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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

#71

Post by suction »

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.

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.

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

#72

Post by tralarpa »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #43
artemonster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ha! I guess you haven't worked as a designer or verification engineer, designing chips then? let me tell you: you work with a commitee-designed c++ like abomination language with 300 non-composible keywords that make no freaking sense. all of that crap grew from legacy-upon-legacy of crutches as an attempt to fix the goddamn broken-by-design verilog. Ultimately, this craplanguage + library that is 90% non-debuggable…

Or working with a 40M Loc codebase started in the 80s with 50% code duplication. Because it's so mission critical that nobody really touches existing code. Or that everything needs to be rubber-stamped by a ton of people and even a rename takes months to make it in the codebase. Oh well. That's probably every enterprise

As somebody without any experience in that field: When you say "codebase", what is that? Is it code describing circuit blocks (e.g. an ALU) that is reused in different projects or is it code for the tools that you use? (in-house tools, plugins for commercial tools, etc.)

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

#73

Post by estaseuropano »

odiroot wrote: post #22
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.

I wouldn't be as harsh, but indeed that decision is a bit weird. They cannot really count on cheap labour, or "friendly" economic incentives. And seeing the case of Tesla factory, it's not so easy and fast. One great thing about Germany is the central location within EU with good logistics overall. Not sure it matters for semiconductor manufacturing.

Germany just committed to put billions into a chip IPCEI, so lots of funding incoming.

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

#74

Post by suction »

reader_mode wrote: post #68
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.

Is Germany really stable considering Tesla story ? Chip making isn't clean by any standard.

The Tesla story had two sides - Tesla was aware about the high standards that would be applied to their factory, but somehow thought "we're Tesla so they'll create all kinds of exceptions for us if we pay the right politicians". Turns out not every country is as corrupt as Tesla's home country.

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

#75

Post by bildung »

sabjut wrote: post #61
ChemSpider wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has plenty of water. Certainly more than Taiwan.

That's what Elon Musk said too about the Brandenburg Facory ("Doesn't look like a desert so it must be ok") But environment groups are saying that ground water levels have been decreasing for years and the factory would demand too much from the water network. So who is in the right here?

I assume Tesla was just trying to be cheap. As soon as the water supplier said Teslas expected demand (372 m³ per hour) wouldn't be possible, the demand suddenly shrank to 243 m³ per hour. So my guess is that Tesla tried to reduce capex by employing more wasteful water usage but now has to work more efficiently. https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/wie-problematisch-ist-der-bau-v...

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

#76

Post by suction »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #46
bildung wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say Teslas Brandenburg factory shows a problem with red tape per se, but it does show that ignoring it won't save you time in Germany. Also, salaries usually only account for low single digit percentages of opex in high tech production, so ready availabilty of the needed specialists is probably more important.

For those companies involved in semiconductor industry, where machines cost 100M usd EACH... People are just a rounding error. Should we hire 100 more? 1000 more? Whatever

Keep in mind that for a high-profile engineer or lead who expects to make 400k at least per year, the company would actually have to pay him 800k to make that much net. Labor cost in Germany is sky high. That times a thousand is not insignificant.

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

#77

Post by estaseuropano »

ulfw wrote: post #65
ChemSpider wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has plenty of water. Certainly more than Taiwan.

Germany gets round about 750mm of rain a year, Taiwan 2500mm.

Taiwan is a tiny area compared to the diversity you get in Germany, which has very diverse weather across regions, significant rivers, accessible groundwater, etc.

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

#78

Post by spaniard89277 »

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…

Very interesting. Clicking around seems they have open hardware suppliers in the EU.

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

#79

Post by turbinerneiter »

reader_mode wrote: post #68
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.

Is Germany really stable considering Tesla story ? Chip making isn't clean by any standard.

What's the Tesla story?

They are building a factory as fast as possible, pushing the authorities to work as fast as possible and until now they only had minor difficulties which each other, considering how hard Tesla is pushing and how "slow" German bureaucracy is.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

reader_mode wrote: post #68
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.

Is Germany really stable considering Tesla story ? Chip making isn't clean by any standard.

[deleted]
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