Why Europe Lost Semiconductors 

typical ...

Ah yes,.. I had a little book to translate those words to English.

@@user-er8tr9kt8l I worked at an artificial French data company. I couldnt read with a guy around 1990

@@chubbymoth5810 I believe he did too; but it slowed down skimming, so he only used it when nothing else showed up.

who else but the french..... If you're targeting the global market, use English. Otherwise, be grateful for your local market's demand.

You need guys like Steve Jobs, arguably he was a complete git, but his talent for seeing the potential of any given technology is second to none. Apple was dynamic and exciting under his leadership, today they simply incrementally improve their range of products and don't really innovate because they have lost that keen eye that spots new opportunities. The rule of economics is that if you can't compete, you shouldn't bother. That's why Asia stole the market as they could outcompete everyone else and Philips, Siemens and AEG who were major innovators in their day all gave up trying because the results were not there. But then even Asia is slipping, Sony used to be the company that released nothing but exciting new products and now they are just like any other manufacturer, Samsung took over, but now they are slipping too.

make no mistake though, siemens are still incredibly massive.

@@rotwang2000 Instead we have MBA idiots like the ones at Philips. Great products, but no, "we need to focus on our core business", which they decided was medical, at the time a promising division within the company. Fast forward a bit, and we see them getting wiped out by a single recall on sleep apnea machines.

@@laindump911 Indeed but some years ago Siemens was this: They built the power plant with turbine and generators, all the transformers and switching gear. This power runs to trains built by Siemens where the restaurants use Siemens kettles using Siemens ICs. Energy (above medium voltage) is now Siemens Energy. The household appliances marketed as Siemens are Bosch. The ICs are now Infineon. Their focus is clearly industrial automation today but it's nothing compared to their former glory.

@@rotwang2000 Yes, these companies need to be more dynamic and work with a vision in mind instead of just the next project.

As a 60+ year old U.S. citizen we replaced most skill sets with drug zombies that are government employees.😢😢

This sounds very shortsighted, basically no workforce to maintain all the electronics running around. Forsee all companies charging a premium to French costumers for repairs. Could be a good time to open a electronics workshop in France a la Louis Rossmann?

I have a GEC GET-1 transistor still in its original sealed packaging.

@@v8pilot Nice, I have a bag of EW53's which were early development transistors, amazingly they still test good.

@@v8pilot I have original photo slides from their marketing office from back then. GET1 must be from around 1954, in 54 the total transistor production in the USA was around 1 million units ! 30 million by 1957.

suuure. Do you really expect people to believe you?

Why you lying? @simonhanlon

NXP is also good, and BOSCH makes great automotive chips, though small production volume

Europe probably has success with smaller markets where they don't have to compete with cheaper manufacturers in Asia because Asia can make the IC 3 cents cheaper on a $7.85 IC. These smaller markets will care less about saving 3 cents and will rather care about parameters like support, reliability and other parameters more important for industrial applications.

@@joaquimbarbosa896 BOSCH is a market and technology leader in MEMS. You find a BOSCH sensor chip in every iPhone. There is just not so much ado about it.

@@Henning_Rech I know, though again, the production volumes are not anything impressive, the quality of their semiconductors are impressive

STM is good at power ICs? Their datasheets are bad and I am unsure about the quality of their high voltage ICs.

Software is sadly lost because there is no way to get similar funds here than the us.

"an underinvestment towards disruptive technology is absolutely on point." This is actually something the politicians, who allocate the money for funding, but they don't know how to do it/solve it.

@@autohmae, "the politicians, who allocate the money for funding" - they are social idiots (puppets) who are not allowed to touch money. Money is allocated by conceptually powerful (subjects of global politics and globalization) - the global predictor or bolsheviks.

Europeans are more obsessed with flag waving and who made what first than disruptions. Also, the egalitarianist mentality suppresses disruptions.

