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Comment by klelatti | Hacker News Reader

Even though I've long followed Arm (I went to a presentation in Cambridge from Steve Furber about the Arm 1 in 1985ish even before the first commercial chips shipped) I'm a bit sceptical about how much value would ever be generated for the UK economy by Arm. The business model is about low margins and selling to everyone around the world so its hard to see how being next door to Arm (geographically) would be a big advantage.

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The theory is that clusters form around “anchor tenants”; Cambridge has the University (and its excellent CS departments), ARM and some others, and is close to he largest capital marketplaces in the world, grandiosely bundled into a so-called “silicon fen”. So school leavers can get jobs, network, start companies, develop other tech in a virtuous circle.

Well that’s the theory; nobody has actually been able to reproduce Silicon Valley except arguably in SF (it’s more like the valley grew a tentacle is the peninsula, though the distance is far enough that the culture is slightly different).

As far as Cambridge goes, I don’t see that this purchase makes any difference for those factors, except bragging rights in Whitehall.

This is a bit of an aside, but it never ceases to amaze me how many would be tech hubs try variations of Silicon Valley in their (maybe informal?) branding. Silicon hills, Silicon fern.. (I knew a couple more but I’m forgetting atm). It’s not like it’s the name which made it what it is.

You can find all the places on Wikipedia with the "Silicon something" name here[1]. Look under "S".

I live in Silicon Peach.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Information_technolog...

An area in London was also amusingly called Silicon Roundabout.

This cracks me up I had to google and check it wasn't a made up joke. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_London_Tech_City

It's not even a roundabout any more.

My personal favourite is Silicon Glen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Glen

I've heard people at the wafer manufacturing facilities in South Portland, Maine refer to that little cluster as "Silicon Tundra" but I don't think anybody from outside there calls them that.

Silicon Beach. I live in one that claims the title. I suspect there are many.

Me too. But I moved here from the Silicon Prairie!

I love that name because of course all beaches are by definition made of...silicon!

Silicon slopes as well I've heard for Boulder and Salt Lake City.

"Silicon Valley North" checking in.

> The theory is that clusters form around “anchor tenants”

Yes. Largest technology hub in Europe sits in Eindhoven (Veldhoven), Netherlands where you have a technical university, but the real anchor was Philips who were headquartered there. Eindhoven is home to ASML and Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) among others.

ASML is also a Philips spun-off

It was a joint-venture between Philips and ASMI.

> Well that’s the theory; nobody has actually been able to reproduce Silicon Valley

Shenzhen and Israel have been pretty successful.

I think the value is a soft-power and positioning play.

Being able to say "we control the architecture in seventy trillion and counting devices" gets you a seat at the tech industry grown-ups' table (next to the US, China, Japan, Korea).

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