| ▲ | HPsquared 2 days ago |
| Semiconductor fabs involve a lot of hazardous chemicals, process changes and high energy consumption. Exactly the kind of thing European regulations tend to deter or slow down. Which is somewhat fine if there is nowhere else to build it, but if other places are easier, well... |
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| ▲ | tgsovlerkhgsel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| What is so energy consuming around fabs? The light source? I always thought of these as high-precision, not-too-high-volume processes and would have expected energy requirements to be lower than e.g. a car factory (or similar to e.g. a mall) and completely negligible on a national grid scale or compared to something like a smelter or lignite mine. Edit: AI claims HVAC and air filtering/handling can be 40-50% of energy usage. Plus a megawatt per EUV scanner (ok, the latter matches what I would have guessed, but compared to the 16 MW of a single large bucket wheel excavator or estimates I've seen for large shopping malls, that's not that insane either). |
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| ▲ | whateverboat 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | TSMC's Arizona fab needs 200MW of electricity. But even more importantly, they need 2 separate completely independent substation feeds, since a 15 second interruption can cause 0.1B Euro of losses. Finally, and here is where Europe really really suffers, generally you need these things to be planned, approved and built within a year. | |
| ▲ | tyre 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Check out asianometry on YouTube for deep dives into many parts of semiconductor manufacturing, including the lithography processes ASML uses. |
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| ▲ | whateverboat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Life cycle of the fab is 3-5 years, an opimistic estimate of slow down in europe due to all the paper work is 2-3 years, so then you would rather not build the plant. |
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| ▲ | l5870uoo9y a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > high energy consumption Just to address this separately: there is effectively energy rationing in several European countries, where the government intervenes to prioritize who should receive energy first (e.g., the Netherlands and Denmark). |
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| ▲ | radicalbyte 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | AFAIK the problem in NL is due to chronic underinvestment in the grid infrastructure since the big privatisation wave. Combined with the heavy subsidy of industry causing the issues. Solvable but we need to be much smarter and redirect the fossil subsidies to reducing risk for grid-scale batteries and adding more grid capacity. | | |
| ▲ | rapnie 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I wonder. Had any privatisation in NL any net benefits for the population? Not talking shareholder revenues. |
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| ▲ | vovavili a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A consequence of a totally self-imposed handicap. | |
| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Most fabs build their own separate power grid. And Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are also energy poor states that have been able to maintain capacity. The energy excuse is true for some manufacturing processes like automotive in CEE which were pants that were built in the 1990s to 2000s and leveraged Russian ONG, but is a red herring for a lot of other manufacturing processes in Europe. European states have a coordination problem as Draghi pointed out 2 years ago. | | |
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| ▲ | piltdownman 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I mean Ireland has some of the most strenuous regulations in this regard, with dozens of data centres blocked over planning and environmental impact assessments. Despite this Intel still put €30 billion in turning a 360-acre former stud farm in Kildare into a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility, powered entirely by green energy, and acting a key location for production of Intel’s 14nm process technology. They currently pull 1,677,197 MWh/year from our grid. More to the point, from 2019 they built €17 billion new fab development which doubled the manufacturing capacity available in Ireland and enabled the production of Intel 4, the company’s most advanced process technology. |
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| ▲ | mikeyouse a day ago | parent | next [-] | | For better or worse, Ireland’s extremely lax tax rules resulted in a ton of multinational corporate cash ‘stuck’ there with companies having the option of spending there roughly tax free or repatriating back to the US at some rate higher than that. It also really helps sell the ‘of course an Irish subsidiary owns all of our IP’ tax claims if there is actual spending there, hence you got all the pharma investment and the capital projects from others like Intel and Apple. | | |
| ▲ | piltdownman a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Rather the US lax rules regarding their own enforcement. The Double Irish (& Dutch Sandwich) where Companies routed profits through two Irish-registered subsidiaries, attributing intellectual property royalties to a management seat in a tax haven like Bermuda, is closed since 2015. Subsequent sequential mismatch structures (the "Single Malt" tool) that replaced the Double Irish for certain firms using non-EU residency loops were also banned. Finally there's a 12.5% charge on unrealized capital gains when a company moves its assets or tax residency out of Ireland. The headline tax rate and the effective tax rate are also very different things. France's effective corporate tax rate was actually lower than Irelands - but France is an absolutely brutal place to do business in for employers and they've comparatively no english-language tech FDI to speak of. | |
| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | "Trapped capital" is not why Intel has doubled down on Ireland. It's because whenever Intel asks for anything, the Taoiseach, IDA, and Invest Ireland will move mountains to do it. Ireland is extremely business friendly because their leadership actually listens to industry. | | |
