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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

#351

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

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…

Your analogy works if ASML makes the only printer that can print the letter 'S'. Without it, you can't print and sell the books, regardless of who the author is.

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

#352

Post by aries1980 »

chx wrote: post #275
tasubotadas wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were non-competitive businesses producing outdated junk and in majority of cases there was no other way to survive apart of being sold for scrap. Some manufacturers that produced basic sellable goods survived (steel foundries, fertilizer makers)

This is not true, several precision mechanics factories (or parts of factories) in Hungary were producing for Western export and yet they let them rot apart.

Indeed. In my hometown - Gyula, Hungary - there was a precision mechanics factory, for phones, faxes, communication relays called Integra. It wasn't huge, employed a couple of hundreds people. In '89, Olivetti bought it for peanuts to close it down.

This was quite a classic move during the "privatisation" in '89-90.

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

#353

Post by aaronblohowiak »

CountSessine wrote: post #312
DSingularity wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they squandered that recently. We will see with Biden but the Trump administration basically encouraged Brexit and repeatedly adopted anti- EU positions in key geopolitical issues (Syria, NATO, Iran, Israel, and Ukraine). These things come with a cost and the EU will try to rectify this. Enhancing Chinas CPU tech by a few generations might be worth it if it can advance EU interests and ensure future good-fait…

Enhancing China’s CPU tech even a single generation is in the EU’s interest in exactly 0 alternate universes, along with this one. As long as the US has the world’s only reserve currency and as long as the EU economy - especially the productive bit in the North - is built on exporting to the all-powerful US consumer, the EU has very little leverage in its affairs with the US.

This thinking is how you end an empire

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

#354

Post by worik »

jbay808 wrote: post #330
samat wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a popular myth that 'there was a mighty USSR and some enemies ruined it'. The Soviet Union collapsed because of massively broken economy. That's just basic science. They exported oil and imported grain. Russia imported GRAIN for gods sake. Then oil prices collapsed. Next? They did nothing and just ate through the resources until they were no more. And then 'evil liberals/evil west destroying the great countr…

> They did nothing and just ate through the resources until they were no more. Those resources they ate through -- when were they accumulated? I find it hard to believe that they became a superpower by just coasting on the wealth that existed in 1917.

In 1917 they were in ruins.

in 1940 they went toe to toe with the worlds greatest industrial super power (or second greatest - depending how you count) in war and won.

The economic development achieved by the Soviet Union in the first half of its reign was incredible.

They made the best rockets, fighter planes, super computers.... But they never made a TV with a remote control.

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

#355

Post by Defenestresque »

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

The leaders of the free world sat around a secret table...

https://youtu.be/azEvfD4C6ow

(I know this comment is not exactly in the mood of HN, but this is the one thing I never fail to think of when someone mentions the Bagger family of murderous machines!)

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

#356

Post by ATsch »

csunbird wrote: post #314
908B64B197 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not the brilliant engineers you imagine are going to run it. I have no doubts brilliant European engineers are going to work on the hard problems of shipping a next gen chip process and design... In America! What the EU should do is earmark some of that money to be directly paid as engineering salaries. Of course they won't: that would reduce the piece of the pie of all the non-technical managers and bureaucrats!

> I have no doubts brilliant European engineers are going to work on the hard problems of shipping a next gen chip process and design... In America! Exactly. The salaries in EU are pitiful.

That's an understandable reaction if you just look at the raw USD value, but that's very far from the full picture. They are not pitiful when you start adding the costs for housing, healthcare, transportation and the rest of the things that you need to live. Compared to the huge wage increase, the increase in living standard is very minor (and in some regards worse, e.g. the amount of time you lose daily to the car centric infrastructure).

The number and quality of available jobs in the SV region was a much bigger factor to everyone I've spoken to that moved from the EU.

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

#357

Post by AdrianB1 »

bojan wrote: post #290
dmix wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I wish I too shared such optimism in EU or other massive multi government bureaucratic organizations to pull something off like this in 2021. But sorry I simply don’t. From my experience with gov trying to do tech investment it’s going to go into the pockets of late career overpaid ‘executives’ with ‘industry experience’ and tons of (also overpaid and underqualified) contractors doing the same thing. Not the bri…

Considering what it has to do and support, the EU has surprisingly little bureaucracy, although obviously it's huge in absolute terms.

A relative is a middle manager in one of the biggest tech organizations in EU; only 60% of their huge organization is doing actual work and that 60% includes the management of the actual experts; the rest are "support functions" with very well paid positions for people appointed by the member states with strong political connections and no relevant skills vs. hired with interviews for the 60%. But even in the 60% there are a lot that are not meeting the skills required, but they are protected from any action by labor laws and unions, including forced salary raised based on how long they worked there, with no performance indicators.

In practical terms, over 50% of that large (many thousands) organization should not exist. Another 50% of what is left is only needed because EU bureaucracy requires them to cover work that can be avoided. That qualifies for "too much bureaucracy".

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

#358

Post by e-_pusher »

petre wrote: post #301
thu2111 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a deep question that is asked nowhere near enough. And when it is asked, my experience has been it's mostly been Americans doing the asking. Here's a story. I was once visiting Silicon Valley for work and getting dinner with a friend who lives there. I'm a Brit who lives in central Europe. On the way over I'd bought a copy of Der Spiegel, which likes to write tabloid-esque articles about the Power Of Tech Firm…

> The EU views more regulation as inherently good, and anything that isn't caked in hundreds of pages of regulations as being merely on the TODO list One of the best examples of this are the digital tachograph design documents, which are hundreds of pages of legal gibberish mixed with a convoluted tech spec. 100% design by comitee. No wonder the top digital tachograph supplier is VDO and one if the lesser players, St…

This is really interesting - do you have any links to the documents you mention?

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

#359

Post by mschuster91 »

csunbird wrote: post #313
rapsey wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how much the EU spent, but over here EU money payed for a frankly crazy amount of fiber optic cable. Completely common for a house far from any urban centre to have fiber internet.

Which I found that very amusing, because Germany is suffering from really bad and expensive cable/copper internet all over the place.

That is the intentional result of Helmut Kohl's government many decades ago. Kohl wanted cable TV instead of fibre... because cable TV could be used to broadcast programs that were not "left mainstream". Wish I was joking, private TV stations in Germany are a thing only because the state TV was too left (in reality: not right-wing enough) for the freshly appointed Conservative chancellor.

See https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...

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

#360

Post by AdrianB1 »

Nokinside wrote: post #225
GregarianChild wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aerospace, energy, semiconductors, telecom, drugs/biotech The EU lost leadership in all of them! (And some others!)

What did I just wrote about leadership and it's importance?

Leadership or "leadership"? EU is full of "leaders", those that self-titled as such.

It lacks motivation, there is no SV in Europe because one cannot pay competitively with SV for top talent when you tax to death. It is a lot easier to become a billionaire from real stuff (not manipulating stock markets or other financial trickeries) in US than in EU, so the smart and motivated in EU move to US; what is left is ... what is left: either less motivated or less smart or less both.

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