EU has the tech. ASML is #2 company in EURO STOXX 50 index with 5.69% weight.
ASML is the world's largest photolithography systems manufacturer and the only one producing extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. These EUV scanners are expensive as hell. Last years model costs $120 million per piece and you need 10-15 of them for TSMC gigafactory.
TWINSCAN NXE:3400C (7 and 5 nm nodes, >170 wafers per hour) is probably the most expensive machine in the world.
If the EU treats this as a strategic capability and not commercial, the spending is much less of a consideration.
The advantage that the EU has is in fact ASML. No company can make the 5nm litho systems today, and catching up with the decades of R&D they've invested is not feasible. They are the greatest achievement of science and technology on the planet. [0]
The strategy that can work is for the EU to partner with TSMC to build a foundry in the EU that produces at the node they want to intercept (2 nm?). Then, make a business arrangement that puts European scientists and engineers into high-value roles. That would enable the EU to develop the technical skills and keep China from locking it up.
Man, I wish I too shared such optimism in EU or other massive multi government bureaucratic organizations to pull something off like this in 2021. But sorry I simply don’t.
From my experience with gov trying to do tech investment it’s going to go into the pockets of late career overpaid ‘executives’ with ‘industry experience’ and tons of (also overpaid and underqualified) contractors doing the same thing. Not the brilliant engineers you imagine are going to run it.
I mean I hope it goes to the engineers and smart dudes (who doesn’t want another successful semi competitor and 2nm?) and not the ones who know how to play the political game the best but I’m highly highly skeptical.
We’ll see in a few years I guess.
And I say that fully understanding ASML and the value they currently provide. But let’s hope who ever doles this out understands it as well as (maybe) half the people in this thread.
But even ignoring that giant elephant in the room, it adds the critical question why should ASML care to give special treatment to this one project? They are already killing it globally. Just because they operate in EU and this offers shit loads of money to potentially fleece?
> Not the brilliant engineers you imagine are going to run it.
I have no doubts brilliant European engineers are going to work on the hard problems of shipping a next gen chip process and design... In America!
What the EU should do is earmark some of that money to be directly paid as engineering salaries. Of course they won't: that would reduce the piece of the pie of all the non-technical managers and bureaucrats!
> What the EU should do is earmark some of that money to be directly paid as engineering salaries.
I mean, that's exactly what they do. Any company with good finances can apply for support for R&D to develop new features or tech that they would otherwise not develop or invest in. This comes in the form of direct contributions to employees' salaries listed in the grant application.
I've written and defended these grants for multiple companies and I have been on the receiving end of them, too.
This isn't even specific to this deal, this is just something you can always do, along with literally hundreds of EU and state level support programs.
That's an understandable reaction if you just look at the raw USD value, but that's very far from the full picture. They are not pitiful when you start adding the costs for housing, healthcare, transportation and the rest of the things that you need to live. Compared to the huge wage increase, the increase in living standard is very minor (and in some regards worse, e.g. the amount of time you lose daily to the car centric infrastructure).
The number and quality of available jobs in the SV region was a much bigger factor to everyone I've spoken to that moved from the EU.
They still are pretty pitiful across Europe even after that, compared to Canada and Australia as well as the US.
In the UK the problem seems to be the company owner/manager class see software people roughly the same as any other office worker, rather than as skilled producers of products. As a result they pay peanuts, and then are surprised when they get less than stellar results. Not sure what the reason might be elsewhere, but across the rest of the continent the pay seems even worse.
>That's an understandable reaction if you just look at the raw USD value, but that's very far from the full picture. They are not pitiful when you start adding the costs for housing, healthcare, transportation and the rest of the things that you need to live.
And that’s not even specific to tech salaries. A typical Bay Area TC of $250-400k for a senior engineer will also include great healthcare so there is basically no competition in any European location.
You have to specifically want to live in a European city for the culture/walkability/etc or else there is just no reason to take tech jobs there.
> A typical Bay Area TC of $250-400k for a senior engineer will also include great healthcare
Notionally, yes, but in reality it will be the same blighted hellscape of insurance denials, out-of-network complexity, and lack of consistency as everyone else's healthcare in America. You can hire someone to help you navigate it, which is a remarkable economic construct.
You have actually addressed the actual issue here but from wrong perspective.
Culture is the issue here. EU tries to live, USA tries to earn. If the only thing that interests you is money then yes, probably USA is the right direction. Of all the people that I know that went working outside of their country, they were mostly going to EU companies (or USA companies in Europe), sometimes to the Asia. None left for USA. On the other side I know a CTO that left USA for Europe and bought a small property in France where he lives with whole family.
This shows very well in environmental laws, gdpr, protection of workers, actually having friends, nature, having hill-climbing organizations that aren't only lobist groups to be actually allowed to climb the mountains, public transport, able to drink spring water in center of capital city, most people working 40h/week max, actually do use their vacations in one piece, free education, maternity leave measured in years not months (yes under a year too but not month or two),...
So it depends on the personal cultural preference. Some people just love the money and things they can buy with it, maybe even power that it brings and surely a lot of such people are also in EU. The difference is in the percentage of population although Hollywood did great job at exporting the view of world trough money glasses.
---
Regarding the topic. EU was quite satisfied with buying processors from the States, it was also happy with using Windows, Android, Apple thing. The problem is, as in every other thing, USA corporations became vampires that wants to eat you alive from pure greed and systemic addiction to blood (endless growth).
It has become imperative to produce our own processors as you can no longer trust USA or China to not shovel inside some spying equipment. Well the times have changed and it is no longer an option to buy it from USA/China, so EU has moved forward and dont worry, we will have our own chips our own phones and operating system (linux, sailfish or something else...).
EU is an elephant and it needs a lot of coordination of muscles to move its legs but once it starts moving...
I am sorry, I would love to just use the USA/China products and not re-develop hardware (based on what we know now, maybe not dragging 40 years old anchor of previous development with me), not having a need for GDPR, but they have both just screwed everything up from pure greed. Now we need to fix it and a lot of time and resources will have to go that way. But we will eventually fix it.
>Of all the people that I know that went working outside of their country, they were mostly going to EU companies (or USA companies in Europe), sometimes to the Asia. None left for USA. On the other side I know a CTO that left USA for Europe and bought a small property in France where he lives with whole family.
