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TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

asia.nikkei.com

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is necessary to grind in a random fashion (OP is talking about the method of grinding, not the order), or you will end up with imperfections. Lots of info about this if you look in to grinding mirrors for telescopes. Also, the order being random wouldn't effect the end result.

If it's a machine doing the grinding, what is the source of randomness?

input

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please provide a source for this, then.

ed- One thing is organising contracts in a certain way another thing entirely is setting in place an export ban - which, you may recall, is exactly what the EU DID threaten to do when the Dutch-run AZ plants failed to produce what they planned to do, despite the UK funding it to the tune of something like £54M to get production going, which the Dutch government outright refused to do.

Again, because this crops up a lot - I am in no way a flag-waving brexiteer - but i am thoroughly fed up with the shit-eating grinning from people with axes to grind. The UK has a lot to feel ashamed for over recent years, but this is not one of them.

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

#273
post #41
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…

You mention it already - bootstrapping. Always optimising, always correcting for yet another flaw in materials, processing, environmental conditions, quality control and usage procedures. Usually, it is helpful that there are multiple ways to do a particular thing that can be used to calibrate each other. Also, there are physical processes that can produce high-quality surface finishes that can be used for calibration tasks, for example by splitting crystals. The resulting shapes are dependent on the crystal lattice, and improvements in material purity reduce any irregularities.

A more general approach is to understand measurement as a process where a minute signal has to be amplified to be more easily evaluated. There are many such methods.

In the case of surface metrology, Coherence scanning interferometry is such a method which uses the properties of interfering light waves to directly visualize surface anomalies as bands of lights. Another, more direct method is to drag a stylus across the surface and to amplify variations in position. Sort of like a turntable does.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

@detritus To quote Matt Hancock directly:

"I wasn't going to settle for a contract that allowed the Oxford vaccine to be delivered to others around the world before us. I was insisting we could keep all of the British public safe as my primary responsibility as the Health Secretary."

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is necessary to grind in a random fashion (OP is talking about the method of grinding, not the order), or you will end up with imperfections. Lots of info about this if you look in to grinding mirrors for telescopes. Also, the order being random wouldn't effect the end result.

If it's a machine doing the grinding, what is the source of randomness?

function setPostion(float x=random(), float y=random()){}

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

#276

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…

The last European war was over 70 years ago and today it is one of if not the most stable regions in the world. The idea that they are doom spiralling into authoritarianism is a conspiracy theory that is easy to dismiss.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

@detritus To quote Matt Hancock directly: "I wasn't going to settle for a contract that allowed the Oxford vaccine to be delivered to others around the world before us. I was insisting we could keep all of the British public safe as my primary responsibility as the Health Secretary."

So, not an Export Ban. Gotcha. Thanks.

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take three somewhat flat stones to start out. Alternate rubbing the surfaces together in a random fashion. As you continue the high spots of the stones will be ground down and the surfaces will become flatter and flatter. In the end you can get very precise flat surfaces. Two stones is not enough, you can then end up with two spherical surfaces. With three this isn't possible (imagine two of them are convex, when you…

Obligatory machine thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 Altough, I disagree with the "random fashion". Alternating the pairs AB -> BC -> CA seems more logical to me.

or a long-form textbook on the foundations of mechanical accuracy. Someone linked to this a year ago and I found it a fascinating deep dive:

https://pearl-hifi.com/06_Lit_Archive/15_Mfrs_Publications/M...

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Backdoor Roth?

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@detritus To quote Matt Hancock directly: "I wasn't going to settle for a contract that allowed the Oxford vaccine to be delivered to others around the world before us. I was insisting we could keep all of the British public safe as my primary responsibility as the Health Secretary."

So, not an Export Ban. Gotcha. Thanks.

lmao, how is that not an export ban in all but name. AZ literally wasn't allowed to export vaccines from Oxford/Keele until the quota set in the contracts was reached.
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