It is the same with ESA, we got 25% of the NASA budget so we are extremly limitead in what we are able to do. Though our politicians does not want to take risks so we will never get rewards because of it. The more risk we take the higher the reward, though the reason why we do not take risks is because of stupid nationalism. Primary because we refuses to pull the resources necessary to get the ball moving. Our combined gdp gives us a 21 trillion dollar economy to play with while a divided EU gives us only 4 trillion dollar economy to play with(germany). Everything takes a certain amount of resource investment, its just that we need to actually invest those resources to get there. The only way for that to happen is to get rid of idiotic nationalism so that it becomes easier to get a joint effort working. What I guess will happen is that every EU nation will invest in its own fabrication and it will result in no nation getting enough resources to actually build the necessary infrastructure since we will divide up the resources to a extreme extent. If we had a smaller EU I think coordination is a lot easier which would make it possible to get the concentration of resources to be able to achieve that goal.

I LOVE angel food cake. 🙂

The commercial type is more like polyurethane foam than anything edible -- you have to make it at home. It uses a lot of egg whites beaten to stiff peaks with the dry ingredients carefully folded in to avoid squishing all the air out and gets turned upside-down in a special pan to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight as it cools.

yeah, not everything runs on top-of-the-line processors; 5g/6g chips, rf-mems, analog circuitry from IHP Germany, photonics from VIGO Poland... it's not like europe lost on anything, they have their own market, and are increasing their share every year

Renesas Electronics in Japan is the world's largest designer and maker of microcontrollers.

Just like there are companies beyong ASML, NXP, ST Microelectronics and ARM in Europe, there are companies beyong SMIC, TSMC, MediaTek, Nikkon, Tokyo Electron, Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcom, AMD, Apple, Nikon, Canon.

There`s a place in the the UK where I worked that makes space chips still.

@@himanshusingh5214 Nope, NXP has larger market share. 2021: NXP: 17.3% Renesas: 16.8% STMicro: 15.4% Infineon: 13.9% Microchip: 12.6% TI: 6.9% The rest of the list have market share of 2% or less. With 3 of the top 5 MCU manufacturers being European, I’d say they’re not doing that bad…

I always wondered if the EU would have combined forces in a similar way to Japan and how the US did it. I'm curious if this would have changed the industry In a dream it would be an EU R&D but the findings would be shared among the countries. With I guess a limit on dropping out of the EU just to take advantage of other sister states. Anyway... Just curious if a alternative timeline would have been interesting to see what would have actually transpired

@@nomore-constipation The margins are too low, better outsourcing it. You can better invest in ASML, patents that are profitable.

Yes. Someday if I can get the time ...

@@Asianometry you have until the end of the universe to make them. Sooner would be better.

Yes. Plz.

I would include in the confusion the French Sesco. At some point SescoSEM. A connection to Italian company and politics by the French government. Eventually the the SGS Thomson. My personal memory about Sesco was that we used some of their products, above all their Unijunction transistors and 2N692 SCRs. I also remember how I used to study Sesco data sheets and still occasionally argue with my American friends that I understand just a little French strictly because in technical terms it is so close to English. They react quickly that I am totally wrong. That being what it is, I would add some more European semiconductor manufacturing history out of my memory. Swedish ASEA had some high power diodes, which they presumably developed for their electric locomotives. Same happened in Switzerland, by Brown Bovery. Siemens had some big SCRs. Regarding SCR support, Siemens published an excellent handbook that along with a similar book by Westinghouse was the "bible" of SCR applications.

Also the implosion of the GDRs ROBOTRON is chapter worth mentioning.

You make an important point. Production numbers in terms of how many chips you make don't mean much. More important is who owns the technology. The technology to make the machines that produce chips is ASML and is based in The Netherlands. They control 80-90% of the total world market of the production of chip making machines.

Infineon struggled with memory....but bought Cyprus Semi and International Semi among others. Having a stable markets seems to be very elusive for the europeans, especially with their current politicians. expecting them to loose even more relevance.

