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Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

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Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#111

Post by sofixa »

kungito wrote: post #45
ginko wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>EU is a few decades old failed experiment Why do people say this with such conviction?

Independence is a big factor in the identity of people from Europe with many failed attempts to join into bigger states or falling apart with many people wanting even their regions of countries to split into separate countries right now. Eurosceptics often focus on one small part of being a part of EU and hate the whole idea for it. While EU gave many good things, opening up markets made many people lose jobs because…

> Independence is a big factor in the identity of people from Europe with many failed attempts to join into bigger states or falling apart with many people wanting even their regions of countries to split into separate countries right now.

The EU changes nothing regarding that, on the contrary, by being European as well as of X nationality, it helps overcome traditional national rivalries. One of the main points in recent Catalonian and Scottish independence movements has been that due to the EU, the economic and legal impact will be minimal.

> On the other hand, many people feel like their countries are constantly giving handouts to the less developed ones and feel like that money could have gone to them personally instead

And they don't realise that the improvements in neighbouring countries concern them as well, by adding extra markets and expanding them ( a better developed Romania can buy more German-made washing machines, etc.).

The cheap labor that moves is a positive contribution.

Then there's the incalculable positive from EU sponsored and made possible programmes of cultural and educational exchanges.

The worst thing about the EU is its lacking marketing. Most of the bureaucratic problems with it aren't really that far from the same thing in countries.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#112

Post by jollybean »

imtringued wrote: post #92
saveduaclick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask spaniards or italians, I know it well. Regulation and taxes have eaten up all the economic potential.

I see the exact opposite, lack of state intervention has been the biggest problem so far. Fiscal stimulus has become extremely unpopular in the last 10 years. Why is state intervention necessary? Because the private sector is too healthy, it's making profits but it isn't investing. The hornets are hibernating in the summer, you gotta poke the nest. If you cut taxes they are just going to hibernate even deeper. The ea…

Fiscal Stimulus and Strategic Investments are completely different things.

" The better answer is to let the state invest" - it's never easy.

Or rather, the 'easiest' it can be is when you have money coming out of the ground (or water) i.e. Statoil.

Airbus is a commendable success, but in a way, it's more structurally solvable: build planes, much like the other one's but better in some ways, and supply the domestic market.

The planes are not that-that hard to build, but it requires investment and very long term planning.

With chips ... which tech? Who are the customers? Where is the business going to be in 10 years? Can the EU do things to require/guarantee income for the project?

It's for the same reason the EU hasn't invested to create the next FAANG either.

That said - I'm surprised they haven't tried with some things like Netflix, AirBnB and Uber, which have tremendous individual and cultural impact and are not necessarily difficult in terms of tech.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#113

Post by azinman2 »

pydry wrote: post #95
azinman2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But China is doing things no one else is doing. Requiring a local partner, giving up your IP to them and/or “security reviews”, not letting through many companies to give their own home grown a chance (eg Facebook, Google, etc), currency controls, currency manipulation, exploiting the global postal system to facilitate being export-oriented, inaccessible courts that never punish IP theft and abuse, the list is quite…

I wouldn't count on the fairness of US courts for strategic industries. They're unlikely to rule in favor of Huawei or against Boeing.

First, Lion Air successfully sued Boeing and that’s just from recent high profile memory. I seriously doubt that legitimate lawsuits wouldn’t go through. And regardless, you’re naming two very specific entities. Good luck with any lawsuit for IP theft in China… they’ve pretty much all lost [1], and often the theft is either explicit policy for the gov or the gov itself providing the hacking and supplying their industries for the data. Further keep in mind China is a place where the conviction rate was 99.965% in 2019 and 99.969% in 2018. This is not exactly where you ever want to end up in court.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-us-china-trad...

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#114

Post by redis_mlc »

arp242 wrote: post #85
saveduaclick wrote: post #27

The intersection between bold entrepreneurship and european social-market political environment is zero.

This can easily be disproven by the fact that I am 1) an entrepreneur, and 2) European. Either I am a highly unusual statistical fluke, or your comment is bollocks.

Or you call yourself an entrepreneur, but you're really a failure.

Yet another reason to block European IP addresses on HN - they have no useful contribution.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#116

Post by nine_k »

jollybean wrote: post #102
nine_k wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, they are playing the Mercantilist card which Britain played about four centuries ago, and US, a couple of centuries ago. International free trade is profitable in the long term if everybody is buying your goods, which was the case for the US and UK a century ago. China is using the resulting situation to its great benefit.

