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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

#151

Post by baybal2 »

moooo99 wrote: post #105
tobessebot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Munich does have Infineon as well and it's closer to lots of the eventual customers in the automobile industry.

But is the automotive industry really the main customers for TSMC? Judging by all the news I read about the company, the main reason for the hype is that they are always on the bleeding edge of semiconductor manufacturing, which isn't usually something that you'd find in the automotive sector. And assuming that the automotive industry is the target customer: Volkswagen has their biggest plant in Saxony, which is thei…

Automotive chips are less than 1% of TSMCs volume, but they can shout the loudest, have big pockets, and lobbying power.

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

#152

Post by ng55QPSK »

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

The lead of construction for BER was a dutch company

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

#153

Post by ahartmetz »

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #131
volta83 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top technical talent scarcity and cost. In Silicon Valley, you can find a dozen 600k$ engineers relatively quickly to scale up a random startup. In Germany... the salaries these people would be making would be This disparity in the valuation of top engineers cause many to emigrate, and once you are in the US, it is impossible to financially justify taking a 5x pay cut to go back to Germany. (You can justify it "non-f…

I don't know of a single person in my Master's degree class in Computer Science in one of Germany's top tech universities who went to the US. And I have most of them as contacts on LinkedIn. I'm not buying your premise.

The thing about not coming back is probably true (30% the salary?!), but yeah, not many leave in the first place.

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

#154

Post by lordnacho »

artemonster wrote: post #29
tester34 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's the compensation / benefits / work-life balance like?

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

#155

Post by fundatus »

nbevans wrote: post #137
nbevans wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK isn't even manning its customs posts for imports from the EU at present. And there is no tariffs on the vast majority of exports to the EU - and certainly not on semiconductors. FDI in 2020 was almost identical to France (albeit yes 2nd to France in 1st place) for Europe: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/07/uk-second-t... This is counter to your claims concerning FDI. I doubt it is "much easier" f…

"No one (apart from Brexiters) cares that much about tariffs. EU tariffs are some of the lowest in the world - the average applied tariff for imports into the EU in 2019 was just 1.88%. Compare that to 6% for India or 13% for the US." Bizarre comment. You initiated it by suggesting the UK has erected "giant trade barriers" but then reply saying nobody cares about trade tariffs? And then immediately in the second sent…

My point is that UK politicians are obsessed with tariffs and free trade agreements, while in reality those play a minor role (as EU tariffs are generally very low).

What really matters to companies though are non-tariff-barriers (regulations etc). By deciding to leave the single market, the UK has erected huge non-tariff trade barriers with their biggest trading partner (the EU).

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

#156

Post by jansan »

nixass wrote: post #98
nbevans wrote: post #57

I find it surprising that they are choosing Germany - after everybody is seeing what Germany is doing to Tesla's Gigafactory there (embroiling it in so much red tape that Elon wishes he could pull out if it weren't for sunk cost). It seems that Germany has a very good ability to convince and lobby these mega-manufacturers to base themselves there, but a very poor ability to actually let them succeed after making that…

> after everybody is seeing what Germany is doing to Tesla's Gigafactory there Yeah, the Walmart said the same in the 90s when they tried to concur Germany, only to miserably fail. The thing is that the Germany (and the EU as a whole) is no Wild West and there are actually rules, environmental responsibility and labor laws to follow.

I am pretty sure the other reailers in Germany like Aldi and Lidl teamed up to prevent Walmart from getting a foothold. They are extremely strong and this for a reason. I went to Walmart in Jena when they opened their shop there and was really underwhelmed by what they had to offer.

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

#157

Post by Heliosmaster »

tralarpa wrote: post #72
Heliosmaster wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or working with a 40M Loc codebase started in the 80s with 50% code duplication. Because it's so mission critical that nobody really touches existing code. Or that everything needs to be rubber-stamped by a ton of people and even a rename takes months to make it in the codebase. Oh well. That's probably every enterprise

As somebody without any experience in that field: When you say "codebase", what is that? Is it code describing circuit blocks (e.g. an ALU) that is reused in different projects or is it code for the tools that you use? (in-house tools, plugins for commercial tools, etc.)

There are several machines required to make a chip, and many steps involved. Those machines are crazy complex and accurate (i remember having a precision of around 3 atoms of silicon, femtometer scale). I meant firmware fot these machines, in general. Crazy complex (and amazing) tools with complex software

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

#158

Post by raverbashing »

volta83 wrote: post #122
FabHK wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying in SV, they're 600k$, but in Germany they're only 100k$, but it would be 2x expensive to hire them? Why don't you pay 600k$ gross then, they get 300k$ net, and thus 3x what they'd get otherwise in Germany, but don't have to move to the US? Seems like a feasible strategy to me.

Paying somebody 300k/year doesn't make them "top talent". The top talent is in the US, Taiwan, etc. designing the 3nm plants, operating the 5nm plants, doing research, etc. Why would a 600k$/year engineer relocate from the US to Germany for a 300k$ salary pay cut ? I've always made more money at my next job than the previous one. If a company wants me to leave my life here behind and move 15000km, they better offer m…

Do you think they're not paying any tax in the US? That 600k gross is at most 500k net (probably less)

Also you assume they are a) happy to stay in the US b) have no immigration issues to deal with c) don't have a crazy CoL on SV that eats most of that 500k...

Yes, it's not a clear-cut move, but not too bad neither. Salary is not everything.

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

#159

Post by reportingsjr »

Akronymus wrote: post #133
symmetricsaurus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take three somewhat flat stones to start out. Alternate rubbing the surfaces together in a random fashion. As you continue the high spots of the stones will be ground down and the surfaces will become flatter and flatter. In the end you can get very precise flat surfaces. Two stones is not enough, you can then end up with two spherical surfaces. With three this isn't possible (imagine two of them are convex, when you…

Obligatory machine thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 Altough, I disagree with the "random fashion". Alternating the pairs AB -> BC -> CA seems more logical to me.

It is necessary to grind in a random fashion (OP is talking about the method of grinding, not the order), or you will end up with imperfections. Lots of info about this if you look in to grinding mirrors for telescopes.

Also, the order being random wouldn't effect the end result.

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

#160

Post by kome »

mejutoco wrote: post #109
raverbashing wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries that have semi factories in Europe: Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, Netherlands, UK, Austria, Belgium, and Hungary (with different capabilities and sizes) So it would be natural that it ends on the countries with existing factories and expertise. The German (or even we might say, "north-european") self-deprecation gets old sometimes...

I have never heard of german self-deprecation. Do you have any examples of it?

German self-deprecation? I wish! My impression is that Germans feel to be top notch no matter what. I rarely heard self-deprecation from them, humble brag is what come closer.
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