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

Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

financialpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 101 posts

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#71

Post by andromeduck »

polishdude20 wrote: post #25
throwawaysea wrote: post #18

I don’t understand the case exactly. Is it that there’s room to innovate (like WeavAir, the startup they feature early in the article) or that there’s unmet demand (what the article references with COVID semiconductor shortages)? Certainly innovations can create markets on their own but I don’t see a temporary shortage as being some kind of opportunity to break into the industry. What would they do - build fabs? And…

Yeah what's not evident to me is how Canada has the upper hand in this? If it can be done in Canada, it can be done in the US (and pay better)

Well we produce enough high quality graduates from our colleges and many would would love nothing else but to stay and apply their trade where they have built up connections but at present that connection does not outweigh the massive drag that is our housing crisis & tax policy.

Even if one wished to settle in Vancouver for example, one would still be better off working down south for 5-10 years to save up for a nice house or apartment but by then all your friends are down there so you may as well stay.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#72

Post by nine_k »

aww_dang wrote: post #52
konschubert wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany chose cheap solar over homegrown solar. It is not clear to me that German solar could have become as cheap as Chinese solar with the old subsidy scheme.

There's also the subsidies provided by CCP central planners to consider. This subsidizes consumption in their target markets. I appreciate the strategic concerns. However, the obvious benefit of a foreign nation subsidizing your consumption shouldn't be overlooked. Some of the knee-jerk reactions to central planning suggest that the western nations should emulate the CCP's statist system. To be sure there are pragmat…

The problem is that you never know where better optima lie. You have to guess.

It is easiest when a new optimum is easy to reach by just following the gradient. Short-term thinking works well here.

There may be some optima much farther down, which take a lot of "buried" investment to reach: efficient photovoltaics, electric cars, reusable space launch systems, maybe even fusion power. We know that some of them are better optima than the previous state, because they have been reached. Some, like fusion power, haven't been, but there is a lot of hope that they'll work. Some other attempts, like supersonic passenger aircraft, ended up not as optimal as their proponents had hoped. You never know.

The problem is that you can only reach these distant goals by concentrating resources and spending them without an apparent commercial result for years and decades. This takes a high concentration of resources and a commitment. Currently only billionaires and certain national governments can afford that. Most public companies are too beholden to their quarterly results to follow long-term policies which do not bring steady profits along the way, and many governments are in the same situation because the voters do not care about long-term goals enough.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#73

Post by virtue3 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #64
konschubert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an army prop up a currency?

A currency’s value is the trust that you will be able to exchange it in the future for something you want. An army can help that by signaling the stability of the country. An army alone does not do the job though, the real value lies in the trust and organization of the society itself. The more of that there is, the more others will believe the currency will be able to buy something they want, since organized societi…

Anytime there is an economic conflict with certain countries the US will perform "carrier fleet exercises" in their seas.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/sea-power-us-navy-and-forei...

We (USA) are totally the child of Britain. And we will probably be slowly phased out of relevance in a similar way.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#74

Post by maxerickson »

roenxi wrote: post #51
PicassoCTs wrote: post #41

This touches a problem democracy inherited from the market participants it tries to emulate in the west nowadays. Longterm commitment to plans. It makes no sense to support projects short term, only then to hand the developed fruits of labour over to those capable to longterm commit to development. This is also the most valuable trait a government can bring to the market, as it is a system usually optimized for explo…

There is no conflict between democracies and accomplishing long term goals. Common perceptions are skewed because (1) "everything works as expected" and (2) "obviously clever long term plan bears fruit" make boring headlines. If the democracies ever bring out the brass knuckles and try hard they'll probably succeed. Even mild tweaks like loosening IP protections and letting failed financial institutions go bankrupt o…

Solar energy (with storage!) is cheap energy.

We aren't quite at the storage tipping point, but there is good reason to believe we will get there.

Solar as generation tipped years ago.

Make plans like energy in 2030 will be cheaper than it is now, not more expensive.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#75

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

_udy5 wrote: post #23
klyrs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current... Per capita, our debt is comparable to the US

Wikipedia data says (2017) https://www.visualcapitalist.com/debt-to-gdp-continues-to-ri...