Meanwhile (since 2012) Trump happened, race unrest's, police brutality, corona handling fiasco, Google/FB/Amazon public image is going down, USA public depth has roughly doubled [1] and general perception of USA has changed (to the worse[2]), China is hiring, student depth is going trough the roof (and immigrants want to have children someday), no one believes in "war on terror" any more (talking about EU), Snowden, war on privacy,...
This graph is outdated, did you find some that is up to date? Also interesting one would be how many of those in 2012 survey stayed and where.
I see that you deleted your further attempt to mock my presenting statistics in exchange for your anecdotes (I had no idea until reading your contributions here that that in the US there is no "actually having friends, nature, having hill-climbing organizations that aren't only lobist groups to be actually allowed to climb the mountains").
But since you did bring up Germany with the deleted mention of Operation Paperclip, I suggest you read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25367731 , in which @bildung and I discuss German migration to the US over the past 30 years (including 2019 data).
>This graph is outdated, did you find some that is up to date?
I provided statistics in response to your anecdotes. The onus is on you, not me, to prove that a) your anecdotes are actually representative of broader trends, and b) my statistics are, in fact, outdated.
You can get the walkability side in any of northeastern cities such as NYC, Boston, and to a lesser extent D.C. Pay is comparable to the Bay given the cost of living difference.
Comparable is generally not true - the difference is maybe ~$30k at best in DC vs. the Bay Area for example, but DC compensation is nowhere near what you can get in the Bay Area. The only thing in the US that beats it it seems is NYC area finance (i.e. hedge funds).
There's a catch, though: You have to live in the borderline failed state that is the USA. That's quite the drawback and just not worth it no matter the salary increase, imo.
"Disposable income per capita" is certainly a number, but it's not actually meaningful in this context for a few reasons:
1. "Disposable income per capita" is irrelevant to normal people, as it does not account for how equally that wealth is actually spread. If the top 1% double their income and the rest halves it, that's still a net increase in "disposable income".
2. "Disposable income" does not at all account for the varying amount of cost required to sustain a given standard of living in different regions, even within a country.
3. "Disposable income" is a purely economic measure. As such, it does not measure a large amount things that impact your quality of life, like time off, stress, job satisfaction, etc. A quick look at those non-economic measures will show those high economic measures don't come for free.
Honestly, I looked into this for myself a few years ago. I always hear this health care, holidays cost of living argument. It just doesn't add up. Europe's salaries are just too low.
Global purchase power is a very limited and 100% american way to assess work compensation. In europe we don't care only about the number but about many other factors.
Yet tech salaries in Vancouver combined with real estate values make it so that most tech jobs are barely living wage, at least when my partner and I tried hard to make it work some years ago. Even with universal health care (which wasn't quite what they have) it couldn't possibly make up the difference for someone with college debt.
I'd argue that if you got a CS degree from an American college you're probably just forced to work in the US simply because the other prospective employees can accept a lower salary due to a lower debt load. Maybe the best of the best can find a way to earn American salaries overseas but I really don't think that's as common as the HN crowd might assume.
The situation in Vancouver is caused by out of control immigration quotas. Real estate there is a way to park assets in a safe jurisdiction.
Seattle has a much healthier market both for devs and real estate and is only three hours away.
Only difference in healthcare is while american top devs get it on top of their compensation packages, canadians pay for it with their prohibitive income tax rates. It's pretty easy to take the total spending percentage that goes to healthcare and multiply it by your income tax to see how much a dev is really paying for healthcare.
I don't think Vancouver is as bad as you make it out to be. No, you will not make the same money here as in Seattle, it's often something like a 1/3rd pay cut. That is not a bad income however, it is easily enough to rent and whilst real estate in Vancouver proper may be expensive there is reliable transit and property in the other cities such as Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam etc is significantly less expensive.
I'm also not quite sure what you mean with your point about healthcare. MSP premiums were eliminated last year [0], there is now no charge to access medical care. Prescriptions, dental and eye care are all still chargeable, though prescriptions at least are essentially capped through BC Fair Pharmacare [1].
Compared to the US, Canada is much easier for immigration as a tech worker. One can get PR (equivalent of a green card) before landing if they have a sufficient points score, in BC that's fairly easy through the tech PNP [2] and a willing employer.
Additionally Vancouver consistently ranks among the top 10 most liveable cities [3].
>What the EU should do is earmark some of that money to be directly paid as engineering salaries. Of course they won't: that would reduce the piece of the pie of all the non-technical managers and bureaucrats!
This is what China's doing: offering double salaries to Japanese and Taiwanese engineers to lure them away, because tech salaries in Japan and Taiwan are quite low by global standards (even lower than China's).
If someone tried doing that in Poland:
- there would be a huge (and proper imho) outrage - why not teachers, or nurses
- every job would be registered as a programming job ;)
this would be the case in most european countries mainly because of the difference in culture in regards to working and the role of making money in society.
It is not necessarily a bad thing either in my opinion.
A lot of americans seem so focussed on making money, instead of caring for others around them.
> Man, I wish I too shared such optimism in EU or other massive multi government bureaucratic organizations to pull something off like this in 2021. But sorry I simply don’t.
I can understand your concerns. But if you look at mid-range airplanes the European monster Airbus did respectably catch up with incumbent Boeing.
In with the Jumbos they clearly surpassed it engineering-wise but failed in their commercial predictions that such planes would be needed.
So EU is neither a guarantee for failure nor for success.
Plus side, the amount of money seems realistic. TSMC's latest node at 5nm/3nm was like $16B and so 10x doesn't sound outrageous if playing catchup.
I do wonder how many people will be involved; it could be like ITER where everyone builds one fab that's truly the best in the world. Or it could be that they want to spread it out amongst the existing incumbents they can find who I am sure will do nothing with it.
Concentrate the funding and I imagine it could do pretty well. Distribute to (more than one) commercial entity (preferably zero to retain public access) and I doubt it will go anywhere.
Airbus was not related to EU (or EEC). It was basically a France-Germany bipartite cooperation, with tiny bits of Spain and Netherlands, and UK being in/out. UK didn't belong to EEC when they were supposed to take part in the beginning of the project. Spain didn't join EEC until 20 years later. Netherlands were in by accident, in a way.
