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

TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 450 posts

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

#191

Post by nicbou »

ahartmetz wrote: post #153
wasmitnetzen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Money isn't everything to many. Life in Germany is good enough, and there's no guarantee that it would be betted in the US. Sure, more money is nice, but the pay in Germany is still decent, and the perks are considerable: 22% fewer work hours, for instance.

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

#192

Post by openandshut »

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.

>still in the middle of the computer revolution Are you implying it will end? Either Moore's law leveling off or an externality (unrest/war/climate change) that ends it?

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

#193

Post by jansan »

est31 wrote: post #33
driton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to the solar companies in Germany?

Germany entered a subsidy bidding war with China and eventually decided it's not worth the extreme skewing of the market and pulled out. This had the consequences that solar panels are now manufactured in China. IDK but from my point of view, solar panels are more dependent on salaries than chip manufacturing is.

It's also low-tech compared to chip manufacturing.

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

#194

Post by nicbou »

ng55QPSK wrote: post #140
nixass wrote: post #4

Make it Munich, make it Munich, make it Munich

Please not Munich. We're dealing already with an overcrowded area where the cost of living and cost of renting apartments is exploding and the market of engineers is literally empty. North of bavaria closer to e.g. Audi in Ingolstadt or BMW in lower-bavaria would make more sense. Still, you could reach Munich by train or 30min drive and 30min traffic jam.

I'm all for concentrating the problems in a place where I don't live.

- A Berliner

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

#195

Post by GrigoriyMikh »

bluGill wrote: post #182
ChemSpider wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is a great place to invest. So is most of Western Europe. The #1 thing you are looking for is _stability_ and a good engineering job market. Both is available. For this kind of automated high-tech manufacturing, nobody cares about salaries. They are <<1% of the cost.

Even if you care about salaries, German engineers are cheap. If you are looking for the best engineers they are as cheap as India (India has a lot more bad engineers for cheap, but they have plenty of good ones that demand and get a good salary). The real downside of Germany is lead Engineer is a non-union position so you end up with the majority of your engineers refusing to lead the project (despite the higher sala…

Why you think that Germany has a lot of good and cheap engineers? I think the biggest problem that low salaries are causing there is that people with some(5+ years) experience are moving either to Switzerland/US or to freelance for Switzerland/US companies.

So, there's big deficit of experienced engineers. German companies are trying to solve it by inviting Eastern European/Indian/Asian workers, that are cheaper, but that results in mediocre one staying and exploiting job security system and good ones moving to Switzerland/US or back to native country(where foreign experience can help them to get to higher managerial positions).

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

#196

Post by polskibus »

Just recently we've discussed "faltering" talks in Europe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161217 and "eyeing" Japan https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-ey...

I wonder if this media noise is more to do with negotiation tactics than with real intentions.

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

#197

Post by openandshut »

reportingsjr wrote: post #159
Akronymus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it's a machine doing the grinding, what is the source of randomness?

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

#198

Post by nixass »

gsnedders wrote: post #180
fxtentacle wrote: post #45

If you consider GlobalFoundries to be a valid competitor, then that move would make a lot of sense. Infineon and AMD used to do a lot of research and production in Dresden. The AMD fab has since become a part of GlobalFoundries. But there's still a healthy ecosystem of university research and medium-sized software companies. Or at least there was, when I visited GlobalFoundries in 2014. Also, there has been a growing…

There's also Texas Instruments in Freising (near Munich), which I think is ex-NatSemi, and AFAIK now their only European fab after the closure of their one in Greenock (Scotland).

Also Apple is heavily investing into chip design in their Munich campus.

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

#199

Post by bluGill »

GrigoriyMikh wrote: post #195
bluGill wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you care about salaries, German engineers are cheap. If you are looking for the best engineers they are as cheap as India (India has a lot more bad engineers for cheap, but they have plenty of good ones that demand and get a good salary). The real downside of Germany is lead Engineer is a non-union position so you end up with the majority of your engineers refusing to lead the project (despite the higher sala…

Why you think that Germany has a lot of good and cheap engineers? I think the biggest problem that low salaries are causing there is that people with some(5+ years) experience are moving either to Switzerland/US or to freelance for Switzerland/US companies. So, there's big deficit of experienced engineers. German companies are trying to solve it by inviting Eastern European/Indian/Asian workers, that are cheaper, but…

As I said, the union has enough benefits that the value of higher salary positions isn't worth it to many. In the union you are not allowed to work more than 36 hours a week (I might have the numbers off a bit?) and they check to ensure that. Non-union can work longer hours, in practice they don't, but they are allowed to. There are a number of other things like that, the one lead engineer I work with in Germany doesn't think they are worth it, but the majority do.

The above is about great engineers who are holding themselves back. I have no doubt that those who are willing to not be in the union are also willing to leave the country leading to some brain drain, but many are also holding themselves back as well.

Post reply on HN