Daniël Mantione TSMC is basically Philips Taipei, outsourcing it all. EUV, Japan was not able to do it themselves, ASML did the masks and all, the laser, wow ! semiconductors, outsourcing it all !

Yes, Siemens has always been largely a B2B company, even in the S&H days. I'd also mention their industrial automation division, which might not have invented PLCs proper, but they have had several of the most popular lines, and the supply chain of Siemens Automation is and remains euro-based to a surprising degree. Their stuff is ubiquitous in specialty machine building, both in the EU and globally. And of course their other divisions, particularly Energy, draw from that, too.

Infineon is a spin-off from Siemens. Siemens tried to compete in memories, but gave up to Infineon; later, Infineon gave way to Qimonda for the memories, and Qimonda went bankrupt in 2009.

Siemens dealt with consumer electronics by just buying them from others and slapping on their own brand or having joint ventures (such as with Bosch for somewhat dubious white goods).

@@mjouwbuis Bosch-Siemens Hausgeräte is not “dubious”, it’s considered a quite good manufacturer.

Basically Siemens is a German version of a industrial zaibatsu.

No information about those insane conspiracy theories are available in anything but Italian because no one outside of Italy cares. In Sweden there's a guy named Håkan Lans who supposedly invented color graphics (despite the fact that it was already available commercially when he supposedly did) and he has gotten a lot of publicity for his stories, but no one outside of Sweden cares.

I can only highly recommend Technology Connections channel to that

Also NatSemi who are now a part of TI. Could possibly also mention Analog Devices and Linear Technology.

Not to exclude the fact that TI has also had multiple manufacturing sites in Europe over the years, and still has manufacturing in Germany, I believe.

Are they still alive? Haven't heard anything from them since the 80's

Who, TI? Yes, they are. Open up a piece of electronic equipment and you'll probably find a lot of the support components like voltage regulators, op amps, battery chargers and microcontrollers with their logos on.

@@larryc1616 Not just alive, but its stock has grown multiple times past decade, and in the recent years it was considerably more resilient than that of most other large tech companies. It's just that B2B companies are considerably less often talked on in the media.

The top management at DEC was quite old-fashioned, and they failed to adapt to the evolving conditions. The company did have a very innovative high-performance workstation microprocessor (DEC Alpha), but they did not successfully pivot towards it. At the end, Compaq bought them for their large sales/service network, not for their technology. Very sad. DEC was a remarkable company.

They're all failures or b-level including Intel. Only TSMC and Samsung will live and thrive for the next +10years ✨️

Yep, WW2 already ruined Europe and governments had to face challenges the US never had.

Yeah, even though Japan had two nukes dropped on it, it actually pales in comparison to the entire continent that was demolished twice in 40 years. China is the only other region that was as thoroughly ruined as Europe in the same time period (aside from the usual colonial shenanigans the kept and keep Africa from attaining any domestic wealth). The fact that Europe had any skin in the game within 20 years of being completely flattened (and converted for warfare where still standing) is a testament to its academic robustness and industrial resilience

@@TAP7a destroyed buildings means little. What's in the brains of people are more important.

well, you need govt funding to bootstrap to a viable level. you then need to chart a path to profitability minus subsidy. so, chip companies use the funding to get a basis of expertise and a niche that makes money, but have to reinvest so that losing the subsidy doesn't kill them. likewise, the a380 is nice for bragging rights, but if it's more effective to get a bunch of 737 sized things that run efficiently, do that instead

If you live under the Heathrow flight path then the A380 is understandable. I am sure other European capitals are not too different.

Chinese solar Industry, battery industry, display and semiconductor Industries were funded by government until they turned profitable.

@@dercooney A similar issue is now happening with container ships. Size has increased to the point where scale becomes a liability. While moving a massive volume of containers in one ship is great, any issue leads to serious problems. Some are calling for a return to smaller ships, but faster and with more redundancy.

