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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

#351
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... >

Looks like countries are the intuitive units to capture deviations at this level of scale. From NASA's web page about the mirrors in the James Webb telescope [0]: "That means if the continental United States was polished smooth to the same tolerances, the entire country – from Maine to California – would not vary in thickness by just over two inches!" Given the US is roughly 27 times the area of Germany, looks like s…

Hm, I think the magnitude in the z direction would scale with the magnitude in the x direction or the y direction, rather than with the area (x*y), right?

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you think that Germany has a lot of good and cheap engineers? I think the biggest problem that low salaries are causing there is that people with some(5+ years) experience are moving either to Switzerland/US or to freelance for Switzerland/US companies. So, there's big deficit of experienced engineers. German companies are trying to solve it by inviting Eastern European/Indian/Asian workers, that are cheaper, but…

As I said, the union has enough benefits that the value of higher salary positions isn't worth it to many. In the union you are not allowed to work more than 36 hours a week (I might have the numbers off a bit?) and they check to ensure that. Non-union can work longer hours, in practice they don't, but they are allowed to. There are a number of other things like that, the one lead engineer I work with in Germany does…

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

#353
post #238
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the wealth inequality larger in Germany than in the US? Also, you still end up paying for all those things. And private health insurance will simply always be more expensive

It's comparable to the US. If you look at the roster of billionaires in Germany, and then look at their national median wealth figures, it's stark.

Klause-Michel Kuehne scaled from Germany's economic size to the US economic size would go from $37b in wealth to $195b. That's Jeff Bezos.

Dieter Schwarz scaled similarly would go from $26b to $135b. That's Bill Gates.

Susanne Klatten scaled similarly would go from $24.6b to $128b. That's Zuckerberg.

Thomas and Andreas Struengmann scaled similarly would each go from $21b to $109b. That's Warren Buffett.

Stefan Quandt scaled similarly would go from $21b to $109b. That's Steve Ballmer.

And so on. Germany has 30 of the top 500 largest individual fortunes globally; the US has 159. Interestingly that's the approximately correct scaling if you account for the difference in economic size (although one would expect it to increase even further with scale, and given the US also has other things in its favor (eg global reserve currency, military superpower); so Germany is more than pulling its weight in relation to the number of US billionaires at the top). Overall Germany had 153 billionaires as recently as 2019, while the US had 788 that year; once again that scales roughly correctly for the difference in economy size.

So yes, the incredible wealth at the top in Germany is every bit as lopsided considering the size of the German economy.

Germany's median wealth figure is below the US. That's despite the US massively debasing its median with tens of millions of poor immigrants from Latin America over the past 40 years (meaning those people are starting from scratch, typically with no valuable labor skills or education background, and often without even knowing English). Comparing apples to apples, US demographics to Germany demographics, US white people are drastically richer than German white people at the median. And it's also despite the US not having the much vaunted labor protection that the Germans enjoy.

Germany, given its immense economic output, relatively stable culture and politics, high productivity, and strong labor protection, should have extraordinary wealth at the median. It doesn't (France and Britain both far exceed Germany in that regard; Germany is only slightly ahead of Portugal by comparison).

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is positioned excellently for chip production, why would you consider that a bad investment?

its not. you have to have _TEST HOUSES_ nearby. and this would mean, like for most of germany semiconductor output, that these wafers are flown to china for testing & assembly.

How about Fraunhofer, IMEC, Amkor, AEMtec, ICsense, Infineon...?

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

#356
post #8

Wonder how much TSMC Biontech vaccine deal influenced decision. Assume some level of gov involvement considering Germany was annoyed that US car manufactures got first dibs during shortage.

>TSMC Biontech vaccine deal influenced decision that'll be really stupid to build billion dollar fab just because of that. Japan can sell/donate AZ vaccine since they have a deal with AZ and American can sell moderna which Taiwan bought. either way, it is a really stupid business decision if that's case.

In context of broader geopolitical developments, it was also "really stupid" for TSMC to build new US fabs after already planning record capex in TW proper in 2019. Few thought TW would erode their silicon shield by allow TSMC to expand fabs abroad. Right now both US/EU wants to reshore semi supply chain, and both have the leverage to coerce TSMC/TW into submitting against their own interests since TSMC is wholey reliant on US/EU tech. Side considerations like semi subsidies and vaccines are there to sweeten pot. The timing is interesting since this follows shortly after TSMC Biontech deal. IMO there was never any doubt EU would get TSMC expansion, question was who had the leverage to determine where. Most of interviews by Morris Chang suggest he's not enthused about fragmenting supply chains, yet we keep seeing new fabs outside of TW being proposed. Whether these proposals are serious or performative is another qusetion.

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

#357
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's "the union"? I never heard about it. Not a single engineer that i know personally is in this union(or at least they are hiding that). And literally all of them planning to leave Germany once the good opportunity arrives. Also, i know personally almost 20 engineers who left the country only for better pay and that's during pandemic only.

Many German companies (BMW, Siemens, Bosch, BASF, ...) historically cooperate with unions like "IG Metall". Unions win benefits for their members, but companies usually pass these benefits on to all employees. These benefits typically include: 35-hour work week, regular and performance-independent salary increases for all employees, at least 6 weeks of vacation per year, parental leave beyond the legal minimum, train…

> regular and performance-independent salary increases for all employees

What country are you talking about?

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

#358
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 14.6 % of the gross income, capped around 58k income / year. Half of that (7.3 %) is paid by the employer, the other half by the employee (deducted from monthly wage payments). For that, kids (no matter how many) are covered unless the other parent has a private insurance. Spouses are covered if they don't have their own insurance. Based in Germany, I'd say the best part of it is that it's truly social: The heal…

Ah, so more like 350€/yr, including all dependents, for an employed person. That is a much better deal than (self-employed) KP, assuming the quality is good!

No, nowhere closed to that. There seems to be some confusion because Americans tend to quote things in yearly rates, while Germans tend to quote things in monthly rates. I pay just over €10k/year for my public health insurance in Germany, which is the maximum rate. (I'm self-employed, so I pay the full rate.) But that covered my whole family (wife and two kids) when my wife wasn't working. Now that she's a full-time employee, she pays around half of that (because her employer pays the other half).

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

#359
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Texas Instruments in Freising (near Munich), which I think is ex-NatSemi, and AFAIK now their only European fab after the closure of their one in Greenock (Scotland).

Also Apple is heavily investing into chip design in their Munich campus.

Yeah, just thought that they probably pick munich / near munich.

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

#360

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…

Actually there is a lot of current semi activity in Dresden. It's the biggest cluster in Europe.

Notable fabs in Dresden: Globalfoundries, Infineon, Bosch (recently opened), X-Fab, First Sensor, Plastic Logic (now defunct). May be noteworthy that some of these fabs are among the semi fabs with the highest degree of automotation world wide.

Add to this many bigger and smaller suppliers, universities, reasearch institutes and so on.

https://www.silicon-saxony.de/nc/en/members/sorted-by-alphab...

There are also plenty of Fabs in other parts of Germany: Infineon, Bosch, Nexperia, TDK, Osram, TI, X-Fab, Vishay, Elmos and some I forgot probably.

There are also many design companies. Especially noteworthy is probably Apples modem team that keep growing and growing...

CERN certainly stimulates some semi research, but it is rather specialized.

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