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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

The EU was funding fab lines, several levels back up the chain IIRC? The idea being that the chips doing car comms, engine management, cruder FPGA, old ARM cores, can be done fast, and stop supply chain weaknesses for things Europe needs chips in, like cars (and tanks, and UAVs and ...)

I'm not saying tiny lines aren't cool. I'm just saying the idea you can't be successful if you make cruder, older resolution chips is probably wrong: Your printer and your car don't care if the Dice is 10mm not 5mm, and the track lines are 5x wider. MILSPEC stuff probably runs cruder for other reasons. Resiliency? Verilog proofs?

I also have no idea how many dice you get off a single ingot these days. 300mm wide, but how long?

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>The EU was funding fab lines, several levels back up the chain IIRC?

Yeah but much larger(16-12nm) and much less profitable nodes than what Taiwan, the US or even Japan and China have now.

> I'm just saying the idea you can't be successful if you make cruder, older resolution chips is probably wrong

Define success. Smallest nodes are bringing in the most profits and every country prefers more profits versus less profits, especially Europe given it's budget deficits and welfare spending.

Larger nodes that aren't very profitable are good for national security but Russia and even North Korea are proof you don't need much domestic semiconductor industry to completely terrorize neighboring countries and level entire cities. WW1-style artillery shells and rifle rounds will do just fine.

Yes, I think that's true. But I also think from re-establishing a viable VLSI industry on cruder tech, Europe (like China) can move up the food chain into the smaller lines, as the tech beds in. The irony of ASML being a JV with strong European roots, but the VLSI moving to "anywhere but europe" at scale stands out.

I don't buy labour costs. I think it's probably post-VLSI packaging, assembly of devices, and compliance with HAZMAT that made the moves to Asia and Latin America happen. These plants don't use a lot of cheap labour. So wage cost cannot explain the decision.

There are interesting posts going back decades (crufty google doc shares, USENET posts..) talking about what the work culture at TSMC is like, about Intel management. I think VLSI is like cheese making: if you wear the wrong perfume on the wrong day, you destroy the entire output in one go. But that doesn't justify 16 hour days and toxic management.

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