The A380 was more of a prestige project to finally close the gap or even surpass Boing. The A380 was also meant, to enable the seemingly emerging "hub-and-spoke" model in aviation travel routes at the time. Though these market expectations simply didn't came to pass for several compounding reasons. Nevertheless it did gain Airbus alot of attention and in the meantime their more conventional sized and marketed Models like the A320/A321, A330 A350, etc. became very successfull in their own right, and are receiving regularly undergoing further modernization/updates. Partially due to Boeings continueing and seemingly deepening crisis after they've encountered failure after failure for several years now, Airbus in reverse, is doing extremely well right now and have a huge backlog in orders. Taken on its own, Airbus has more than catched up to Boeing's cpabailities and is well positioned to expand their different divisions' product portfolio and market share and crucially also invest a lot into further RnD. Especially their defense division will probably grow a lot in the coming years and with several new projects under development, such as a major component for the upcomming FCAS air-combat system and further growth of their helicopter business. SAF and Hydrogen propulsion are also under active development.

And combined with butter cream frosting, it's a taste of heaven. Get your hands on a recipe and make it if you've never had it. You won't be disappointed.

I think he was being sarcastic. Jiggly japanese cheesecakes have been the rage for some time now.

I always asked for confety Angel Food cake for my bdays. Great w whipped cream, icecream, raspberry (the juice bleeds int the cake perfectly), or pretty much any addon you would wish. It can easily 'fall' while baking tho, which is why it has its own specific 2-piece baking pan.

A sweet whipped egg white cake

It's a reference to a verse of Ecclesiastes; whoever casts his bread upon the water will find it again after many days. In other words investing money is a good idea.

I've seen Chinese made home appliances in Taiwan with the Telefunken brand name

Anything from Philips is basically the same fake "joint venture" stuff too

Luxor is owned by the same Turkish company.

@doalwa I saw a WW2 documentary and hitler was making a speech and there was telefunken branded microphones , I think that's where I recognize😐 the brand

High end microphones are still being sold under the Telefunken brand world wide. The company is American and is called Telefunken Elektroakustik.

Haha it's the German way of doing things. "Das haben wir schon immer so gemacht" "Das haben wir noch nie so gemacht"

Well said

To explain it to a non-American. It tastes like *freedom*, which is a poor phrase to choose because non-Americans could never grasp the concept of freedom.

@@MissourHanzai - Your comment is not just stupid but also xenophobic. Freedom is not a SUV, it's more like a bycicle. Also when you say "America", I'm guessing you mean Mexico or Brazil, right?

@@LuisAldamiz Nah, greater Israel.

It's not to everybody's taste, it is different, but everybody who likes cake ought to try it once at least.

Casting your bread on the water is reference from the Bible that says "cast your bread upon the water and after many days, it will return to you".

I can't believe I've never thought about the symmetry of the cake names before. Was one invented before the other? Did someone eat a devil's food cake and set out to create an exact opposite cake. A quick google comes up with stories but very little verifiable info. Someone please waste a couple weeks of your life in research and post a deep dive video on the subject. thanks

not that mysterious - toss something basic, get back the fancy

@@joekennedy4093 The most I heard on the subject is is the Good eats episode on it, which pretty much starts with a skit of someone inventing the angel food cake after being beaten by a devil cake at a county fair. No clue where he got it from, though. Sometimes you can find interesting stories for the name; others just get a the first one to come to mind, like the opposite of Devil food cake would be...

culture peculiarity which cannot be copied by other countries. similar to japan

Well, I’d say this: plenty of university research; a culture of attention to detail; willingness to look at longer-term planning. These traits are shared by the Swiss and Japanese, too, for example. Germany continues to be a major manufacturer; for example, the actual liquid crystals used in LCD displays are mostly supplied by BASF in Germany. Germany and Switzerland are major manufacturers of advanced industrial automation gear, but moreover, they both are major manufacturers of high-tech materials, precision parts, and tooling used by manufacturers all over the world. So their products are often “invisible”.

lotsa fancy words..

