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Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

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Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#71

Post by musiciangames »

Reason077 wrote: post #70
johnfarrelldev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not closing down, from the article they are moving to newer furnace technology which requires less workers to run.

Correct. There are two major steel producers still operating in the UK: British Steel's Scunthorpe steelworks in the North East of England, and Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales. Both have announced plans to convert from blast furnaces to modern electric arc furnaces. This will greatly reduce emissions - they are among the largest industrial polluters in the UK (along with the Drax wood-burning power…

As I understand it, Britain will no longer be able to produce steel from iron ore, only from scrap. Which doesn’t sound good strategically.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#72

Post by Reason077 »

musiciangames wrote: post #71
Reason077 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. There are two major steel producers still operating in the UK: British Steel's Scunthorpe steelworks in the North East of England, and Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales. Both have announced plans to convert from blast furnaces to modern electric arc furnaces. This will greatly reduce emissions - they are among the largest industrial polluters in the UK (along with the Drax wood-burning power…

As I understand it, Britain will no longer be able to produce steel from iron ore, only from scrap. Which doesn’t sound good strategically.

It actually makes sense strategically. Britain already has more steel than it will likely ever need, in fact it's one of the world's major exporters of scrap metals. But it depends on imports for iron ore. Why import iron ore (and coking coal, for that matter) when the resource you need to make better, more valuable steels more efficiently is already here?

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#73

Post by kitd »

thebruce87m wrote: post #4

> The acquisition is expected to secure up to 100 skilled jobs in the North East and safeguard a critical part of the UK’s defence infrastructure. The “North East” in the context of the UK and “the North East of England” are not interchangeable.

It's a UK website. In common parlance in the UK, they are interchangeable.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#74

Post by thebruce87m »

kitd wrote: post #73
thebruce87m wrote: post #4

> The acquisition is expected to secure up to 100 skilled jobs in the North East and safeguard a critical part of the UK’s defence infrastructure. The “North East” in the context of the UK and “the North East of England” are not interchangeable.

It's a UK website. In common parlance in the UK, they are interchangeable.

I live in the UK. In my experience only English people think they are interchangeable since they use it a lot implicitly.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#75

Post by nine_k »

PHGamer wrote: post #67

whats the process node it can do. im suprised a fab built in 1991 is stil valuable. the us is trying to build a 5nm fab in arizona and by the time its done well be at 1 or less. granted still probably worth it since it would only be about 7 years old process but 1991. thats gotta be old unless they kept upgrading it

Maybe it's not about processors at all, but about camera sensors, lasers, high-speed analog electronics, high-power semiconductor devices, etc. These are also really important parts of military gear.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#76

Post by quacksilver »

tonetegeatinst wrote: post #3

Smart to buy a preexisting fab. From what I understand via from various blogs and YouTube research, building a Feb even if your not doing cutting edge tech like tsmc, say going with an openpdk, still requires that special infrastructure. You need seismic dampening for the fab and to be located in a low activity region preferably, you need cheap water that can be refines, you need affordable electricity, and then supp…

Also, they bought a fab, and by extension a bunch of knowledgeable employees who can work it and are eligible for UK security clearances.

Once the knowledge of the workers is gone then it would be really hard to spin something up in country, and being the UK we would likely be forced to buy stuff from the US (or go to the far east anyway). If you built a fab in country then you would probably have to get staff from an existing fab to help run it and iron out any issues and gradually switch them out for local staff.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#77

Post by pjmlp »

PHGamer wrote: post #67

whats the process node it can do. im suprised a fab built in 1991 is stil valuable. the us is trying to build a 5nm fab in arizona and by the time its done well be at 1 or less. granted still probably worth it since it would only be about 7 years old process but 1991. thats gotta be old unless they kept upgrading it

The way things are going having any kind of chips is more valuable than whatever build process they use.

Same applies to maybe starting having again some kind of national OSes, and programming languages, not subject to export regulations.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#79

Post by Dylan16807 »

osnium123 wrote: post #59
Havoc wrote: post #5

What lith node is that?

The most advanced optical lithography for 6 inch wafers is I-line (365 nm wavelength). For compound semiconductor fabs, they can use e-beam lithography which allows for shorter gate lengths. Some companies are also clever about taking I line lithography and patterning tricks to make smaller features for gates.

> Some companies are also clever about taking I line lithography and patterning tricks to make smaller features for gates.

Well that's the critical question. Is that being used?

Lithography using 193nm light varies from 130nm down to 10nm, if not wider.

365nm probably doesn't vary as much, but just saying the wavelength doesn't give a clear answer about the node size.

Re: Britain buys semiconductor factory for defence purposes

#80

Post by rightbyte »

jldugger wrote: post #32
ineedasername wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small arms dumb weapons aren’t going to do much by themselves either. Anything more than a rifle? Chips

I think it's the [artillery shells]( https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-... ) that's been a bottleneck thus far in Ukraine. It's like NATO keeps around 3 serious war days worth of ammunition on stock.

They estimate that radiation poisoning and starvation will prevent the armed forces from running out of shells.
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