The graph is for the growth of debt to GDP - we previously had lower debt and so the need to react to COVID caused the debt to grow by quite a bit as CERB was implemented to try and keep people liquid. I can't find any break downs of 2020 in terms of actual debt to GDP, but the chart supplied definitely isn't telling the whole story.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#76

Post by KoftaBob »

api wrote: post #70
KoftaBob wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Canadian salaries are a joke compared to their American counterparts. Their tech companies need to offer much more competitive salaries if they want a remote chance of preventing further brain drain of their talent to the US.

Why are salaries so low in Canada? The difference for most technical and engineering jobs is huge. It would make sense if the cost of living were lower but it isn’t. Rents and home prices are very high. Tech jobs in lower cost of living places in the US like Kentucky or Michigan often pay much higher than Canadian tech jobs.

They're low in Europe too. The first thing I can think of is that American tech companies are generally much bigger than their Canadian and European counterparts, and therefore have much larger resources financially to pay competitive salaries.

On top of that, the American tech industry has a huge number of both existing companies and new startups entering the picture due to the entrepreneurial culture and VC funding infrastructure.

As a result, the job market in the US is more competitive for talent, whereas Canadian applicants have fewer companies to choose from if they don't want to leave the country, and therefore less leverage for salary.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#77

Post by ludamad »

goodcanadian wrote: post #53
MattGaiser wrote: post #34

Canada needs to focus on retaining the tech capacity that it has. https://financialpost.com/news/economy/virtual-brain-drain-p...

I hate to bang on about it, but as a Canadian who has worked in the U.S. and who is now in the U.K., I've tried hard to land a good position in Canada. Very few opportunities seem to exist, and the ones that do pay a pittance. In my experience, it is not 30% higher in the U.S. as the link indicates, but more like 100-200%. A couple of years ago, I was offered a highly technical position with a salary below what I had…

I've been told C$120-150k is the salary top end quite a few times. Base salaries don't seem to go much higher. Meanwhile I'm trying to find alternatives to contracting for the US

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#78

Post by aww_dang »

konschubert wrote: post #55
tomp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By destroying any country that dares to oppose petrodollar (latest example being Libya). Edit: Google “libya petrodollar gold”

I don’t get it.

The largest producer (Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members) of crude will only accept USD for payment. In exchange the US guarantees security. You may read the inverse of the security guarantee as well. Producers defying the arrangement may expect regime change or other hostilities.

>However, by 1971, convertibility into gold was no longer viable as America's gold resources drained away. Instead, the dollar became a pure fiat currency (decoupled from any physical store of value), until the Petrodollar Agreement was concluded by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973.

The essence of the deal was that the U.S. would agree to military sales and defence of Saudi Arabia in return for all oil trade being denominated in U.S. Dollars. A secondary option to this agreement is the purchase of U.S. debt securities with surplus oil proceeds. By 1975, all OPEC nations agreed to price their oil supplies exclusively in U.S. Dollars and to hold their oil proceeds in U.S. government debt securities.

https://www.sandstoneam.com/insight/rise-of-the-petrodollar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling#Petrodol...

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#79

Post by yabones »

Canada has a long and shameful history of our innovations being screwed up or screwed over. In the 50s our fighter/interceptor was leagues better than the US's jets, but crooked politicians killed the project. In the 70s our CANDU reactors were safer and cheaper to run than the PWRs the Americans were exporting, somehow we lost out on that too. More recently Bombardier built some of the nicest small passenger jets, and now that's owned by foreign companies.

The brain drain is endless. If this project took off, our leaders would roll over in a second to sell it off, it's the proud tradition here.

Re: Making the case for a homegrown Canadian semiconductor industry

#80

Post by johnwalkr »

KoftaBob wrote: post #62
MattGaiser wrote: post #34

Canada needs to focus on retaining the tech capacity that it has. https://financialpost.com/news/economy/virtual-brain-drain-p...

Yeah Canadian salaries are a joke compared to their American counterparts. Their tech companies need to offer much more competitive salaries if they want a remote chance of preventing further brain drain of their talent to the US.

Yet cost of living in the major cities is so high!
Post reply on HN