While Airbus is older than the current EU it was and is a multi-national cooperation in the same spirit, where political and national interests need to be taken into account, even if it reduces economic efficiency. They even needed the Beluga https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga because they could not concentrate manufacturing of big parts in a single country.
Boeing should have a clear advantage because they have no such political interference. But it doesn't seem to have prevented Airbus from being a serious competitor. Whether the political interference is older than the EU or from the EU of today should not make a significant difference here.
I think I share your concern -- it's a question of "is a top down order to develop some technology (with required investment to 'force' it to happen) the best way to achieve that?"
What often ends up happening is that because it's so "strategically important" and so much money has been directed towards it, you are obligated to have expensive ("experienced") people hired based on past reputation -- which may not be applicable to new technology, roadmaps get laid out which everyone has to say they're meeting successfully, and then at the end you find out somehow that it didn't produce what you wanted.
Versus, a more bottoms-up approach where you hopefully create the conditions that incentivize or make possible some technologies and technologists to succeed -- without knowing fully who exactly or what exactly.
I'm sure that both have some inefficiencies, but the 1st method is sure to pay the people who have already been successful. But then again, maybe for a relatively incremental advance in some technology, there are fewer unknowns and method #1 works ok.
Conversely, for the really novel stuff government investment in research has a pretty good track record, really - I mean, they don't always turn it into a product, but who cares? Hoping for a corporation to fund medium or long-horizon research seems unwise. Even if they do, they're not going to do it in a way that's very efficient (i.e. they'll inefficiently invest in stuff with a high moat, rather than broad applicability).
As far as I understand, ASML is not the creation of government
funding, but instead a spinout of Philip and ASMI, two successful
Dutch electronics companies. ASML was successful in a competitive market, dominated by Japanese companies pretty quickly.
In other words, very different model from what the EU is currently trying.
However TSMC is a direct creation of the Taiwanese government.
In 1985 Morris Chang was recruited by
the Taiwanese government to help develop
the emerging semiconductor industry. In
1986 Morris joined the Hsinchu based non
profit research institute ITRI as Chairman
and President and launched what would be
TSMC’s first semiconductor wafer
fabrication plant on the ITRI campus.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Ltd. was officially formed in 1987 as a
joint venture between the Taiwan government
(21%), Dutch multinational electronics
giant Philips (28%), and other private investors.
You are correct. The discussion about ASML is relevant in that state of the art chips cannot be produced without one of their TwinScan lithography tools. ASML is the only company that can build tools with 7nm and below capability.
In the context of the EU developing the ability to fabricate state-of-the-art chips, ASML would sell them the TwinScan tools they needed, which are just one species of about 40 that are used for chip fabrication.
ASML would also sell those tools without prodding by the EU. ASML would dearly love to sell them to SMIC and other Chinese foundry too, if the US would let them.
Lithography machines are a functioning market that is interfered with for geo-strategic reasons.
If ASML is the only company that can do what they do and anyone else would need decades to catch up, how are they not the most profitable company in the world?
All of the world's most profitable companies depend dearly on chips. If they are literally the only company that can provide this critical part of the chip production, why aren't they taking a larger portion of the profit?
At some point their customers will stop worrying about using 7nm and go back to double-digit nanometres. CPU tech from the 2000s is adequate for most workloads, let alone stuff from 2010.
I'm sure there is a lot of stuff where 7nm is necessary to get certain outcomes, but it is a small market compared to what could be reasonably done with older process technologies.
ASML is not directly funded by a govermental grant yes, but phillips had massive govermental support (mainly from the dutch goverment and the EEC aswell).
I don't think this requires anything special from ASML. They'd sell systems to the TSMC/EU partnership. The key is that the process engineers in the fab would learn how to develop processes for the leading edge geometries. To some extent, ASML engineers would know this, too. However, the secret recipes (literally) of chip production are so closely guarded that even the equipment companies for the tools they run on are not permitted to see them.
I completely agree that consortium-based organizations are less able to respond and react to changes or issues. That's why it needs to be treated as a strategic (defense) matter rather than a government/industry partnership, a-la Sematech in the US.
> Not the brilliant engineers you imagine are going to run it.
I'm still so fascinated by our minds' ability to interpolate and extrapolate to the platonic ideal of any ungrounded and unconstrained idea so readily. Yes big bureaucratic mass of brain trust experts going at it nonstop, how can you not yield great returns? I'm starting to awaken more and more to how messy and data dependent this world is. Ideals and declaration and promises just don't go far enough. But it's all so complicated and situational to figure out in advance why they don't go as far as we'd expect.
A relative is a middle manager in one of the biggest tech organizations in EU; only 60% of their huge organization is doing actual work and that 60% includes the management of the actual experts; the rest are "support functions" with very well paid positions for people appointed by the member states with strong political connections and no relevant skills vs. hired with interviews for the 60%. But even in the 60% there are a lot that are not meeting the skills required, but they are protected from any action by labor laws and unions, including forced salary raised based on how long they worked there, with no performance indicators.
In practical terms, over 50% of that large (many thousands) organization should not exist. Another 50% of what is left is only needed because EU bureaucracy requires them to cover work that can be avoided. That qualifies for "too much bureaucracy".
> This book contains three basic ideas. The first is an output-oriented approach to management. That is to say, we apply some of the principles and the discipline of the most output-oriented of endeavors—manufacturing—to other forms of business enterprise, including most emphatically the work of managers. Consider Intel, which is a true manufacturing and production company, making highly complex silicon chips as well as computer-like products built from them. Our company now has over thirty thousand employees. Of these, about 25 percent actually work to make the products. Another 25 percent help them as they supervise the personnel, maintain the machines, and engineer and improve the manufacturing process. Another 25 percent work in administration, where they schedule production, keep personnel records, send bills to our customers, and pay our suppliers. Finally, the remaining 25 percent design new products, take them to the marketplace, sell them, and service them after the sale.
Andy Grove, High Output Management, about Intel (at the time when they were successful)
I think there are many, many (not directly) productive functions that successful business needs to have and engineers often underestimate those (I certainly know I often do).
What is described above is a close to 100% productive personnel, direct or indirect. Imagine on top of that you have 10% that "work" on wellness programs (on paper, no tangible output ever, maybe a link to a Youtube yoga channel), 25% doing marketing for an institution that is unique with no competitors and no need for publicity (imagine publishing adds for Europol, the European police force; what are they selling?), another 10% doing diversity programs (when skilled engineers are already scarce, you force quotas on various categories) and another 10% are hired just on paper and never appear to work.