Scarcity of natural ressources within their national border and the fact that education and scientific research were valuated extremely high. Combine that with the strong urge in the past centuries to become a superior military power in the world and funding would be agreed on more easily then in today's Germany. That's also why during the world war periods so many technology innovations or inventions came out of Germany. It also shows some similarities to the post WWII technology culture in the US which, as it was shown in this video, was primilarily driven by big military spending compared to other countries.

they used the blood of jews and soldiers leftover from the war to conduct research. it was effective

Telegraph to the universal SMS protocol language over GSM Gen1 FRAUNHOFER are specific Social Government Projects, why you need them ? Protocols is better, try to do messages over GSM ! What impact it was ....

The problem is that people confuse geography and organization, or use Europe and the eu interchangeable even though they are not!

And there's this small little dot right in the middle of the EU ... I think it's called Switzerland ... being Swiss I just thought I'd mention it as well, although we have absolutely nothing to do with the semiconductor industry, as far as I know ...

People routinely mix up America and the USA and nobody bats an eye.

It is a group of islands voluntarily isolated from the European continent. Other than Switzerland. Micronas Holding was a Swiss semiconductor company, while more a holding, e. g. of the former Intermetall site (mentionend in the video) in Freiburg/Germany, before the company was sold to TDK/Japan. They produce Hall sensors for the automotive industry in Freiburg.

Given the UK is no longer part of the EU, it, and it’s computing history, were outside the scope of this video.

It appears you missed the beginning of the video where he said that UK was not covered due to Brexit. There will be another video later on UK.

@@stevewilson6193 Also, there was already a separate video about the UK and why the UK semiconductor (or computer, I am not sure) industry failed.

@@mrb692 For the period covered by this video, the UK was very much within the scope of this, evidenced by Siemen's, Philips' and Fujitsu's investments during the 5th gen/Alvey project. Something that Philips Semi directly benefitted from, and lead to the creation of the spin-off ASML (where I had some involvement). I agree that Brexit has essentially closed off any future participation, but the sheep have spoken.

So it's simply a copper oxide diode with the trademark westector

@@BD-cm7xc Yes. WESTinghouse detECTOR. The one pictured is a double diode (which I have never seen myself). Usually they were single diodes. With several of the copper oxidised disks in series, the voltage rating was reasonably high. My copy of "Wireless World Valve Data" (1957) lists twenty or more types, ranging from W1 (piv = 6V)...W15 (piv = 90V). 50µA reverse current at piv. 5mA forward current at +2.4V for type W1. My guess is that the number following the "W" in the type number indicates the number of copper discs in the unit. Also types WX1 ...WX15 with smaller forward current and smaller reverse current. Their use is listed as "Detectors, a.g.c noise suppressors, clippers, etc".

Yes, Europeans have quite a history of doing catching-up subsidy programs. Most recent ones are probably the attempts to get ahead in AI and battery manufacturing

A lot of them are made in Asia now though (mostly China).

@@nicholasvinen Are you sure? As Nxp does have 2 fabs right here in The Netherlands. 🤷‍♂

@@FullFledged2010 you're right, also Germany, China, Malaysia and Philippines. I know they have significant investment in China but I don't know what percentage of the products come from where. I tried to find out but it seems I need to actually buy the chips before I get the information on where they were made...

@@nicholasvinen Well Actually i've worked at NXP Nijmegen. They do have fabs in the US. But never heard anything about china 🤷‍♂

And gigantic military budgets, too. I think it boils down to disruptive innovation being implicitly disincentivized in planned economy (hard to plan around something that doesn't exist yet). So by the end of the 1960s USSR government abandoned most domestic R&D (10+ incompatible architectures) and focused on building compatible System/360 replicas.

