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TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

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Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#101

Post by Vespasian »

Dalewyn wrote: post #85
crote wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the issue, isn't it? The Chips Act was marketed as an attempt to bring back "cutting-edge chips" to Europe, and to promote research and innovation. In the end it turns out to just be a huge government subsidy for a bog-standard fab which is at least a decade behind what TSMC is building in Taiwan. Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines, but pretty pointless when it com…

>The Chips Act was marketed as an attempt to bring back "cutting-edge chips" to Europe, You'll have to excuse me if I'm being daft, but I assume this is not the CHIPS Act we have here in the US? I'm aware Europe's trying (or has done) something similar, but if it's called the Chips Act this is the first time I've heard of it that way.

It is indeed called that https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#103

Post by myrmidon »

Lionga wrote: post #61
junon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines That's great news for Germany then.

If they want to produce more ICE cars for the next decades yes.

No. Its irrelevant if you produce electric or combustion vehicles (or even household electronics in general): The biggest demand is for chips on an efficient (read: older) process.

You are not going to use some 3nm EUV boondoggle process just to pump out voltage regulators or sub-100MHz microcontrollers, but you need tons of those for pretty much every application.

Sure there might be four or five CPUs on a modern process in a modern car, but there are COUNTLESS simpler/slower/cheaper chips required that are made on an older process and this is not gonna change anytime soon.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#104

Post by mensetmanusman »

sirius87 wrote: post #3

Wonder if the Taiwanese govt at some point will step in and block these onshoring measures as a matter of national security. If countries are less reliant on manufacturing within Taiwan, its one less reason to stand up to Beijing's one China principle.

Onshoring is impossible for most countries. TSMC had an annual capital budget of >$50B, there are only like 30 countries with >$100B in total government revenue:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governm...

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#105

Post by christkv »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #94
mytailorisrich wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what the US tell NL to do, as we've seen before.

These days are over - they ended with the war in Iraq. In the 80s the US said "Jump!" and western Europe asked "How high?".

Europe is still doing it, and when they don’t the us applies pressure through its closest European Allies. The us is very much still involved in classic Cold War stuff in Europe. The Ukrainian war has been very good to American exports of arms and liquid gas.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#106

Post by bluecalm »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #104
sirius87 wrote: post #3

Wonder if the Taiwanese govt at some point will step in and block these onshoring measures as a matter of national security. If countries are less reliant on manufacturing within Taiwan, its one less reason to stand up to Beijing's one China principle.

Onshoring is impossible for most countries. TSMC had an annual capital budget of >$50B, there are only like 30 countries with >$100B in total government revenue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governm...

But only like 5 countries matter for Taiwan national security and those have the budget.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#107

Post by nolist_policy »

Lionga wrote: post #61
junon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines That's great news for Germany then.

If they want to produce more ICE cars for the next decades yes.

If anything, BEVs have even more older processes built in for high-power dc-dc conversion, motor driving, battery management etc.

Less gigahertz and gigaflop, more kilovolt and kiloampere.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#108

Post by bluGill »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #91
NKosmatos wrote: post #82

“…begin construction of the fab in the second half of 2024 with production targeted to begin by the end of 2027”. It’s good to see new fabs in Europe, but I think it’s a bit late and with “old” technology. On the other hand there are many other areas in need of chips that will benefit from this in the coming years.

Modern is better, but many industries are fine with "old" technology. As the pandemic showed, the problem (for industry and mass market consumer electronics) was not Intel/AMD/Nvidia high end chips but chips for washing maschines (had to wait 7 (!) months for a dishwasher b/c Miele had no chips) and cars.

Is modern really better? If you are waiting on a compile, or running the latest game or - other performance critical task of course it is. However for embedded systems older processes are likely to result in chips that operate longer under harsh conditions and so may be better. It depends on the application.

I know where I work we have customers that run our products at -70C and +50C, we can't run a lot of modern chips because they fail our tests at those operating temperatures.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#109

Post by michaelt »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #94
mytailorisrich wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what the US tell NL to do, as we've seen before.

These days are over - they ended with the war in Iraq. In the 80s the US said "Jump!" and western Europe asked "How high?".

Well, to an extent.

But as we saw with the Evo Morales grounding incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident there's still a certain amount of jumping.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#110

Post by throw0101b »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #94
mytailorisrich wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what the US tell NL to do, as we've seen before.

These days are over - they ended with the war in Iraq. In the 80s the US said "Jump!" and western Europe asked "How high?".

ASML has suppliers in the US, so if the US does not like what ASML/NL are doing they could block exports of certain components to certain destinations.

Also remember that a lot (all?) of the circuit design software is US-based, so the supply chain could be squeezed from that direction as well.

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