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South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

arstechnica.com

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Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#21

Post by gruntled-worker »

whatever1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash. I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

Chip fab locations have traditionally had more political than economic importance. Matrix multiplication chips and RAM have been the recent exception, while TSMC has long been the geopolitical exception. ASML's location only matters to the extent that it gets ordered not to sell to someone.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#22

Post by password54321 »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #12

Why humanoid? Surely there must be a superior physical form factor than one mimicking human anatomy. Is it just supposed to be more psychologically acceptable?

A lot of training data being collected is coming from people. You have companies paying people to do chores while recording themselves.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#23

Post by goretghh »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #12

Why humanoid? Surely there must be a superior physical form factor than one mimicking human anatomy. Is it just supposed to be more psychologically acceptable?

Because it's what Elon and China say that matters. There are exceptions but Korea is not the land of creativity. At all.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#24

Post by fennecbutt »

whatever1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash. I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

Memory has only really recently become lucrative. Germany still has heavy machinery, trains, drilling machines etc all of which will be needed for a long time regardless of whether the "bubble pops" or not.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#26

Post by tw04 »

fennecbutt wrote: post #24
whatever1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash. I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

Memory has only really recently become lucrative. Germany still has heavy machinery, trains, drilling machines etc all of which will be needed for a long time regardless of whether the "bubble pops" or not.

Most of those now need memory to function. At some point it becomes a national security issue.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#27

Post by woadwarrior01 »

whatever1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash. I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

The AMD spinoff GlobalFoundries has a fab in Dresden.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#28

Post by GuB-42 »

whatever1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash. I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

> I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train?

My best guess is that the connecting train was operated by the Deutsche Bahn

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#29

Post by fennecbutt »

tw04 wrote: post #26
fennecbutt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory has only really recently become lucrative. Germany still has heavy machinery, trains, drilling machines etc all of which will be needed for a long time regardless of whether the "bubble pops" or not.

Most of those now need memory to function. At some point it becomes a national security issue.

That's not really a gotcha, because my train doesn't need a TB of dram.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#30

Post by stogot »

paulmist wrote: post #16
cherryteastain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a large memory manufacturer, Infineon, who spun out their memory division as Qimonda which then went bankrupt [1]. They were the 2nd largest in the world at one time apparently. Looking back, it's easy to say the German govt should have thrown them a billion or two to keep them afloat. However, state intervention was very unpopular at the time in economic circles, and there was much furor over bailouts follo…

Even better, Qimonda was ultimately bought (alongside all their patents) by SMIC [1] who is now the Chinese memory player. For 30 million. [1] https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/chinas-cxmt-is-set-to-...

Wow, 7000 patents and all their IP and documentation
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