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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

#301

Post by oezi »

ulfw wrote: post #175
MarcusE1W wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably true that the net salary is lower than some other comparable countries, although Denmark for example has also a quite low net salary. I feel the important bit is what you get for the net salary deduction. In Germany you have: - Free Education including University - A decent mostly free health system, health care insurance - unemployment insurance so your life does not completely unravel if you are made…

"A decent mostly free health system" Where in Germany is that? You either pay a lot for private insurance (especially when you get old) or you pay a lot for state-backed insurance (which is a lot if you earn above average as most techies do).

Since insurance is capped at around 5k salary you will at most pay 15% of that (750 EUR) for health insurance per month in the universal insurance system. If you make higher salaries then you won't be affected.

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

#302

Post by aembleton »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #31
driton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to the solar companies in Germany?

We spent a lot of money on solar, lots of German companies started to fill the demand, the Chinese came in and dumped prices, Germany decided not to import-tax -> lots of German tax payer money spent on installing solar power, but all the German solar companies were priced out of the market by Chinese companies. Basically, Germany built Chinas solar industry, let our own die.

Import taxes are decided by the EU, so it wouldn't have been simple for Germany to quickly react.

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

#303

Post by nbevans »

nbevans wrote: post #293
fundatus wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's now two things to care of. Which will diverge eventually, even if only ever so slightly. If not, what's the point of the whole exercise? It just adds additional friction. Whereas when you set out your supply chains within the EU single market you don't have to deal with that.

That's your take. Business' take is that they are more than willing to invest the time to find nuanced subtle differences between countries regulatory environments so that they can exploit them for monetary gain. The UK REACH and EU REACH regulations apply to production process - not to the finished exportable product. Hence TSMC in this case would only need to implement REACH within the country it has chosen as its…

> "Given that the UK decided not to make itself subject to REACH, that presumably means it wants to diverge, which introduces uncertainty. Now, it's _possible_ that having its own copy of REACH was just political posturing (if you're taking the cynical approach, you might assume that this is even likely), but I can't imagine anyone would want to depend on that."

There is no difference to TSMC. The UK "diverging" i.e. making changes to its UK REACH regulations, versus the EU making changes to its EU REACH regulations. To TSMC these events would be one and the same. Uncertainty exists at all times. Business recognises this and, like the Internet, routes around it when possible or otherwise just absorbs it and gets on with business.

The UK copy-pasting EU REACH into UK REACH was /obviously/ done for business stability and environmental reasons and because generally it was just the right thing to do. Painting it as "political posturing" is certainly a highly cynical even hyperbolic interpretation.

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

#304

Post by rsynnott »

samus wrote: post #286
bildung wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already quite a few plants (Globalfoundries, Bosch, Infineon, TI, Osram, ...) so the qualified work force is there. Germany is also pretty heavy on high tech production, so there's a big existing supplier network. Key suppliers like ASML are nearby (Both the Netherlands and Germany are part of the Schengen Agreement, so logistics-wise almost as open as cross-state transports within the US).

Minor nitpick: Schengen does not matter, membership in the customs union does. For shipping, availability and quality of infrastructure is more important.

Schengen and in the customs union is still a little better than non-Schengen and in the customs union (eg Ireland), but yeah, the customs union is the main thing.

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

#305

Post by bpodgursky »

nicbou wrote: post #191
ahartmetz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not, and that's perfectly fine from a societal standpoint, but people who are worried about working 22% fewer hours and are fine getting a "decent" salary are not the engineers you want to hire when trying to bootstrap a new enterprise.

They can run your company steady-state, but they are not going to build anything internationally competitive.

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

#306

Post by stingraycharles »

suction wrote: post #71
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.

Might be true, but in Germany, the salary you pay to your employee is also about 1% of all the labor cost for him or her. Which is hyperbole, of course, but Germany is one of those countries where the actual net payout is usually significantly less than 50% of the salary the company provides. I'm not criticising it as I think Germany is a good example of a well-working system but net salaries are low for most.

Which other European country would you suggest? I mean, if ASML can thrive in The Netherlands, surely Germany must be fine for TSMC?

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

#307

Post by stingraycharles »

_ph_ wrote: post #246
reader_mode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Germany really stable considering Tesla story ? Chip making isn't clean by any standard.

The Tesla story is widely exaggerated. So far they have gotten basically every approval they asked for quite quickly. Local politics is quite supportive of the project, because it brings a lot of jobs in an industrial-weak region. It is also not clear that the project has actually suffered any significant delays beyond some of the time plans being overly optimistic. There has been some attempts to block this project…

> There has been some attempts to block this project from some environmental groups and some groups posing as environmental, but their their injunctions have been quickly cast away by the courts.

Tangent: how can environmental groups be against an electric car manufacturer? You would think they’re somewhat fighting the same fight?

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

#308

Post by adwn »

artemonster wrote: post #251
adwn wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the very idea of simulating circuits is a mine field of patents and you'd be sued out of existence. Doesn't that apply to basically every kind of software? How's it different for HDL simulation software?

the point is that for FOSS there was an active movement that forced IBM and old megacorps to forfeit such "nonsense" patents. So if you roll out a brand new c++ compiler you may have some buffs with intel if you try to go to their turf about some propreitary x64 specific optimizations, but, say, IBM wouldnt sue you because you dared to create "a program/method of transforming source code into machine code" that viola…

I get that, but you wrote:

> the very idea of simulating circuits is a mine field of patents and you'd be sued out of existence

Do you think a startup selling a new HDL simulator is any more at risk of getting sued than any other software-based startup?

Not trying to be combative, I'm genuinely curious.

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

#309

Post by delfinom »

j_walter wrote: post #295
rurban wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have enough water anymore in Dresden

Didn't stop Intel or TSMC from building in Phoenix...where there is literally no water and they are having one of the worst droughts ever.

They'll just get a government bailout so it's no real problem. We are big on corporate socialism

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

#310

Post by artemonster »

adwn wrote: post #308
artemonster wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point is that for FOSS there was an active movement that forced IBM and old megacorps to forfeit such "nonsense" patents. So if you roll out a brand new c++ compiler you may have some buffs with intel if you try to go to their turf about some propreitary x64 specific optimizations, but, say, IBM wouldnt sue you because you dared to create "a program/method of transforming source code into machine code" that viola…

I get that, but you wrote: > the very idea of simulating circuits is a mine field of patents and you'd be sued out of existence Do you think a startup selling a new HDL simulator is any more at risk of getting sued than any other software-based startup? Not trying to be combative, I'm genuinely curious.

Yes. Happened twice? already
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