alt Hacker NewsGermany squandered so much money on nonsense, when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony". Sure, it would have taken years and years and serious commitment by the government and private sector to make that a successful move. But instead of putting in the hard work with a clear vision for the future, we mostly spend our time whining and wailing. It's a shame.
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Cultural failure on a massive scale
That seems a bit too simple. I saw one particular graph [0] once that really stuck with me illustrating just how decisively Europe was ejected from the semiconductor market. It takes more than just inaction to achieve results like that. In many ways it could be called an impressive feat that only the Europeans could achieve. 44% of production to 9% - losing a steady 1% of the market every year, largest to smallest player. No other region is even in a position to do that badly even if they tried.
[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/...
>when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony"
That's not at all how it works. You're talking as if you're buying a plug-and-play Xerox copy machine that you can just unbox and start printing copies of your work and make money.
Buying the latest EUV machines doesn't get you the latest nodes and economically viable yields.
Intel, Samsung also have the latest ASML machines that TSMC has and yet they haven't caught up to TSMC because there's a lot more to semi manufacturing that just the machine itself.
If Germany just buys an ASML machine it would be an expensive paperweight without the process know-how that engineers at TSMC have amassed over the decades in order to get the most economically competitive yields.
The only forward facing government that actually had a drive to change anything useful for the future broke apart with internal squabbles, with a big part of it by the market liberals torpedoing things left and right. And now we're back to a government of stand still, like we did the almost two decades before.
We get what we deserve.
Who knew that forcing 'green everything, at all costs' and importing millions of unskilled people who don't share your values might not work.
High-end chips should be more of a EU concerted effort rather than every country for itself.
The problem is that unlike Airbus, which (highly inefficiently) can be made in multiple countries, you can't really spread out parts of a fab that way. The most you can do is fab machines + chips + chip packaging. Netherlands already has fab machines and in packaging there isn't a high margin.
That leaves chips, and you can be sure that whoever gets the fabs, the other EU countries will throw a shit fit and demand counter investments to compensate. And on top of that there is also regional animosity. So even if it makes logical sense to pop the fab down in the middle of the blue banana, it won't make political sense because France and all of South and East EU will be angry about "the rich getting richer".