Berlin, Intel strike deal on $33 billion chip plant after months of subsidy talks
Berlin, Intel strike deal on $33 billion chip plant after months of subsidy talks
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The article says "leading-edge" but I really wonder what processes will be used here, so far the new fabs being set up in the US aren't being tooled for the latest EUV 3nm etc. stuff, but older nodes. The older ones are still very important, and any way to remove dependence on potentially disruptable single sources of chips is great, but would be awesome to have proper cutting edge chip manufacture in the EU.
As far as I've been reading the types of highly qualified workers who can work in leading-edge fabs aren't in the US and won't be any time soon. So it could be an economic/technical choice to go with older stuff, or it could be a practical matter of having people to run the factory.
I think one for 3nm is being built in US by TSMC. But this one in EU will probably not be that. Intel is way behind TSMC.
Chip manufacturing is so important to all countries, I'm pretty amazed that just about all of the countries that could build their own chip factories have been fine with sourcing chips from dubious countries versus building their own plants. I know it's expensive as hell, but it's a national security issue.
The political understanding of this issue is low in much of the world because the technology especially in much of the countries where it is used has been introduced to people generally in the last 2/3 of their life. Which makes the work of ~1980 Taiwanese leadership so impressive realising that the political importance of this stuff could be great enough in the future to act as a guarantee of security from the CCP, and greatly and successfuly embracing it to that end.