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TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

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Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#21

Post by lispm »

988747 wrote: post #9
cpach wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? From my POV Germany seems good at manufacturing. E.g. Siemens. And cars.

In general investment in the "old" EU countries is less profitable due to higher taxes, salaries, and other costs. That's why most of the European companies choose to build their new factories in Central Europe: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, etc. TSMC should do the same.

TSMC would go to Dresden if it decides to invest in Germany.

Bosch just opened a new chip fatory in Dresden.

https://www.bosch.com/stories/bosch-chip-factory-dresden/

Globafoundries and Infinion are there, too.

https://gfdresden.de

https://www.infineon.com/cms/dresden/en/

The Dresden/Saxony area is said to have in semiconductor manufacturing "2,300 companies with roughly 60,000 employees active in the industry in Saxony and generating revenues of some €16.5 billion last year."

Apple invests heavily in a Chip design center in Munich.

https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2021/03/apple-to-invest-ov...

Customers for the TSMC chips would be in the automotive industry.

Tesla builds a new EV factory in Brandenburg near Berlin... Volkswagen has several factories working on current and future EVs, ... for example the ID.3 is being manufactured in Dresden, too.

https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/id3-st...

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#22

Post by odiroot »

alexanderklein wrote: post #2

If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.

I wouldn't be as harsh, but indeed that decision is a bit weird. They cannot really count on cheap labour, or "friendly" economic incentives. And seeing the case of Tesla factory, it's not so easy and fast.

One great thing about Germany is the central location within EU with good logistics overall. Not sure it matters for semiconductor manufacturing.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#23

Post by adrian_b »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #14
988747 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general investment in the "old" EU countries is less profitable due to higher taxes, salaries, and other costs. That's why most of the European companies choose to build their new factories in Central Europe: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, etc. TSMC should do the same.

I wish :) There's no infrastructure or know-how in Poland regarding microelectronics. The only related field is ASIC design - a few offices of American companies like Synopsys (>100 employees), Silicon Creations (a few dozen employees), Cadence (a few dozen as well). Intel has a massive R&D site but they don't do hardware design here, maybe except FPGA.

In the more distant past, i.e. up to 1990, all the Eastern European countries, including Poland, had semiconductor plants and many people, both engineers and workers, with good know-how.

However, after 1990, the plants have been closed and most of the skilled people have gone to USA, Canada or Western Europe.

So for the present time you might be right, it could be difficult to find enough experienced workforce, unlike many years ago.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#24

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

cpach wrote: post #3
alexanderklein wrote: post #2

If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.

Why not? From my POV Germany seems good at manufacturing. E.g. Siemens. And cars.

German engineering gave us BER

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#25

Post by DangerousPie »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #24
cpach wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? From my POV Germany seems good at manufacturing. E.g. Siemens. And cars.

German engineering gave us BER

What does the (mis)management of a public infrastructure project have to do with Germany's attractiveness as a base for manufacturing?

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#26

Post by sichtlinkair »

hans1729 wrote: post #10
alexanderklein wrote: post #2

If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.

Germany is positioned excellently for chip production, why would you consider that a bad investment?

Genuinely curious why Germany's position is excellent for chip production?

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#27

Post by grlass »

ipnon wrote: post #5

TSMC is really the keystone for everything else done that ends up getting talked about on this website. They are constantly at the bleeding edge of computer manufacture and pushing it further still. We should feel some sense of amazement to be alive still in the middle of the computer revolution.

Not to mention the people who design many of the machines that TSMC use in their plants: ASML.

"The mirrors guiding this light, made of sandwiched layers of silicon and molybdenum, are ground so precisely that, if scaled to the size of Germany, they would have no bumps bigger than a millimetre" https://www.economist.com/business/2020/02/29/how-asml-becam...>

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#28

Post by bildung »

odiroot wrote: post #22
alexanderklein wrote: post #2

If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.

I wouldn't be as harsh, but indeed that decision is a bit weird. They cannot really count on cheap labour, or "friendly" economic incentives. And seeing the case of Tesla factory, it's not so easy and fast. One great thing about Germany is the central location within EU with good logistics overall. Not sure it matters for semiconductor manufacturing.

I wouldn't say Teslas Brandenburg factory shows a problem with red tape per se, but it does show that ignoring it won't save you time in Germany.

Also, salaries usually only account for low single digit percentages of opex in high tech production, so ready availabilty of the needed specialists is probably more important.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#29

Post by artemonster »

tester34 wrote: post #11
ipnon wrote: post #5

TSMC is really the keystone for everything else done that ends up getting talked about on this website. They are constantly at the bleeding edge of computer manufacture and pushing it further still. We should feel some sense of amazement to be alive still in the middle of the computer revolution.

Overall semiconducting industry seems to be way more exciting than boring computer industry

ha! I guess you haven't worked as a designer or verification engineer, designing chips then? let me tell you: you work with a commitee-designed c++ like abomination language with 300 non-composible keywords that make no freaking sense. all of that crap grew from legacy-upon-legacy of crutches as an attempt to fix the goddamn broken-by-design verilog. Ultimately, this craplanguage + library that is 90% non-debuggable macros, works only with ~3 vendor simulators (all 3 would do different stuff on big designs and you are locked almost forever). When you simulate you designs, most of external components would be either encrypted blackboxes or be calling "magic" functions (called system tasks) that are absultely opaque to you and do some global side-effects. All of this multiplied by the fact that every statement is executed in parallel in your huge design and evolves in time. Oh, did I mention how crappy the actual tools are? Think of 90's era with outdated and moronic UI/UX, some poorely integrated quasi-TCL interpreter for configuration & ability to crash that tool in 50).

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#30

Post by NicoJuicy »

grlass wrote: post #27
ipnon wrote: post #5

TSMC is really the keystone for everything else done that ends up getting talked about on this website. They are constantly at the bleeding edge of computer manufacture and pushing it further still. We should feel some sense of amazement to be alive still in the middle of the computer revolution.

Not to mention the people who design many of the machines that TSMC use in their plants: ASML. "The mirrors guiding this light, made of sandwiched layers of silicon and molybdenum, are ground so precisely that, if scaled to the size of Germany, they would have no bumps bigger than a millimetre" https://www.economist.com/business/2020/02/29/how-asml-becam... >

You forget Imec in Belgium, which does a lot of the R&D in semiconductors.

I suspect lot of the production facilities would want to be near them.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-13/u-s-and-c...

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