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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

#401

Post by blibble »

LatteLazy wrote: post #384
blibble wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you even live in the UK? the political deadlock was completely resolved after the 2019 election... now the government has a huge majority and is rock solid politically (as is normally the case) other than some toilet roll shortages in March last year, there have been no visible issues whatsoever

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19450687.brexit-scottish-c... Plus lorry drivers. And hospitality jobs. And god knows what else. And we're in the middle of pulling out of the deal we signed, because no one read the Northern Ireland section. Or they did and lied and now they're pretending otherwise. We can have all the elections we want, and you're right that Bojo has a solid majority. But that majority does nothing…

I don't think The National can be considered a credible source on, well, anything really (the Daily Mail is less biased)

in their picture there's... apparently been a run on weetabix, but then the picture below shows fully stocked shelves of fruit and vegetables?

honestly, I don't know why I've even bothered responding

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

#402

Post by corty »

baybal2 wrote: post #151
moooo99 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Big pockets" isn't really true in this aspect. Part of the problem with the automotive chip crisis is that car companies are stingy customers and treat their suppliers badly, with insane contracts. So when production was stopped, they cancelled orders. When they restarted production, not having any stock, suppliers gave them the middle finger because they had other less stingy customers to serve.

Automotive is influential, but all their suppliers hate them with a passion.

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

#403

Post by Robotbeat »

throw0101a wrote: post #225
bschne wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely naive question, but I always wonder how you can "bootstrap" this kind of precision — intuitively for something to be this precise, the tools and equipment that "create" it should also have to be more or less equally precise. Or is it a matter of manufacturing it, testing it, and rejecting some percentage of things that don't fit your requirements due to imprecisions? Are there any good background resources…

> Are there any good background resources on how some of these things are done? For a cultural history of precision see The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectioni... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOEcyYsiHc

Yup, seconded. I was going to recommend that book.

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

#404

Post by iancmceachern »

lordnacho wrote: post #154
artemonster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My experience in this industry is that it pays well, good benefits, but it ebbs and flows much like the defense industry with large boom times and slower times with large layoffs.

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

#405

Post by idownvoted »

zz865 wrote: post #397
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…

Any historic reason for the cluster to be in Dresden? I would have expected the most sophisticated areas to be in Western Germany area. Maybe govt encouraged development there?

There is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_300

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony

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

#406

Post by boruto »

ChemSpider wrote: post #40
gallexme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German Permits, the government is V slow. And labor is expensive. Also sounds expensive to use all the water they need, since they would need to clean it up very good and align the temperature with the rest of the attached rivers or what they use. And other climate relevant regulations.

Germany has plenty of water. Certainly more than Taiwan.

In Berlin there is water which even the city doesn't want. :))

http://allsinkscherman.blogspot.com/2013/02/berlin-water-pip...

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

#407

Post by oezi »

ulfw wrote: post #399
oezi wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. Which ... I am sorry is not "free". We can argue about it being cheap or not cheap or whatever. Sure. But I don't get why I got downvoted for pointing out that it's not free, when that's 100% true. 750EUR public (which doesn't cover everything) or depending on age anywhere from 400 to 1500EUR private isn't "free healthcare". That's on top of high taxes etc. Germany has a lot of great things. Free healthcare ain'…

I don't think anybody says it would be free (what is free except air and love anyway?). But it is universal and also available if you are not working, are unemployed or retired. If you are not earning any money, then you still receive the same level of care.

You are right that it doesn't cover everything, but in my experience these are primarily things where there is a high level of own influence or electivness (dental implants, lasik, glasses) and or cost/benefit isn't proven. Since a basic level of care is provided I don't mind that.

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

#408

Post by pasabagi »

hogFeast wrote: post #395
a254613e wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds great doesn't it? Too bad in reality with public insurance you get the basic care, while with private insurace (more equivalent to the US system) you get much more. For example you can find German news articles about how public insurance doesn't cover some tests that confirm/deny if you have some life threatning condition or not, even if you have all the symptoms and the doctors says that's the next step - whi…

And Germany is one of the countries with relatively good public coverage. I am in the UK, we don't get medicine for some things because it is too expensive: HRT has been in shortage for years, we don't get most newer cancer drugs (it is unrelated to efficacy, it is just too expensive to treat people), epilepsy drugs are the same. Because drug prices here are so low, pharmacies get drugs, and then ship them to Europe…

The UK per-capita expenditure on medicine is very low. It's also hamstrung by the choice a few years back to balkanize the NHS (stopping financially successful hospitals from subsidizing unsuccessful ones).

My feeling is the NHS is a good institution in an unfortunate political culture. The UK is an essentially conservative state (they have been the ruling party for the vast majority of the last century) which is a poor fit for a pretty radical socialist healthcare system.

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

#409

Post by apflkx »

formerly_proven wrote: post #357
apflkx wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many German companies (BMW, Siemens, Bosch, BASF, ...) historically cooperate with unions like "IG Metall". Unions win benefits for their members, but companies usually pass these benefits on to all employees. These benefits typically include: 35-hour work week, regular and performance-independent salary increases for all employees, at least 6 weeks of vacation per year, parental leave beyond the legal minimum, train…

> regular and performance-independent salary increases for all employees What country are you talking about?

Germany, if the collective agreement for the metal and electrical industry applies to you [1]:

4.3 % pay increase for all employees in 2018, 2.0 % in 2017, 2.8 % in 2016, 2.2 % in 2014, 3.4 % in 2013, etc.

In addition, there are individually agreed salary increases depending performance.

[1] https://www.igmetall.de/ueber-uns/geschichte/die-tariferfolg...

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

#410

Post by flohofwoe »

zz865 wrote: post #397
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…

Any historic reason for the cluster to be in Dresden? I would have expected the most sophisticated areas to be in Western Germany area. Maybe govt encouraged development there?

Dresden was the seat of Robotron since the late 60s, which was the biggest (and pretty much only) East German electronics company. In some ways, East Germany had built a more advanced (or let's just say "bigger") semiconductor industry than Western Germany during the 70's and 80's, because Western Germany could simply buy its chips cheap from all over the world, while the Eastern Bloc was under emgargo and had to produce their own. East Germany focused on Zilog clones, while the Soviets focused on Intel clones. After the reunification most of this industry collapsed because it wasn't internationally competitive, some niches and especially the "engineering tradition" and universities survived though. I think this planted the seed for Dresden to become a semiconductor hub again since the early 2000's, of course supported by the Saxon government (AMD building a fab there at the end of the 90's was a big deal for Saxony).
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