| ▲ | piltdownman a day ago | parent [-] | | While I agree completely with you regarding how we handle FDI, the role of Enterprise Ireland, and that our ability to act as an educated, stable and culturally compatible western european base for US industry is not to be understated, the Intel situation in particular has its own special nuance. This is where the 'Inside Tennis' knowledge of the Irish Tech industry from someone working within it comes in handy. Enter the 21st Century Luddite, Thomas Reid, from stage left. Thomas is an eccentric, independent bachelor farmer whose family has owned a 72-acre farm next to Intel's Leixlip manufacturing campus for generations. Ireland’s State Industrial Development Agency (IDA) attempted to use a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) to buy Reid's land so that Intel could proceed with a multi-billion euro expansion of its microchip production plant. The land was valued at €5 million. During the negotiations that followed, the farmer was reportedly offered in the region of €10 million. He turned it down. Reid had no interest in being a millionaire. Instead, he continued to live on-site without a telephone or modern amenities while taking on Intel and the state alone. The battle culminated in a landmark legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Ireland, where Reid ultimately won a historic victory against corporate overreach and protected his property rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Battle_of_Thomas_Re... https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/3s4bg1/how_a_farme... https://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/inte... https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/1102/1003311-the-lonely-batt... | | |
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| ▲ | upupupandaway a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | >construction kicked off in 2019 on a €17 billion new fab development which will double I think what the OP wanted to highlight is right here: in China or Taiwan etc. this would not have taken 7 years. | | |
| ▲ | piltdownman a day ago | parent [-] | | I mixed up a tense or two there. It was done in 4 years, even accounting for Covid. The timeline looks like this 2019: Kick-off 2020: Construction in Ireland basically halted due to Lockdown for 18 months Q3'2023: Fab 34 begins running a ‘First Full Loop’ of silicon Q4'2023: Fab 34 completed. Doubles the manufacturing capacity available in Ireland, enabling the production of Intel 4 and Intel 3, some of the company’s most advanced process technologies, and the first to incorporate EUV lithography 2024: Intel sold 49% stake to Apollo GM for $11.2bn 2026: Intel buys back stake for $14.2bn Q2'2026: Intel announce a further $5.7bn investment to upgrade existing capacity for server chips, slated for completion by late 2027 |
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| ▲ | Zagitta 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Everyone loves a good race to the bottom with the environment |
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| ▲ | alephnerd 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the US all share comparable living standards to Western European states yet are able to maintain and expand semiconductor manufacturing. The issue is with policymaking - coordination between the EU, national, and local governments is weak so high capex projects become risky. Edit: can't reply > Your first 3 countries are also incredibly poor comparisons for living standards as they have horrendous work/life balance. Their hours worked are comparable to most Western European states as well now [0]. Germany is unique in Europe based on hours worked, and is why German industry is pushing to bring back the 40 hour work week. [0] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html | | |
| ▲ | Zagitta a day ago | parent | next [-] | | So now we're suddenly talking about living standards and not environmental regulation? Your first 3 countries are also incredibly poor comparisons for living standards as they have horrendous work/life balance. | |
| ▲ | throwaway132448 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > comparable living standards So vague as to be utterly meaningless. And slow moving regulation literally incentivises high capex long-horizon investment. | | |
| ▲ | karahime a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think it's that vague. I've lived in both Europe and the US, in several places, and both have a wide range. What I will say is that I don't think Europe is better off for the times that it has thrown up roadblocks. Also, slow moving, stable regulation can be better than arbitrary flippancy, but that doesn't mean it directly incentivizes investment, it just means the investment already incentivized by demand can proceed with more confidence that it won't have the rug pulled out from under it, assuming the regulations didn't discourage a tentative proposal in the first place. | |
| ▲ | upupupandaway a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >And slow moving regulation literally incentivises high capex long-horizon investment. What? | | |
| ▲ | CamperBob2 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | No one wants to invest a lot of money into something that might be illegal tomorrow. (Do you?) |
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| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | HDI is a good metric for gauging living standards [0] And slow moving execution and creation of relevant legislation is a hindrance for capex in high risk projects like those in the semiconductor segment. The Draghi report was published 2 years ago, and remains largely unimplemented. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... |
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| ▲ | varispeed 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If something needs to be done, then these rules are a bit pointless if corporation can just do it in another country. It means the EU simply assists in poisoning poorer countries. If they were serious, then they would have banned chips made using those processes altogether. If they cannot do that, then that regulation is pointless virtue signalling. |
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| ▲ | cromka a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is some ridiculous speculation, we do plenty of such critical manufacturing in EU. Regulations is not why we don't make highly-integrated chips here. |
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| ▲ | scotty79 a day ago | parent [-] | | Why then? | | |
| ▲ | cromka 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Lately specifically because of Intel having financial issues, they already started building their fabs in Dresden and Wrocław when they cancelled last minute. This was strategically planned with EU as part of bringing back production locally, similar to CHIPS Act in the US. | |
| ▲ | mdp2021 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | A probably non negligible weight is that decadence is bearish. Those alive invest in long term planning, those with a dead drive get conservative in their action. |
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