>From my experience with gov trying to do tech investment it’s going to go into the pockets of late career overpaid ‘executives’ with ‘industry experience’ and tons of (also overpaid and underqualified) contractors doing the same thing. Not the brilliant engineers you imagine are going to run it.
Are we talking about VC and large corporate investment or government investment here.
Pretty much. All big players (US, EU, China) must maintain domestic strategically important industries (aerospace, energy, semiconductors, telecom, drugs/biotech ...) even with government subsidies.
The goal of strategic investment is to stay as one of the major players in the industry. Being the leader is not necessary, but letting the deep core and knowledge in manufacturing to erode is strategic weakness.
Exactly the opposite happened in Russia and other ex-soviet countries. The factories were sold and dismantled under the pretense of “transitioning to market economy”.
That’s exactly the narrative that was used. I guess that’s why Yeltsin was such a good friend to the west and why he’s despised by many Russians.
I mean, sure, many factories were not competitive since they were highly subsidized and faced no competition on internal market. But USSR had an immense R&D potential and engineering education was top-notch.
Price signals following the soviet collapse were non functioning ( see the current oligarchs ). It’s hard to know how many of these factories could have adapted over a slightly longer time frame or with some slight investment restructuring.
When the price of a corporation falls below their paper assets it tends to attract A certain kind of investor disinterested in long term value. I’d venture a good number of soviet parts suppliers saw their revenues dry up when their clients were dismantled, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few such links in the supply chain being dismantled to break the entire supply chain given the level of centralization.
No. There’s significant evidence that sudden overnight market manipulation (e.g. setting exchange parity to the eastern and western Deutsche Mark destroyed all eastern consumer goods industries, which were bought for symbolic sums and then deliberately shuttered.) it’s obvious that any such fundamentalist and radically liberalist policy would have tore through any economy, but the point was to smother Carthage, and sow salt on its ruins
this graph does not take into the account the massive geopolitical difference between ukraine and poland, especially considering poland had far more possibilities in regards to joining and integrating with western european economies compared to ukraine.
Don't forget that prior the collapse of the USSR, ukraine was not an independant country from russia, while poland has always been "independant" during socialist times.
This is not true, several precision mechanics factories (or parts of factories) in Hungary were producing for Western export and yet they let them rot apart.
Same happened in Latvia where the largest soviet chip maker ALFA was dismatled under silly (but efficient) propaganda premises. It was top notch and had great contracts with US and Russia at the moment. Decades later the retired goverment officials confirmed they were "advised" and said "we did not understand what we were doing very much back then". Of course, they were ex-soviet middle level officials and anti soviet activists who suddenly found themselves in power and needed such advices.
The true reason for those who wonder was the fact that ALFA was making electronics for MiG, Su, Tu and for missiles. I had family and friends working there btw.
Indeed. In my hometown - Gyula, Hungary - there was a precision mechanics factory, for phones, faxes, communication relays called Integra. It wasn't huge, employed a couple of hundreds people. In '89, Olivetti bought it for peanuts to close it down.
This was quite a classic move during the "privatisation" in '89-90.
Some fertiliser plants (Achema for example) still rely on exclusively signed contracts with Russia for buying cheap natural gas (its main cost) aka there’s some underwater influence there.
Most of the time with countries not directly aligned to the west, the preaching is for us to sell our strategic industries in name of liberalism and "economic openness", usually spreading lies and misinformation about the company's efficiency. When it's the other way around, it's protectionism and good old Keynesian economics: China can't buy that company, their 5g is evil etc.
I know this first-hand because it has happened to my country each and every time an US backed president was elect. It's happening right now, they're attempting to sell our only semiconductor company.
The Soviet Union was destroyed from within much the same way the 2010s arab springs/ukraine and more recently also tried with HK.
There is a popular myth that 'there was a mighty USSR and some enemies ruined it'.
The Soviet Union collapsed because of massively broken economy. That's just basic science. They exported oil and imported grain. Russia imported GRAIN for gods sake. Then oil prices collapsed. Next? They did nothing and just ate through the resources until they were no more.
And then 'evil liberals/evil west destroying the great country' happened, when finally USSR had no money to pay for the social obligations and for massive military.
This are the undisputed facts, supported by a vast trove of internal documents from the late USSR and first years of the Russian Federations.
A monograph by Egor Gaidar [1] is an excellent source referencing tons of the original documents.
Sorry for Russian, not sure this is available in English anywhere.
I get that it's easier to think that source of our problems is some evil mastermind and conspiracy. But think of the Occam's razor — this is explained much easier by sheer incompetency and stupidity and no checks and balances to mitigate them.
The truth is in between. Was USSR full of internal problems? Yes. Did USA and allies want USSR destroyed and actively work on? Also yes. Saying that Cold War and the arms race had absolutely no role in USSR collapse is either a blatant lie or incompetence.
Exactly. Had the west not interfered, the USSR would recover from the 80s crisis. Instead, they took advantage of its shortcomings and managed to break up the union: Gorbachev is considered by many Russians a traitor, but he was not the only western investment in toppling the Soviet Union.
Let's remind that full-on opening of the market was not what the west promised, but it's what they pushed for once the reforms passed a point of no return and they wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Propaganda is what won the cold war.
I think you miss a crucial fact here - large part of Soviet block was incorporated by force and wanted to get rid of their influence as fast as possible. Nobody misses USRR here in Poland.
Poland is a weird example since it doesn’t seem like they fit in the EU either, almost like an outcast.
But let’s look at other ex-Soviet countries. Territorial quarrels and dumb nationalism were unthinkable back then. Look at Azerbaijani and Armenians, ethnic Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine, Georgia...
If only we ("other ex-Soviet countries") could stop our "dumb nationalism" and go back to being nice "little-brother nations", speaking Russian, fighting Western imperialism together somewhere in Afghanistan after being drafted to glorious Red army... Those where the times, comrade!
Or you can compare countries from a similar regions that decided to stick close to Russia (Ukraine and Belarus) vs countries that decided to stick with the West (Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia).
> Also yes. Saying that Cold War and the arms race had absolutely no role in USSR collapse is either a blatant lie or incompetence.
