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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

#261

Post by cma »

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... >

Don't forget DARPA, DoE, and US semiconductor industry funding EUV LLC in the 90s:

https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/1997/CN0911...

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

#262

Post by volta83 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #176
ahartmetz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about not coming back is probably true (30% the salary?!), but yeah, not many leave in the first place.

Adding to that, is there any general reason for a German, besides money, to go to the US? So if the ones that go mostly do it for the money, they'll most likely stay gone.

Personal development.

Working with people that are much smarter than you generally makes you better at your work.

So from that point of view, going to the places where the concentration of super smart people is the "highest" makes sense.

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

#263

Post by selimthegrim »

selimthegrim wrote: post #189
bschne wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

NB: I guess he changed the title to Exactly for the paperback release.

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

#264

Post by nkmnz »

Max-20 wrote: post #106
nkmnz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got it wrong. The policies that heavily subsidized the solar industry were written by Merkel when she was the Minister for the Environmental Affairs in the 90s, but put in place by Minister Trittin from the Green Party after the '98 elections. The death of the German Solar industry was the result of KEEPING those subsidies TOO HIGH FOR TOO LONG. If the government makes sure that the demand is increasing at a very…

Thats sadly wrong, Chinas solar industry was heavily subsidized by the state to purposely crash the market prices of panels and ruin the solar industry of western countries. Once they succeeded they raised prices again to make profit.

So Chinese subsidies are “purposely crashing the market”, while German subsidies are... what exactly? Well, they did not crash the market, but they crush innovation and competitiveness, while China improved.

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

#265

Post by varispeed »

From a security point of view, it's interesting that they don't look to build a fab in the UK. Given that the Europe used to be an arena of devastating conflicts - with things like completely levelled down cities, to murders on an industrial scale, the long term investment like this may be subject to a lot of uncertainty as the EU moves closer towards being an authoritarian regime, this may wake up internal conflicts that are deeply embedded in some of the nations.

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

#266

Post by volta83 »

raverbashing wrote: post #158
volta83 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying somebody 300k/year doesn't make them "top talent". The top talent is in the US, Taiwan, etc. designing the 3nm plants, operating the 5nm plants, doing research, etc. Why would a 600k$/year engineer relocate from the US to Germany for a 300k$ salary pay cut ? I've always made more money at my next job than the previous one. If a company wants me to leave my life here behind and move 15000km, they better offer m…

Do you think they're not paying any tax in the US? That 600k gross is at most 500k net (probably less) Also you assume they are a) happy to stay in the US b) have no immigration issues to deal with c) don't have a crazy CoL on SV that eats most of that 500k... Yes, it's not a clear-cut move, but not too bad neither. Salary is not everything.

When you are making 600k$ a big part of your compensation is stocks.

There are lots of ways to pay fewer taxes in the US when holding stocks. Plus you have 401k, backdoor Roth, etc. retirement saving plans that are non-existent in Germany.

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

#267

Post by totalZero »

mrlonglong wrote: post #227

I'm not sure why they didn't consider the UK, plenty of high tech here and the Russians won't find us a walk over if they ever do come.

I think there are some obvious trade barriers that the British imposed upon themselves.

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

#268

Post by rurban »

fxtentacle wrote: post #45

If you consider GlobalFoundries to be a valid competitor, then that move would make a lot of sense. Infineon and AMD used to do a lot of research and production in Dresden. The AMD fab has since become a part of GlobalFoundries. But there's still a healthy ecosystem of university research and medium-sized software companies. Or at least there was, when I visited GlobalFoundries in 2014. Also, there has been a growing…

We don't have enough water anymore in Dresden

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

#269

Post by nbevans »

rsynnott wrote: post #164
nbevans wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one (apart from Brexiters) cares that much about tariffs. EU tariffs are some of the lowest in the world - the average applied tariff for imports into the EU in 2019 was just 1.88%. Compare that to 6% for India or 13% for the US." Bizarre comment. You initiated it by suggesting the UK has erected "giant trade barriers" but then reply saying nobody cares about trade tariffs? And then immediately in the second sent…

As mentioned elsewhere, the tariff aren't the issue for most industries; non-tariff barriers are. I would think the UK's plan for a sort of parallel REACH regulation (REACH is the EU's chemical regulation) after the transition period ends would be particularly burdensome for the semiconductor industry.

Two questions:

Why would copy-pasted (from EU REACH) "UK REACH" regulations present more of a burden to the semiconductor industry than EU REACH?

What NTBs exist that are known to affect the semiconductor industry?

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

#270

Post by fundatus »

detritus wrote: post #249
fundatus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point around export restrictions was in reference to the EU blocking vaccine exports this year because it suited them. LMAO The EU blocks ONE vaccine shipment - while the UK and the US had export bans in place for months and now the EU is the bad guy. smh

The UK did NOT have vaccine export bans in place. Why is this a recurring meme on HN? Or, more pointedly - why are some people so eager to gleefully regurgitate such misinformation?

It's not misinformation at all.

The UK was just clever enough to hide the export ban in their contracts with AZ (unlike the US which did it more bluntly). The first xx million doses of vaccines manufactured in Oxford/Keele had to be supplied to the UK. Which is an export ban in all but name. But it gave the UK government the opportunity to claim that there was no export ban in place (even though nothing was exported for months).

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