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Comment by jonkoops | Hacker News Reader

EU chip industry: best I can do is eat glue in the corner.

EU chip industry: best I can do is supply chips that are in 99% of industrial equipment and vehicles. Also supply the only machines in the world that enable leading edge lithography processes.

No comment on the second part, but the first part is wrong. EU doesn't have a moat in process technology anymore (since 2010s). They have a bunch of legacy fabs, like 350, 180 and 130 nm but Taiwan, US, and China (and others like Israel, or Singapore) have these too. EU is severely lacking behind chip design, production and packaging capabilities for industrial, automotive, and space kind of niche applications since the heavy divestment from semiconductors after 2008 financial crisis and 2015 Euro crisis.

On top of this, once European giants like NXP (formerly Philips semiconductors), Infineon (formerly Siemens semiconductors), and ST are actively reducing their footprint in Europe and moving to India or SE Asia.

In short: No, EU has no future in those markets as designer or producer of chips.

I can't speak for the others, but ST has six fabs in Europe and only one in asia. ST's smallest process node is 18 nm and made in their fab in Crolles, France. In any case trying to compete at the cutting edge of process technology seems to be too expensive to be worth it.

[Redacted]

I upvoted the post because they make a valid point and 99% is indeed factually incorrect hyperbole.

This is actually at the core of our (EU) problem. Instead of thinking, "here is this new technology, how can we build new markets/products out of it", our industry leaders always think, "here is this new technology, how can we apply it to our existing industries".

You can see it a lot in AI, right now. AI4industry is not where the gains are right now. We should be competing on training foundational models. Once the foundational models from US/China are strong enough, they will do AI4industry and we wouldn't have any edge on them anyway because their tech is more vertically integrated and they have better insight in how AI works under the hood.

There's no moat to AI models so it doesn't really matter who develops it first. If AGI happens none of it matters since it won't be controlled anyway. If there's an exponential wall then everyone will be at it within 12 months of the first person hitting it and then it's better not to have spent the cash pioneering the path.

The long-term idea that the we have to compete claim is based on is like AGI and it's gonna really care what Elon tells it to do. This is a dumb idea regardless of how it fails.

AI models are seeming the ultimate in fungible commodities at this point, why spend on R&D?

If you don't have the capability to train these models, then there's almost no chance of you having enough GPU power to run inference at a large scale on these models (assuming the weights for such a model are ever released or leaked in the future). And that's ignoring the fact that you won't have cultivated a sector that can continue to learn about and improve on said models.

CXMT uses old Qimonda patents (even though Qimonda's tech is now outdated), and the former CEO of Qimonda is currently building a fab for an FeRAM-based alternative to DRAM in Magdeburg. It's a gamble as FeRAM still suffers from a more limited lifetime than conventional DRAM at this moment but I think there are still somewhat interesting developments happening in Europe.

EU: we should create a law regulating the viscosity of the glue being eaten

EU: Perhaps we should also spend a few billion on attracting american glue manufacturers so they open a factory and a half here so we can catch up in this chip making business.

EU: Our people generally live longer and happier lives plus our countries are some of the safest on Earth. Better throw that all away and follow the Americans into hell so our elites can make slightly more money!

To be fair, all high end chips are made in Asia with EU tooling. US happens to be the place where the managers are and the trade is facilitated. There has been some good progress to push Asia make cips in USA with EU machines however IIRC significant part of the chain is still in Asia and chips made in USA are shipped to Asia for further processing.

Edit: changed China with Asia to distance the comment from Taiwan-China based politics.

> US happens to be the place where the managers

And you know.. the actual design for plenty of these chips. By that definition Apple is also an Asian company..

> with EU tooling

That is only a (vital) part of the supply chain, there are plenty of other components.

IMHO the moral of the story is that no one particular makes the chips, humanity does it collectively.

> To be fair, all high end chips are made in China with EU tooling.

Did you mean Taiwan? Because depending on who you ask that is, or is not china.

The Chinese have been cut off from EU tooling for a while now. And their attempts to build out their own lithography setups have been a failure. Their 7nm process is, by all measures, not delivering the yields that one would need to make it really successful.

No I don't mean anything related to politics of China-Taiwan. I have no interest in that.

Clearly you do, given you expressly maintain that China includes Taiwan (an uncommon opinion)?

Taiwan's official name is Republic of China.

The other China's official name is People's Republic of China.

You know what, it's not something I know anything about but it seems like the "Taiwan is not part of China" folks are annoying and I haven't met the opposite kind so I guess I lean towards Taiwan is part of China now, giving the benefit of doubt to the other side of the flag war.

AFAIK the high end chips are made in Taiwan, that's not the same. Also there was an export control, so ASML couldn't sell the latest equipment to China.

Officially, according to USA, Taiwan is China but this is pedantic. Let's call it Asia instead of going into China-Taiwan politics

Don't make me tap the sign that says "ASML".

Difference between Europe and the others is that it doesn't brag nearly as much.

Even the EU thought the “EU Chips Act” was a failure which is why they are trying to re-invent it after spending billions https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/eu-microchi...

I don’t think the goal there was to sit around praising past accomplishments. You always have to keep building.

And that’s about it..

In relative terms there is no innovation happening outside of that and some other smaller companies providing highly specialized components that are a part of the supply chain.

There isn’t just much if anything to brag about. ASML is great but it’s effectively a monopoly (for the time being) due to a large extent some correct historical choices.

ASML doesn't make chips.

Nobody makes state of the art chips without ASML

If you believe Huawei’s marketing, they are doing quite well on their Ascend series with DUV.

CXMT is making truly impressive inroads on what is currently a very Large addressable market using DUV.

ASML doesn't make state-of-the-art machines without Cymer. What is your point?

EU chip industry: best I can do is power electronics.

EU Chip industry : ASML, 2nd to only nvidia, 0.5T mkt cap

They sell the shovels, we need someone actually digging for gold.

Shovels have always been the better out of the two investments.

There were rumours about China grabbing hold of one of ASML's machines, but with no additional information on this it's safe to assume they're still hammering out 7nm chips using DUV at piss poor yields.

I see no reason to think that CXMT’s yields are poor. Or, for that matter, that Huawei’s yields are a problem.

Except in China’s case where they eventually figured out how to make shovels themselves in plenty of other industries (and likely at some point in the future chip fabrication as well)

STMicroelectronics cries in a corner.

It's simply not possible to build profitable fabs, or large industry anymore in most of the EU. This won't change. Laws and regulation has put a stop to this. The best that EU can do is to protect existing industry.

HN continues its transmogrification in X.

Yeah the audience here has significantly shifted.

EU bourgeoisie invests in US tech

You're forgetting about ASML, which is European and makes the actual machines to produce a huge portion of the world's high-end chips.

> EU chip industry: best I can do is eat glue in the corner.

Aren't they the only ones able to supply the chip-making machines?

Based on the empirical evidence we have ASML succeeded in spite of the EU not because of it (so “they” is bot exactly fair). There is not much EU has going on besides that when it comes to growth and innovation.

It’s a bit like Novo Nordisk, they had a huge win and then just focused on making as much money while it lasted while more innovative companies ate up their market.

Oh Jon

EU: More windmills!

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