Germany is trying to do the mercantilism thing as well. I think the fundamental differentiation is the degree of state involvement, Han nationalism etc.. I don't want to use this word because it's a trigger and possibly misleading but 'Fascist' might actually be the best word to describe what China is right now. The economy is not centrally planned, but managed in coordination with major actors who often seem to want…

One thing I plan to do is to read "The doctrine of fascism" and compare it to the Lee Kuan Yew book about the building of Singapore, and with some good accounts of China's current policies. There must be a number of parallels, but also divergences.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#117

Post by greatgib »

To be noted, "EU industry chief Thierry Breton" being the former ceo of Atos, a big consulting (and not industry) firm; their solution will be, as always, to poor even more subvention money at useless big player and consulting firms.

And this will lead us to nowhere in term of chipmaking glory, but increase the huge pile of wasted money.

Even if we don't speak too much about it, but a lot of French and European money has already been distributed like that for the "cloud" and "virtualization" things, and so far it was completely wasted without any useful outcome.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#118

Post by bsder »

nine_k wrote: post #101
lnsru wrote: post #3

Will I get lots of rotten tomatoes telling, that this is a huge waste of money? Chips production is one thing, but the whole ecosystem matters. So these chips produced in Europe must be sent back to Asia for integration in final products. Or a miracle will happen and European Union will resurrect manufacturing? I doubt, because manufacturing means missing climate goals.

The funny thing is that the key machines to produce chips are built in Germany and Netherlands. Not in Korea, not on Taiwan. The robots that assemble the electronic circuits are also largely built in EU. (And, of course, in Japan, too.) What made Apple to order their iPhone production from a Chinese company was not the availability of relevant hardware elsewhere; certainly the US has it. It was the nimbleness of that…

> What made Apple to order their iPhone production from a Chinese company was not the availability of relevant hardware elsewhere; certainly the US has it.

Um, the CNC machines that iPhone production uses are actually made in the US and shipped to China because the Chinese CNC machines can't handle the tolerance.

So, why is Apple shipping it there then?

Cheap labor is the answer.

And, why is Apple starting to ship production away from China?

Cheap labor is still the answer.

As we found out, the supply chains in China weren't that robust. You can put them wherever without a lot of problem and they take about 12 months to come up to speed. That's not very long at all in the manufacturing world.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#119

Post by Dah00n »

azinman2 wrote: post #113
pydry wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't count on the fairness of US courts for strategic industries. They're unlikely to rule in favor of Huawei or against Boeing.

First, Lion Air successfully sued Boeing and that’s just from recent high profile memory. I seriously doubt that legitimate lawsuits wouldn’t go through. And regardless, you’re naming two very specific entities. Good luck with any lawsuit for IP theft in China… they’ve pretty much all lost [1], and often the theft is either explicit policy for the gov or the gov itself providing the hacking and supplying their indust…

Is that Chinese IP law being broken or US IP law? I don't know how Chinese IP laws work but of course Chinese should follow Chinese law and Americans American law. Anything else is completely irrelevant.

About Huawei: Getting a fair trial is impossible. The evidence is mostly "three letter agency said so". The US justice system is not going to let Huawei be Innocent until proven guilty. It's not even about courts but straight to Guilty as proven by politics. Cisco is at least as big a danger in any system but they aren't Chinese so that's a different matter. (Look at the massive amount of "accidental backdoors" Cisco keeps churning out for a great example of real danger to network security.)

If you believe hacking is one sided or lopsided I would recommend you read some books about the topic. There are some pretty good ones from former NSA people for example. The fact is the US is by far the one who does the most hacking. No-one should be in doubt of that and I don't think anyone are after Snowden. You just seem to believe that "your" hacking is more okay than theirs. It really isn't. Besides, the NSA and CIA steals trade secrets and IP too as whistleblowers have stated multiple times.

Re: Europe Is Trying to Reclaim Its Lost Chipmaking Glory

#120

Post by raphaelj »

lnsru wrote: post #19
chrisseaton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of minor manufacturing Europe is the second largest manufacturer of cars for example. And half the world's planes are made here. That's not minor. > plus a lot of assembly Right... assembling chips into things for example. Wasn't that the point? The chips don't need to be sent to Asia in order to put them in products.

Well I have car made in Germany, I don’t own a plane. But most of my possessions are manufactured in Asia. 2 Philips displays are made in China as the label on the back says. Apple phones too. Computers in China and Taiwan.

Assembled in China would be more accurate.

Modern supply chains are really complex. Your laptop might uses chips manufactured in Taiwan by Dutch lithography machines, have a screen build in South Korea using German automation devices, run on software made in the USA, all shipped on a Japanese-build vessel.

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