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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

#181

Post by sveme »

grlass wrote: post #27
ipnon wrote: post #5

TSMC is really the keystone for everything else done that ends up getting talked about on this website. They are constantly at the bleeding edge of computer manufacture and pushing it further still. We should feel some sense of amazement to be alive still in the middle of the computer revolution.

Not to mention the people who design many of the machines that TSMC use in their plants: ASML. "The mirrors guiding this light, made of sandwiched layers of silicon and molybdenum, are ground so precisely that, if scaled to the size of Germany, they would have no bumps bigger than a millimetre" https://www.economist.com/business/2020/02/29/how-asml-becam... >

Those mirrors (like all of ASML's optics) are actually developed and made by Carl Zeiss. And the lasers come from Trumpf.

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

#182

Post by bluGill »

ChemSpider wrote: post #36
alexanderklein wrote: post #2

If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.

Germany is a great place to invest. So is most of Western Europe. The #1 thing you are looking for is _stability_ and a good engineering job market. Both is available. For this kind of automated high-tech manufacturing, nobody cares about salaries. They are <<1% of the cost.

Even if you care about salaries, German engineers are cheap. If you are looking for the best engineers they are as cheap as India (India has a lot more bad engineers for cheap, but they have plenty of good ones that demand and get a good salary).

The real downside of Germany is lead Engineer is a non-union position so you end up with the majority of your engineers refusing to lead the project (despite the higher salaries, the union benefits are considered worth it - as an outsider I don't know what these are). Thus you end up with a lot of great mid-level engineers who try to stick to their own area of expertise instead of growing to make a better whole.

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

#183

Post by sveme »

alexanderklein wrote: post #2

If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.

Aah, the self-deprecating German, so common it's almost a meme now.

Remember, grass is always greener on the other side.

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

#184

Post by nicbou »

suction wrote: post #71
ChemSpider wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is a great place to invest. So is most of Western Europe. The #1 thing you are looking for is _stability_ and a good engineering job market. Both is available. For this kind of automated high-tech manufacturing, nobody cares about salaries. They are <<1% of the cost.

Might be true, but in Germany, the salary you pay to your employee is also about 1% of all the labor cost for him or her. Which is hyperbole, of course, but Germany is one of those countries where the actual net payout is usually significantly less than 50% of the salary the company provides. I'm not criticising it as I think Germany is a good example of a well-working system but net salaries are low for most.

Eh the salaries are alright. It seems to me like the salaries are higher in America, while in Germany they're lower but include things American end up paying for: pensions, insurance, and education.

If I were American, a part of my net income would still end up going to health insurance, student loans and other things. My employer might pay less benefits, but pay a higher salary to compensate for those costs.

I think that a direct comparison is very difficult in that regard. That doesn't even include different expectations regarding work life balance, and legal requirements regarding parental leave and sick leave.

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

#185

Post by nicbou »

carlos22 wrote: post #177
corty wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But I think all the politicians Tesla could have bought are already owned by their German competitors.

Oh thats so not true. The Brandenburg (the state) Ministerpräsident (like Gouverneur) and his team really like to be a big car producing Bundesland. We have Baden-Württemberg (Mercedes, Porsche), Bayern (BMW, Audi) and Niedersachen (VW HQ) and to some extend also NRW (biggest EU plant of Ford) and Sachsen (VW plant). But there is not a single plant Brandenburg. So to be in the game is something they really wanna happ…

Yes, and I remember that the people watched the project with a skeptic eye. It was neither pessimistic nor optimistic, just cautious. It's just an impression though.

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

#187

Post by randyb27 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #99
nbevans wrote: post #57

I find it surprising that they are choosing Germany - after everybody is seeing what Germany is doing to Tesla's Gigafactory there (embroiling it in so much red tape that Elon wishes he could pull out if it weren't for sunk cost). It seems that Germany has a very good ability to convince and lobby these mega-manufacturers to base themselves there, but a very poor ability to actually let them succeed after making that…

The uk is horrible political mess at the moment. God knows if we'll be able to import or export anything or keep the lights on next week. Not a great place to put a billion dollar global supply investment.

Chicken licken?

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

#188

Post by jcfrei »

suction wrote: post #71
ChemSpider wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is a great place to invest. So is most of Western Europe. The #1 thing you are looking for is _stability_ and a good engineering job market. Both is available. For this kind of automated high-tech manufacturing, nobody cares about salaries. They are <<1% of the cost.

Might be true, but in Germany, the salary you pay to your employee is also about 1% of all the labor cost for him or her. Which is hyperbole, of course, but Germany is one of those countries where the actual net payout is usually significantly less than 50% of the salary the company provides. I'm not criticising it as I think Germany is a good example of a well-working system but net salaries are low for most.

A well-working system? Germany only has an income tax but no wealth tax, unsurprisingly there's a huge inequality in wealth. If you earn your living in Germany through work you are basically a sucker: You have to hand on average 38.9% to the state. Taxation on capital gains, interest and dividends is 25%. This difference is compounding every year so the net effect over a lifetime is huge.

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

#189

Post by selimthegrim »

bschne wrote: post #41
grlass wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the people who design many of the machines that TSMC use in their plants: ASML. "The mirrors guiding this light, made of sandwiched layers of silicon and molybdenum, are ground so precisely that, if scaled to the size of Germany, they would have no bumps bigger than a millimetre" https://www.economist.com/business/2020/02/29/how-asml-becam... >

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…

Simon Winchester's book "The Perfectionists" [1] is a good popular level intro to Maudsley, Whitworth et al.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Exactly-Precision-Engineers-Created-M...

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

#190

Post by sveme »

volta83 wrote: post #97
martin_a wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German myself: Why would you not invest? Infrastructure, state of mind? I'd really love to see more high-tech companies invest here, after we've managed to kill the solar companies... :-/

Top technical talent scarcity and cost. In Silicon Valley, you can find a dozen 600k$ engineers relatively quickly to scale up a random startup. In Germany... the salaries these people would be making would be This disparity in the valuation of top engineers cause many to emigrate, and once you are in the US, it is impossible to financially justify taking a 5x pay cut to go back to Germany. (You can justify it "non-f…

So you're living in SV now?
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