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TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

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Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#91

“…begin construction of the fab in the second half of 2024 with production targeted to begin by the end of 2027”. It’s good to see new fabs in Europe, but I think it’s a bit late and with “old” technology. On the other hand there are many other areas in need of chips that will benefit from this in the coming years.

Modern is better, but many industries are fine with "old" technology. As the pandemic showed, the problem (for industry and mass market consumer electronics) was not Intel/AMD/Nvidia high end chips but chips for washing maschines (had to wait 7 (!) months for a dishwasher b/c Miele had no chips) and cars.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#92
post #61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines That's great news for Germany then.

If they want to produce more ICE cars for the next decades yes.

1. They do want to produce ICE cars for several more decades, yes.

2. It's not as if BEVs are chip-free, and most of the chips used aren't ultra-high performance things that require the very latest generation fab equipment.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#93
post #87
post #2

That's an interesting development. I can't fathom how TSMC would've let Infineon+NXP into the deal without some level of positive, or negative coercion. For Germany, it's an insurance against TSMC possibly bailing out in the future. The 22nm node is also a very strange choice. It's absolutely not a thing which most of German industry needs, which are microcontroller, high voltage, mixed signal, niche memory, and ASIC…

Which are these ASIC friendly nodes?

40nm-ish. IO logic doesn't really scale, so going much beyond that doesn't really make sense when the price per mm2 keeps increasing with every node. If your logic is simple enough that it doesn't really benefit from the increased transistor count or power savings, IO is going to be the main factor when it comes to node selection.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NL could block it on national security grounds.

Depends on what the US tell NL to do, as we've seen before.

These days are over - they ended with the war in Iraq. In the 80s the US said "Jump!" and western Europe asked "How high?".

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#95
post #61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great for automotive companies who want to strengthen their supply lines That's great news for Germany then.

If they want to produce more ICE cars for the next decades yes.

Tesla has a large factory in Germany too

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#96
post #3

Wonder if the Taiwanese govt at some point will step in and block these onshoring measures as a matter of national security. If countries are less reliant on manufacturing within Taiwan, its one less reason to stand up to Beijing's one China principle.

A much better strategy is to work slow :). Drag out every phase.

Also ASML has a super long backlog I think so even if they build it they would have years to wait to even get and install the equipment

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#97

Great to see they coming to Germany. If Tesla could build a car factory here from scratch, I'm sure that they can build chips too. Curious why they've chosen Dresden though. Anybody knows how much the government is willing to invest? Missing some tangible figures.

Other companies with offices there are AWS' EC2 (Kernel dev, Gravitons, etc), and Xilinx.

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#98
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and zero of the shortages were caused by lack of fab capacity - companies cut orders for over a year. Old stocks got depleted, prices skyrocketed, then companies reluctantly put new orders and started selling at those inflated prices.

That's not exactly what happened. Manufacturers gave up their fab capacity at the start of the pandemic to hedge for a potential economic kerfuffle. That capacity was immediately resold to other parties, and by the time the folks who gave up their fab space realized things were going to be okay and came back, it was too late. It really was a fab supply shortage, but a situation of their own making too.

Can you point at one/two examples of companies using this freed up fab space? Where did all that silicon go to?

Re: TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP to jointly build semiconductor fab in Europe

#99

What irony if chips bring wealth to saxony, when chip production in the GDR was one of the reason it collapsed.

I’m not familiar with the story, can you elaborate a bit on the chip production being a reason of GDR collapse?
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