & no one else really stepped up doing it the "proper" way so far.

Re: EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

#110

Post by rapsey »

_ph_ wrote: post #85

Good news. Yes, as with all government money, there is some pork barreling involved, but there is a long history of such government initiatives laying the starting seed for high tech industry development. It means money is invested in Europe tied to a certain purpose. Giving talented engineers a job perspective and companies a field in which they can invest into.

Yeah but that was then and this is now. Exploiting these EU programmes is a business for many. They produce paperwork and they get EU funds.
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