Particle physicists had quite a demand for ICs - I took a course in VLSI chip design at a European university and that was hosted by the High Energy Physics department. They did have the commercial design software which they not only used for teaching but also making special mixed signal chips for detectors in accelerators. But the people doing this are of course specialised in that. Production was contracted out to commercial chipmakers.

Why? Tell us

​ @Larry C Taiwan TSMC paid very well, but the staffs work their head off, almost like lifeless if one work for TSMC, basally the staff is sleep and work only, don't be surprise if they have 12 hours work shift, because of these hard working staffs, this is what make TSMC so successful, it is extremely hard not only for Westerner to work in such TSMC culture and environment, not many Asian can do it as well. There are many cases the staffs of TSMC committed suicide due to work pressure.

in Europe we insist on having time to enjoy life outside work and we still do the exciting part, the r&d, the specialized high end production, equipment design etc. High volume manufacturing is not very profitable anyways, and Europe still makes a lot of money indirect with the production in asia. It's only because of geopolitics that the west wants again more in house production, not because of economics.

​@@eveleung8855 Inhumane Makes you think that CEO Chang is hestiant to let his chaebol branch out to Nigeria and/or Bangladesh.

And whats wrong with saying that the US is lagging behind in coffee production? I mean, no one cares about it, but its still factual.

@@Mr30friends because saying "the US is lagging behind in coffee production" doesn't invoke any images, while "Europe is lagging behind in semiconductors" makes people imagine a world where the east Asians colonize the west and takes all of our jobs because our politicians didn't "plan enough" or something like that

@@joaovitormatos8147 The fact that local production of semiconductors is crucial isn't really something controversial at this point. Especially after covid. And yes, the politicians do have to plan for that stuff or the only thing the EU will be producing is handbags, cheese and regulations.

@@Mr30friends There is a local production also in the EU. Just not the leading edge and latest semiconductors. And to be honest, it's not even that necessary. People are not buying anymore every year the latest, shiniest tech. It is just getting too expensive today. A 5-year-old computer and a smartphone from 2020 can still run most things today. Gamers are also not upgrading to the latest 40 series GPUs because nVidia is out of reality with pricing.

@@gpsoftsk1 Sure, there is production. Just not anything that can be used widely in supercomputers, ai, or most cutting edge fields in general. Cutting edge doesnt just mean iphones and gpus for gaming.

Founded by Philips. The decision by Philips to let TSMC do the cutting edge processes and produce larger process nodes in their own fabs, was likely the final nail in the coffin for the European Semiconductor industry and a very crucial one: If Philips would have chosen to upgrade their own fabs up to the same level as the Taiwanese fabs, we might be living in a different world right now.

No.

Most of big chem companies originate from Europe, especially France and Germany. Guess throwing chemicals ar each other's faces for 2 world wars was a good way to stimulate research. Fun fact: agro chem and chem warfare shared the same famous scientists during the 20th century. Fritz Harber once said "A scientist belongs to his country in times of war and to all mankind in times of peace". He was both father of nitrogen-based fertilizers and of weaponized gases during ww1.

LCDs and OLEDs are based on chemistry (semiconductor materials, too, btw). Germany was always strong in chemistry.

If I can remember correctly Merck (originally Germany) wanted to establish a US subisdiary in the beginning of the 20th century. Shortly after WWI broke out and the US government confiscated the US subsidiary and sold it to one family member of the Merck family who moved to the US to lead the US subsidiary and for which he already became a US citizen. That's why there is the original Merck corporation in Germany which is not allowed to sell products in North America under their original name and the US Merck corporation which is not allowed to sell products under the Merck name outside of North America. To this day there are disputes going on concering the corporation names.

@@davinnicode Similar case to the Carl Zeiss split, then

Chemical industry and by extension pharmaceuticals are a deep rabbit hole in Europe

The issue is the same today people that are in politics aren’t particularly intelligent especially when it goes to engineering. Even with a degree through the process of stepping slowly up they loose the track of technology.