USSR could've easily continued its existence if it went full "North Korean." Union's army had no problem to force populace to eat grass in case of a complete economic collapse.
I attribute the single most important contribution to Union's collapse to US funding exchange visits for hundreds of USSR's senior officials, and completely nullifying their will to struggle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24728237
The very same thing has happened to China, and Xi is trying hard to undo it.
His message of absolute committment to, and inreversability of "opening up" don't mean anything to 99% of ordinary citizens.
Whom he addresses these messages to are not ordinary Chines, but elites whom he tries to convince to the best of his abilities to not to drop the ball on him, and the system.
> The Soviet Union collapsed because of massively broken economy.
Which was a direct consequence of surreal levels of corruption, incompetence, and double digit percentages of country's GDP coming, and going out of existence annually as a result.
If anybody are to call names, those would've been the most hardcore brezhneviks themselves.
> They did nothing and just ate through the resources until they were no more.
Those resources they ate through -- when were they accumulated? I find it hard to believe that they became a superpower by just coasting on the wealth that existed in 1917.
You seem to forget that oil became an increasingly important resource. And the USSR had a LOT of oil. Look at how Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Norway developed, and then look at the USSR.
> The economic development achieved by the Soviet Union in the first half of its reign was incredible.
That's a regurgitation of a great lie. Krusev indicated in his memoire that economic data of Stalin's years was defying kindergarden level arithmetics, was utter garbage, and he gave few convincing examples of that, and here, I would believe him.
Union's economy saw few ups, and downs during its existence, and those under Stalin, and Breznev were not ups by any extend of imagination.
Up to 40% of the tanks that fought on the Russian side in these battles were supplied by the British. UK provided a huge amount of war material to the USSR that helped keep it in the war.
I do not think that is true. Maybe 40% of the types of tank.
Some facts from Wikipedia: At the opening of operation Barbarosa the Red Army had four to one advantage over the Nazis in tank numbers.
By 1941 lend lease tanks were 6.5% of Soviet tanks, about a quarter of medium and heavy tanks.
Where do you get "up to 40%" from?
Even if true my point still stands.
According t Alex Nove in 1900 there was not a metal lathe in all of Russia. They could de clinker locomotives, but not make a gear box. By 1941 they were out stripping the Germans.
That is the greatest economic achievement of the twentieth century.
(IMO the Bolsheviks were sadistic psychopaths, but credit where credit is due)
> According t Alex Nove in 1900 there was not a metal lathe in all of Russia. They could de clinker locomotives, but not make a gear box. By 1941 they were out stripping the Germans.
Again, you are regurgitating a myth.
I would not doubt the 4 to 1 outgunning of USSR vs. Germany. Indeed Union's army was incomparably materially superior due to decades long total dedication to military buildup, but that does not preclude the fact the industry was still barely going, and that this material advantage melted like butter within first months of war.
The lie is the Soviets were bad economic managers. They pulled off the most incredible feat in industrialising their economy in less than fifty years, more liek twenty five useful years.
The millions of starved peasants, slaughtered "class enemies", exiled dissidents.... They were there too. Not pretty, not moral, not desirable, but incredible achievement nonetheless.
I am not sure, how in the context of such a system "efficiency" can be measured. But in raw capacity there has never been anything like it until the Chinese in the nineties and naughties with their own millions of starved peasants, slaughtered "class enemies", exiled dissidents....
German army mostly found that Union had more soldiers than they had bullets, and that wehrmacht got to Moscow on the fumes.
The "massive industrial advantage" was nothing not to be expected from the most resource rich country on the planet.
Yet, the country was, by all accounts, from both most staunch communist party sources, and contemporary anticommunists, completely incapable of running during the crisis, and "all in" strategy of manufacturing one gun, one tank, one shell, one plane in massive amounts was a result of desperation, not industrial might.
And what was the alternative? The German’s objective was to literally clear the land out for German settlers. By killing everyone inhabiting those lands. For soviets it was a matter of giving at least some chance of survival to women and children they were trying to protect. Imagine all those soldiers who knew they had to sacrifice their lives.
And you try to reduce their bravery to being “Stalin’s targets”.
But never could make consumer goods. When the economy had to pivot to a consumer lead one, they found that all the economists with different ideas had been shot....
Would be interested in links discussing this, if you know good ones (in English!). Who's the anti-Gaidar one should read to see his opponents point of view?
Sadly I don’t know any serious economist who would oppose him. But yes, he was demonized by state run media in the last years and hence is a controversial figure.
> Airbus is absolutely crushing Boeing in terms of quality. Granted, we are woefully behind on the 'space' part of aerospace
Such a hyperbole statement.
Airbus has the edge in the narrowbody aircraft market, especially A321, while Boeing is plagued by 737 MAX problem.
OTOH Airbus is well behind Boeing in the widebody segment. Boeing had 1,464 787 orders as of Aug 2019, 882 of those had been delivered. Airbus had only sold 913 A350. A380 has been discontinued while Boeing can still count on B748 freighter.
Of course 2020 threw a wrench to the airline industry and it remains to be seen how well it will recover post pandemic. Both Airbus and Boeing are affected deeply.
You conveniently forgot the a330 which is Airbus' most successful widebody.
You are right that for now, Boeing is better in widebodies. But let's see Boeing new aircraft program, because currently Airbus is better prepared for the future.
How much of Huawei's research is done in EU? They have at least three research facilities in Sweden alone. Ericsson does a lot of research in the US. All of these companies are global, so to assign their research to only the country where they're headquartered gets a bit nonsensical.
Huawei’s tech is better per $ because they skipped years of R&D that they didn’t have to price in. I remember when their products included Cisco manuals.
> CERN is anchored to the EU. ITER is anchored to the EU.
Anchored, yeah sure. So you're listing something that isn't in the EU, which is revealing. ITER is entirely irrelevant. It's a pork project that won't result in much. The biggest breakthroughs in fusion will derive from smaller projects, not giant slow-moving projects like ITER. The next 20-30 years of energy generation is wind, natural gas, oil, solar, some hydrogen and nuclear (and primarily only China is brave enough to build that). Fusion will make zero contribution in that time.
> BioNtech made the first breakthrough on a COVID vaccine.
Moderna was just as well positioned as BioNtech, you're more than reaching. Russia and China also have apparently successful vaccines being deployed.
