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0 pointsjoe_mamba1mo ago0 comments

>when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony"

That's not at all how it works. You're talking as if you're buying a plug-and-play Xerox copy machine that you can just unbox and start printing copies of your work and make money.

Buying the latest EUV machines doesn't get you the latest nodes and economically viable yields.

Intel, Samsung also have the latest ASML machines that TSMC has and yet they haven't caught up to TSMC because there's a lot more to semi manufacturing that just the machine itself.

If Germany just buys an ASML machine it would be an expensive paperweight without the process know-how that engineers at TSMC have amassed over the decades in order to get the most economically competitive yields.

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i5heu1mo ago

It is so absurd to think that an investment in even the most uncompetitive fab while one has currently none is uneconomical.

Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.

We speak here about trillions of damage while a fab costs only a few billions.

This is like a complete non brainer.

raincole1mo ago

> Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.

That's hogwash. Sorry. Human society won't simply stop working just due to the lack of 2nm chips.

There are plenty of chip manufacturers around the world, including EU ones. Taiwan only has the quasi-monopoly over the cutting edge process.

alephnerd1mo ago

> Taiwan only has the quasi-monopoly over the cutting edge process

Not really. Taiwan has commanding market share in legacy process nodes (28nm and above) as well.

joe_mambaOP1mo ago

>while one has currently none

What are you talking about? There's a lot of fabs in Europe, just on much older nodes than Taiwan, US and Japan or even China have.

>We speak here about trillions of damage

Where did you get the trillions from?

>a fab costs only a few billions

Billions just to build, but then who's gonna foot the bill for running it, if the fab is not economically competitive to those from Taiwan and Japan, at EU domestic wages, EU environmental regulations and lacking knowhow supply chains that needs to be built up in the EU? The taxpayers again?

The German government (meaning the taxpayers) are still subsidizing energy costs to keep manufacturing from collapsing or leaving the country altogether because it's not internationally competitive anymore.

So how much more of the private sector should the taxpayers subsidize before we take a look at ourselves in the mirror that everything is FUBAR and that endless taxpayer funded subsidies(aka corporate welfare) are just disguising the endemic rot while not actually fixing the problem?

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