I would say politicians do not understand science or engineering. It is just none of their business.

Well, the US also has their big military producers. I don't think the US gov bought ICs directly from Fairchild to put them into missiles and fighter jets. So the existence of big defense companies alone cannot explain the difference in outcomes. Could it be that they had different approach to the make-or-buy decision? Would be worth an analysis.

I also think that would be a better path instead of concentrating on the cookie cutter fabs that makes the chips.

European countries were once leaders in electronics. From the day of Volta, and even during the time of Edison and Tesla (when America was catching up), European inventors and manufacturers were at the bleeding edge of technology. Now, even ASML use American and Japanese patents (including for their EUV) to build their machine, and China is almost (if not already) able to reverse engineer and copy the tech. Europe is a shadow of its former self. From practically the tech wonderland, by far the most technologically advanced region in the world (during mid 18th to early 20th century) to stagnating and increasingly backward region compared to the US and East Asia.

ASML depends heavily on the US and Japan for the components of the EUV machine.

@@rajavignesh8790 Without US light source techs , ASML could not challenge Japan Nikon and Cannon.

​@Immanuel Herman We are still the largest manufacturer and exporter of specialized machinery and tools. China tried to copy that knowledge for the past 25 years but the garbage leaving their factories still can't compare. As for the US...well, look at them. An open-air mental asylum that will probably see balkanization in the next few decades.

The also make billions of chips for Starlink phased array user terminals.

STMicro came out by using ARM cores on microcontrollers (AFAIK the last purely european MCU design was Atmel's AVR) and by generally staying out of the costly races occurring on the hotchips as well as memory markets and focusing on specialised IC for embedded. Though they are losing shares on the MCU market, the STM32 chips are not keeping up the trend outside of the automobile industry.

@@PainterVierax Ummmm…. That’s a rather, um, inventive take on the situation. You know ST had (and still makes) many generations of non-ARM MCUs? And they’re still the #3 MCU vendor, with no obvious signs of that changing.

@@tookitogo selling 8051 and STM8 at high price whereas Asian manufacturers provide more for less.

@@PainterVierax Sure, but the customers you want are the ones willing to pay more for reliability, long-term availability, strong track record, and certified, established development tools for high-reliability applications. That’s how Infineon, NXP, STM, TI, Microchip and Renesas make money on MCUs, not by competing against Chinese startups. Don’t get me wrong: some chinese MCUs are great (I use ESP32’s in most of my projects). But they’re not established enough for mission-critical stuff.

Yea, lets make China great again. Time to take down US leadership right?

ARM?

@@ntro9347 arm is british, officially japanese, secretly controlled by the british gov. Brits don't consider themselves europeas. Eu has only cookies

ASML relies on a lot of outside suppliers. Some are in Europe, but many are in the the US and Asia, where the EU doesn’t have the kind of leverage America does.

As far as I understand it, the EU chip act is a bit different to previous approaches. It aims to have American & asian companies build fabs in Europe, instead of trying to compete with them. It is more about supply chain security than about developing European chips.

I think we should be investing into what makes Europe not competitive. Lack of fabless companies requiring advanced chips is one, high energy prices, burocracy, lack of skilled labour and solid suply chains

''At least we're not speaking German'' he said to himself while western civilization goes down the drain 🤔

It happens, you lose a war here and there

A fucking spoiler warning would be appreciated!

@@arthas640 I know, right?

Going to Japan is like a step back into 80s and 90s tech. They still use fax and windows XP. Business so resistant to changes

@@Trgn I know what you mean. I worked in a major Japanese company. This was in the US, but I visited Japan often. Very advanced in electronics, but woefully behind in software and corporate efficiency.

400 in 5

5k in 50 minutes

It's no fun being an illegal alien 🙃🙃