> The EU has many issues, but losing leadership in the sectors you mentioned is not one of them.
That's true in the sense that the EU never had leadership in most fields to begin with.
Fusion research needs a lot of money and resources. I honestly doubt it can be done by a startup. Nuclear fission was done by very well funded military research. It is true that China has licensed basically every nuclear design, but France is still a leader in nuclear fission.
I believe that if startups can keep losing billions each year and go public without ever running a profit, then startups may just as well be able to create a fusion power plant.
> Anchored, yeah sure. So you're listing something that isn't in the EU, which is revealing
It is surrounded by EU
countries, in a country that is a pseudo-EU member. You're reaching.
> ITER is entirely irrelevant. It's a pork project that won't result in much.
Unless you have a seer's eye, these kinds of claims are baseless.
> The next 20-30 years of energy generation is wind, natural gas, oil, solar, some hydrogen and nuclear (and primarily only China is brave enough to build that)
Agreed and a sad state of affairs
> Moderna was just as well positioned as BioNtech
Which makes Moderna a leader too? It doesn't diminish BioNtech's work.
> That's true in the sense that the EU never had leadership in most fields to begin with.
You literally had to ignore multiple points in my parent comment to even be able to make this claim. Revealing..
Edit: not to mention we are commenting under an article that partly concerns ASML..
One might wonder if the EU has leadership capacity to be able to maintain domestic strategically important industries.
Generalising from 40 years of EU history, I have little confidence. The top US and East Asian processor and semiconductor companies all are extremely successful in the marketplace, in addition to consuming government subsidies. Fostering a competitive market has not been the EU's forte. Indeed the EU narrates this funding as a need to address a "market failure" [1]. I feel that this is one-dimensional, bur entirely predictable from the structure of EU decision making.
Just today, at midnight, the EU lost ARM and DeepMind as domestic industries.
I know nVidia bought Arm, but what is about DeepMind being lost as domestic industry?
It raises to prominence after becoming a Google wholly owned subdiary. I have repeated multiple times in other comments that DeepMind's success is at least built on top of Google's tech and capital.
Interesringly, Google's tech infrastructure were blueprinted by a lot of pioneers and two of the most well known are Urs Hozle and Luiz André Barroso both are of Eu descentdent.
There is no evidence that whatever DeepMind did can be done with another EU partner. Or even anyone who is not Google, largely thanks to Larry and Sergey's personal tastes and experience. I doubt Msft or Amazon have the right culture for DeepMind.
The whole alphabet thing was engineered to allow independency. So that, among other things, a more pure research org can work without the ever encroaching of the profit driven hands inside Google. Mind you, DeepMind absolutely put itself above Google, or at least firmly distance itself from Google, GCP once proposed to use DeepMind brand in marketing materials, and was sharply rejected citing "conflicting brand images".
Leadership or "leadership"? EU is full of "leaders", those that self-titled as such.
It lacks motivation, there is no SV in Europe because one cannot pay competitively with SV for top talent when you tax to death. It is a lot easier to become a billionaire from real stuff (not manipulating stock markets or other financial trickeries) in US than in EU, so the smart and motivated in EU move to US; what is left is ... what is left: either less motivated or less smart or less both.
The parent is alluding to the notion that govt investment made for sluggish state owned industries which aim to be second and suck the life out of any domestic competition.
There are a variety of ways to cultivate a domestic industry, govt committees directly investing doesn’t seem like the leading candidate can. Trade barriers and state sponsored industrial partnerships.
Underrated comment! If eu has a viable alternative to tsmc, incentive to protect Taiwan diminishes greatly. Then again, Why would the eu care to fight China? EU does not seem interested in using its power to further democracy elsewhere (or even within Europe.... )
We have been trying to help Infineon get onto its own feet for years and years, it just isn't happening. The investment it would take for competing with TSMC would require massive government support with very few benefits. Specialized chips with higher margins but older tech make more sense than mass production with the most advanced process.
Same with solar or battery tech, we have the tech and the people but economically it isn't feasible to have production in the EU.
> No company can make the 5nm litho systems today, and catching up with the decades of R&D they've invested is not feasible. They are the greatest achievement of science and technology on the planet. [0]
Those are some huge claims, which could have previously been said for many currently outdated technologies.
The EU has the tech, but that's not enough. I won't say the whole budget will be wasted away, but I hold no hope of something useful coming out of it.
The EU has ASML, NXP, Infineon, maybe STM (not sure) and a ton of little shops, but all of them are far away from the major players. And they are moderately confortable in their niches. This is a very high risk endeavour, even with EU money.
And as far as I know, none of them manufacture for other end-user players, so even if there was a new fabless company with a cool project, it's likely that wouldn't be made in the EU bu by Samsumg or TSMC.
> .. I won't say the whole budget will be wasted away, but I hold no hope of something useful coming out of it.
The ECB has been buying trillions of euro's worth of dubious government bonds and bank debts for the last couple of years. Also every year the EU pays hundreds of billions worth of subsidies to European farmers so that they are able to sell their goods below global market prices. I would say that this 145 billion is as good an investment if not better than what EU money has been spent on so far.
Central banks and governments pretty much already committed to drive a planned economy. EU subsidises farmers (among others) to sell goods at cheap prices, which causes consumer prices to drop and in the end the ECB says inflation is too low, so let's print money to buy more gov bonds. Governments then use the money to subsidise something else distorting the markets and it loops back to disinflation and the central bank printing even more money.
It's a joke. Might as well just admit, semiconductors or not, the future of the economy is with the politically preselected winners who get the subsidies and the loans. Risk premiums, collateral, macroprudential regulation, insurance and so on is for the peasants.
> The EU has ASML, NXP, Infineon, maybe STM (not sure) and a ton of little shops, but all of them are far away from the major players.
They don't need to become major players for this program to be a major success. Both India's and China's push for a native self-sufficient industrial capabilities have been a huge success in spite of not delivering a cutting edge processor.
Moreover, AMD showed that right now the key factor to develop a product line that dominates all competitors in all categories, from performance to power efficiency and also price, is access to a capable manufacturing hub.
"Sovereignty" is an important concept that dropped out of American discourse in the 1990s. No self-respecting country relies on foreign cryptography to protect its diplomatic communications.
