EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

soygul wrote: post #184

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…

Bagger 293 probably is the most expensive machine. It costs $100M to build one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_293

Fascinating. Had to look it up — the photos of it are mind boggling.

I have to say though, from Wikipedia, sounds like there are only a few of them? Sort of one-offs, each of them (so to speak). I kind of think that might disqualify them.

Like calling the ISS the most expensive machine?

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

#212

Post by nickpp » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

USA entrepreneur: I need to start a company that will attract VC money. Damn, that means a company with huge potential. I better start working.

EU entrepreneur: I need to start a company that can access these juicy governmental funds. Let’s see, what exactly do these bureaucrats want? Hmm, sounds complicated, who do I know in the approval committee? I better start calling.

Incentives matter.

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

#213

Post by joejerryronnie » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #150

baybal2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TWINSCAN NXE:3400C is probably the most expensive machine in the world. Unfortunately no. A number of pieces of military hardware produced in bigger numbers will leave even that pricetag in the dust.

Like what?

Do aircraft carriers count in this context? They’re reasonably expensive to produce.

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

#214

Post by f6v » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

Nokinside wrote: post #207

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the EU treats this as a strategic capability and not commercial, the spending is much less of a consideration. The advantage that the EU has is in fact ASML. No company can make the 5nm litho systems today, and catching up with the decades of R&D they've invested is not feasible. They are the greatest achievement of science and technology on the planet. [0] The strategy that can work is for the EU to partner with…

Pretty much. All big players (US, EU, China) must maintain domestic strategically important industries (aerospace, energy, semiconductors, telecom, drugs/biotech ...) even with government subsidies. The goal of strategic investment is to stay as one of the major players in the industry. Being the leader is not necessary, but letting the deep core and knowledge in manufacturing to erode is strategic weakness.

Exactly the opposite happened in Russia and other ex-soviet countries. The factories were sold and dismantled under the pretense of “transitioning to market economy”.

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

#215

Post by dahele » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

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.

Very well put. Take AI as an example - foundational research in deep learning and reinforcement learning was first done in academia. Everyone knows the story of how long neural networks languished in the shadows, before its time. Even commercial research labs only really took note after the potential of these methods was discovered.

Government funding is a good thing, but it’d be even better would be if we could harness the free market. One solution could be to equip research institutions with the means to capture value from IP that follows on from basic research.

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

#216

Post by paulnechifor » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #150

baybal2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TWINSCAN NXE:3400C is probably the most expensive machine in the world. Unfortunately no. A number of pieces of military hardware produced in bigger numbers will leave even that pricetag in the dust.

Like what?

The next Air Force One supposedly costs 4 billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One#VC-25B .

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

#217

Post by vladimirralev » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

misja111 wrote: post #203

iagovar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has the tech, but that's not enough. I won't say the whole budget will be wasted away, but I hold no hope of something useful coming out of it. The EU has ASML, NXP, Infineon, maybe STM (not sure) and a ton of little shops, but all of them are far away from the major players. And they are moderately confortable in their niches. This is a very high risk endeavour, even with EU money. And as far as I know, none…

> .. I won't say the whole budget will be wasted away, but I hold no hope of something useful coming out of it. The ECB has been buying trillions of euro's worth of dubious government bonds and bank debts for the last couple of years. Also every year the EU pays hundreds of billions worth of subsidies to European farmers so that they are able to sell their goods below global market prices. I would say that this 145 b…

Central banks and governments pretty much already committed to drive a planned economy. EU subsidises farmers (among others) to sell goods at cheap prices, which causes consumer prices to drop and in the end the ECB says inflation is too low, so let's print money to buy more gov bonds. Governments then use the money to subsidise something else distorting the markets and it loops back to disinflation and the central bank printing even more money.

It's a joke. Might as well just admit, semiconductors or not, the future of the economy is with the politically preselected winners who get the subsidies and the loans. Risk premiums, collateral, macroprudential regulation, insurance and so on is for the peasants.

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

#218

Post by paulnechifor » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #157

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

B2 spirit costs more than its weight in gold, clocking in at close to a billion

3.17 billion in 2019 dollars, or 1.11 if you exclude the sunk costs.

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

#219

Post by CryptoPunk » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #144

singhrac wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could use your experience to propose a system (whether funding vehicle restrictions or proper incentives) for that not to happen in this case? I think we’d all be excited by that. How can we avoid spending money on lobbyists? Maybe the structure should be more VC-like?

No point arguing with ideology.

It is arguably quite ideological to insist that a large monopolistic bureaucracy, or a conglomeration of them - e.g. the EU - will be efficient in allocating vast amounts of resources when basic game and microeconomic theory suggests otherwise.

Still, an argument for state subsidies, despite some inevitable degree of inefficiency, can be made.

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

#220

Post by gpderetta » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #76

iagovar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NXP, Infineon and STM are the three major in Europe, although STM is Swiss/Italian.

STM is also very strongly French. And these three are only the largest pure-semiconductor companies. There are many dozens of smaller companies and quite some fabs. A lot of automotive electronics is done by European companies. Also, many international semiconductor companies have development sites in Europe.

STM was originally Italo-French; it is a public company these days, whose headquartier is in Switzerland (as a neutral territory I guess), but the major shareholder (which is incorporated in Nederland) is still jointly owned directly by the Italian and French governments, and major production and reasearch sites are still in these countries. So, it is complicated