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ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

reuters.com

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Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#101

Post by throwawaylinux »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #32
throwawaylinux wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well EUV alone cost many billions of dollars to develop. It's also not clear that China is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight.

They don’t have to lead though, just fast follow. Many companies were hit by digital trade secret theft that was sent to China, so they are more than capable of bypassing the billions of R&D by getting access to the designs and going from there with government backing.

That's true. And things will shift somewhat in that China will be less dependent on other countries for silicon for their economic and military security (most of which don't require cutting edge process). It's not going to happen by spending "millions" though, that will happen by continuing to aggressively follow.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#102

Post by [deleted] »

kragen wrote: post #55
throwawaylinux wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well EUV alone cost many billions of dollars to develop. It's also not clear that China is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight.

This smear could not be further from the truth. China has singlehandedly (to the extent that a billion people can be considered a "single hand") dropped the cost of solar energy from five times as expensive as fossil fuels to half as expensive as fossil fuels in only ten years, an innovation that will probably stop global warming and usher in an unprecedented age of energy abundance starting about eight years from no…

[deleted]

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#103

Post by Pietertje »

chongli wrote: post #72
hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

The hard part is what to do with 90s-era tech when times are good? Nobody’s buying that old stuff (hobbyists aside). So then you just run these plants at a loss? I’d hate to be an engineer at one of those places. Seems like very soul-crushing work.

Well, that tech is still being used heavily for a lot of chips. Companies like NXP still have fabs of 90s tech running smoothly. Only the high-end chips need new tech. Also, equipment from that era is still in high demand on the second hand market (especially now...).

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#104

Post by Animats »

celtain wrote: post #100
chongli wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part is what to do with 90s-era tech when times are good? Nobody’s buying that old stuff (hobbyists aside). So then you just run these plants at a loss? I’d hate to be an engineer at one of those places. Seems like very soul-crushing work.

Perhaps students could use or even operate them. Undergraduate level electrical engineers would love to have access to a fab, even one a couple decades behind cutting edge.

Stanford had that. In the 1980s, Stanford built a state of the art fab on campus. And, through 2014, they had a 1980s state of the art fab.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#105

Post by unethical_ban »

whatshisface wrote: post #65
hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

I think you're leaving a few things off the list. Gasoline, steel, machine shops, chemical plants... by the time you added everything that could lead to crisis if it ran out or stopped working you'd be a proponent of the Juche Idea. ;)

Earlier today I was thinking about this positively. None of my ideas are original, but some anti-corporatism thought struck a chord today. Why do we rely on dictatorships and unstable countries for critical infrastructure? Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here? It isn't "markets" that are wrong altogether, but there is something destabilizing and unethical about shipping a neighbor's job away to a slave to save a penny for the stockholder.

Supply chains and globalization should be very much rethought in this century.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#106

Post by unethical_ban »

chongli wrote: post #72
hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

The hard part is what to do with 90s-era tech when times are good? Nobody’s buying that old stuff (hobbyists aside). So then you just run these plants at a loss? I’d hate to be an engineer at one of those places. Seems like very soul-crushing work.

In America, we have a gigantic public works program known as the US Military, with guaranteed work, free college, public health insurance and a pension if you stay in long enough.

Why not do it for just about every critical part of life? Why only do it for the "being ready to kill adversaries" subset?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#107

Post by jeswin »

hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

Or at the very least, have the entire supply chain set up within democracies. With redundancy.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#108

Post by jhugo »

unethical_ban wrote: post #105
whatshisface wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're leaving a few things off the list. Gasoline, steel, machine shops, chemical plants... by the time you added everything that could lead to crisis if it ran out or stopped working you'd be a proponent of the Juche Idea. ;)

Earlier today I was thinking about this positively. None of my ideas are original, but some anti-corporatism thought struck a chord today. Why do we rely on dictatorships and unstable countries for critical infrastructure? Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here? It isn't "markets" that are wrong altogether, but there is something destabilizing and unethical about…

> Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here?

Calling it slave labour is a great sound bite but glosses over the wide variety in working conditions "overseas", and the fact that trade has vastly improved conditions in many such "overseas" countries.

I have broadly the opposite view about supply chains and globalisation; the inter-reliance of countries and the trade in labour/goods/services leads to diplomacy, negotiation, communication, better understanding and ultimately a safer, better world. History has demonstrated this consistently if you take a long view.

The direction of "make everything in your own country, rely on no other country for anything" is the opposite to all of the above: less need for diplomacy, less leverage in negotiation, less communication, less understanding. That's a sad direction for the world to move in.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#109

Post by PKop »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #60
lotsofpulp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason to assume the ability to ramp up in WW2 has any bearing on the ability to ramp up an operation like ASML today? You cannot just throw any bodies at a problem like creating ASML. You have to throw very specific bodies with each one having at least a decade or more of very specific expertise (it seems like, based on the comments and articles I have read). That is just ASML, not even getting into the d…

Manhattan Project? That wasn't a "just throw bodies at it" either...

Do we have the same quality of human resources we had then?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#110

Post by jhugo »

jeswin wrote: post #107
hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

Or at the very least, have the entire supply chain set up within democracies. With redundancy.

Then you have to start to define what a democracy is, or at least what kind of democracy you are happy with. The current approach (of companies having specific requirements for their supply chain regarding labour practices etc) seems better than that.
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