Similarly, no self-respecting country in 2030 will rely entirely on foreign integrated circuits. FPGAs will play an important role for small countries, but large groups like EU can afford to go big.
Sovereignty matters when you can’t trust there won’t be supply disruptions due to war, piracy, or trade intervention.
Post ww2 the US had no reason to be concerned with any of the above in the western world, following the collapse of the USSR this mentality was extended globally with the belief that “we’d reached the end of history”.
As of 2020 I don’t think any major power considers the risk of trade interventions or war to be negligible. The us navy may no longer be capable of ensuring freedom of the seas unilaterally.
There is a lot more to a communication system than the primitives it uses. Even holding primitives constant, there is a lot of room for variation (and bugs and side channels). Recall that one of the early identifiers of equation group was subtracting 0x61C88647 rather than adding 0x9E3779B9 during RC6 key setup [1 p. 28]. So I guess what I'm saying is nations don't just download AES bitstreams off the internet.
>"Both India's and China's push for a native self-sufficient industrial capabilities have been a huge success in spite of not delivering a cutting edge processor."
Could you elaborate on these huge successes in these two countries? I do remember hearing that India had produced a SPARC-based chip.
When you can use the twice the number of transistors and they use 1/3 less power that is a pretty big advantage to work with.
You might have the best car design in world, but if all could use was wood vs someone else who had a crappy design, but had aluminum the crappy designed car might work better.
Not saying this is the case with AMD vs Intel, but right now Intel's manufacturing is hurting them.
ASML is impressive for sure, but having the litho doesn't mean you can make good chips.
As a mediocre analogy, you don't expect to be able to write good novels because you got your hands on a printer.
I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. I don't yet see any other chip company (eg NXP etc) suddenly be the next Intel or AMD yet (let alone the next Apple).
The RISC-V foundation moved to Switzerland primarily to help the big Chinese processor companies to work on RISC-V.
Regarding the EU heavily betting on RISC-V, what gives you confidence that this will work?
The history of EU funded projects to catch up with the US in AI, in cloud computing (like GAIA-X), in quantum computing, in the space race? HPC is not a mass-market, how should this niche be economically viable to amortise the huge cost of processor development? HPC in the US (and other countries) is often connected to military spending (although this is not always openly expressed). Processor development is extremely expensive, to the extent that Intel is now struggling to finance catching up with TSMC's fab process.
Where is the EU's micro-architecture design capacity? ARM is about to be swallowed by Nvidia, and a lot of Arm's micro-architecture development is done in the US already. Now compare the micro-architecture design capacity with that in China (the world's biggest processor market).
I really hope it will work out.
I do too.
Given 40 years of failure to catch up with the US, and now China, I am sceptical! I expect this to end up like previous EU attempts at catching up: the monies available will be much smaller than originally announced (by at least an order of magnitude), spent over much longer a time-frame, but more importantly, mostly flow to existing EU-based companies that are good ad lobbying, e.g. Siemens, and French conglomerates.
Another prediction: China will soon dominate RISC-V, since they are now forced, by US sanctions, to move away from Arm. I cannot see big Chinese processor companies moving to local ISAs such as Loongson. Alibaba announced a RISC-V processor at ICSA this year [2]. The big US players (Intel, AMD, Nvidia) have much less of a need to move to RISC-V.
> The RISC-V foundation moved to Switzerland primarily to help the big Chinese processor companies to work on RISC-V.
Of course. It also removes unnecessary anxiety for the EU that the next ruling power in the US (or elsewhere) may eventually attempt to impose sanctions on the export of the IP. Switzerland, as part of Schengen and Union's single market, fits nearly perfectly into the narrative of European consolidation.
> what gives you confidence that this will work? [...] Where is the EU's micro-architecture design capacity?
I can't see the future, hence I have no confidence. But I express cautious optimism for the following reason: the issue of EU's dependence on some crucial technologies from the third parties is obvious, but there's no direct and quick solution to solve it. The EU can't just turn into venture capital Mecca overnight, the same holds for becoming a low tax heaven. However, the problems/challenges are there, and they must be addressed in the best way under the given circumstances.
The EU has a well-established practice of funding R&D in large areas with non-specific goals or metrics, however this approach is not unique to the EU, it's crucial to the bloc to nourish the interbloc integration and establish logistics between the disparate parts of the market and institutions. It doesn't always lead to unexpected discoveries or breakthrough ventures, but in general it manages the integration task quite well. Which, in turn, contributes to the development of a rich ecosystem. As a tech entrepreneur in the EU, I'm not exactly happy with current affairs, but satisfied with the recognition of my industry's difficulties and proposed attempts to solve them. A failed venture with some new sprouts at worst case, a tangible breakthrough at best.
So far, the EU holds leading position in the lithography systems (ASML). The EU is competitive in radio (Ericsson, Nokia) and embedded (NXP, Infineon, STM) semi manufacturing. There're many blank spaces on the European vertical technology stack, but it's far from a blank slate. This whole commitment is about EU pushing homegrown processor sovereignty across the entire stack. AFAIU, the project puts the focus on HPC as the only specific target platform that needs to be manufactured, but the developments around this project should lay the ecosystem for the boost of the industry as a whole.
Companies such as Apple[1], Microsoft[2], Amazon[3], Google[3], and especially fresh start-ups like Nuvia[4] and Ampere[5] — are working on new ARM-based CPU designs, while SiFive[6] and some others on RISC-V. Also, I'd speculate that AMD and Intel will have to consider switching from the X86 in the foreseeable future. Now is the best possible time for venture into the semiconductor industry in the past few decades. I don't underestimate the complexity of the task. But perhaps a fraction of €145bn would be enough to plant a seed of a viable EU-based CPU semi enterprise; or is it definitely a doomed undertaking, eh? Maybe that French SiPearl[7] or some other company will take chances, we shall see.
The foundation just coordinates the standards process and sets rules for using the trademark. It has a tiny budget and few staff. All substantive R&D is done by its members, which are companies of various size with headquarters in various countries: https://riscv.org/members/
Changing where the foundation is incorporated doesn’t change where this R&D happens.
ARM IP, even full architectural license, is relatively small percentage of the cost of a semiconductor. Know-how for fables microarchitecture designs is widely distributed. Most fabless work goes to specialized asics.
It's the inability for SMIC to obtain EUV lithography equipment for their sub-7nm process technologies from ASML that prevents China from getting into high-end semiconductors, not the domestic microarchitecture know-how.
Here is an interesting question: how long will it take China to catch up? I predict 10 years! The Chinese government sees a leading position in semi manufacture as being of extreme strategic importance. There are several reasons why I think China will succeed other than government strategy: the size of the Chinese market (already the biggest processor market in the world), the ease with which Taiwanese semi expertise can be brought to China (legally, salaries are just higher in Shanghai than in Taipei).
I think they squandered that recently. We will see with Biden but the Trump administration basically encouraged Brexit and repeatedly adopted anti-
EU positions in key geopolitical issues (Syria, NATO, Iran, Israel, and Ukraine). These things come with a cost and the EU will try to rectify this. Enhancing Chinas CPU tech by a few generations might be worth it if it can advance EU interests and ensure future good-faith from a supposed ally.
Enhancing China’s CPU tech even a single generation is in the EU’s interest in exactly 0 alternate universes, along with this one.
As long as the US has the world’s only reserve currency and as long as the EU economy - especially the productive bit in the North - is built on exporting to the all-powerful US consumer, the EU has very little leverage in its affairs with the US.
Yeah but that's ARM IP though. There's a window of opportunity with RISC V, but something tells me that the fact it's open source rubs against some people.
No it hasn't, and the type of deal it is going to get looks likely to be different under Biden than under Trump. I think your point is relevant regarding ARM-Nvidia, as semiconductor technology has tended to be the subject of trade barriers, and is seen as a strategic national asset.
Yeah that’s what I was kind of getting at ... great British success story, bought by SoftBank Japan coincidentally straight after Brexit. Would have been a good asset to have in trade negotiations. The sale to US based Nvidia 3 months ago is an interesting twist that would have gone against the EU had Trump won again.
> I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning
Worth noting the Sophia Antipolis arm design centre in France continues to exist. It works on some of the big A-class cores (The A75 for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A75).
Though whether arm would get involved in this endeavour is another question. They have a significant physical IP portfolio: https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-physical and associated skillsets (I think at least some of this is UK based, not entirely sure how much) so would be a good partner to have and I suspect arm would like to see arm cores coming out as test designs rather than RISC-V cores. Of course in the wake of brexit potentially not a partnership the EU wants politically! UK government would spin it as UK company plays key part in major EU initiative with significant funding awarded. EU would spin it as EU brings in major global semiconductor company to new semiconductor initiative.
The company has offices and design centres in Copenhagen in Denmark; Oulu in Finland; Sophia Antipolis in France; Grasbrunn in Germany; Budapest in Hungary; Galway in Ireland; Trondheim in Norway; Katowice in Poland; Sentjernej in Slovenia; Lund in Sweden.
Your analogy works if ASML makes the only printer that can print the letter 'S'. Without it, you can't print and sell the books, regardless of who the author is.
The previous top model NXE:3400B, "weighs 180 tons and needs 20 trucks or three fully loaded Boeing 747s for shipment. The price tag is $120 million." [1]
Most of that is packaging, seriously. The purity requirements and vibrational limits for those parts are very high.
ASML has plans to get into sub 1nm level. 2nm and 1.5 nm is already in the pipeline.
The technology high-NA EUV (high Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet) becomes just insane. Mirror manufacturing process requires atomic scale corrections and the whole metrology is moved into vacuum.
The limit for mass production is measuring and calibration. The measurement accuracy is comparable or exeeding Large Hadron Collideror gravitational-wave astronomy. The speed (wafers per hour) must eventually slow down, requiring more machines and making the process more expensive. Then Moore's law finally dies due to the cost.
> At its most sensitive state, LIGO will be able to detect a change in distance between its mirrors 1/10,000th the width of a proton! This is equivalent to measuring the distance to the nearest star (some 4.2 light years away) to an accuracy smaller than the width of a human hair.
I’ve heard this often repeated claim about ASML owning the core tech behind TSMC’s 5nm process. However if it was just a question of buying N 200 million dollar machines to launch a 5nm foundry wouldn’t we see dozens of 5nm competitors? Why hasn’t intel , apple, Samsung, or AMD shelled out for 10?
Given the size of this commitment it seems clear that there is a lot more to 5nm than the lithography machine.
It also adds the question what ASML has to gain from handing over their technical advantage to some local gov effort.
I mean they can get paid but there’s a ton of other companies not starting from scratch they can also make billions off of so I don’t see why some geographic thing is some huge advantage for EU.
They already operate in a highly lucrative global market with companies who don’t need to figure anything out.
If anything this should be expansion capital or efforts to build more factories locally. Not trying to do it themselves.
But hey what do I know. I don’t have multiple countries with lagging tech interests in mind with lots of money to burn.
Yes there is whole part of equation that has nothing to do with ASML. But the point, to over simplify things a lot was that without ASML there are currently zero chance you could get leading edge node working. But even with it you have barely started.
Reminds me of when I saw the customs declaration they had to make for the Troll oil platform[1]. It was "a thing" made here in the country, and it was being transported out of the country, so of course they had to customs declare it...
The declaration essentially said "one oil platform, unpackaged".
There was a suitable tariff code for it, but the value of it was so great the electronic customs declaration system couldn't handle all the digits.
Instead they had to write the value as a free-text comment.
Most gigantic blast furnaces, or hydraulic instruments on record if you correct for inflation? Though, most things like these made little sense economically even back in the days they were built.
Fascinating. Had to look it up — the photos of it are mind boggling.
I have to say though, from Wikipedia, sounds like there are only a few of them? Sort of one-offs, each of them (so to speak). I kind of think that might disqualify them.
(I know this comment is not exactly in the mood of HN, but this is the one thing I never fail to think of when someone mentions the Bagger family of murderous machines!)
Yes. The correct term for TSMC should be GigaFab, which was used long before Elon coined GigaFactory.
It was named as such because of the scale and capacity of those Fab as compared to other pure play competitor. It was also one reason how TSMC manage to win by Economy of Scale.
ASML is the world's largest photolithography systems manufacturer and the only one producing extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. These EUV scanners are expensive as hell. Last years model costs $120 million per piece and you need 10-15 of them for TSMC gigafactory.
TWINSCAN NXE:3400C (7 and 5 nm nodes, >170 wafers per hour) is probably the most expensive machine in the world.