They had a large memory manufacturer, Infineon, who spun out their memory division as Qimonda which then went bankrupt [1]. They were the 2nd largest in the world at one time apparently. Looking back, it's easy to say the German govt should have thrown them a billion or two to keep them afloat. However, state intervention was very unpopular at the time in economic circles, and there was much furor over bailouts following the 2008 crisis.

Japan has an even sadder story. They were the DRAM top dog for a very long time. South Korea entirely ate their lunch.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qimonda

> I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train?

My best guess is that the connecting train was operated by the Deutsche Bahn

Realistically, when it comes to the semiconductor market, there aren't many viable options outside of East Asia. I don't mean this in the sense that East Asians were somehow "chosen," but rather that the semiconductor industry inherently requires a large number of highly educated employees working together. The problem is that the working hours inevitably end up being very long. If you actually go work at one of those facilities, you have to wear a "cleanroom suit" (bunny suit), and it's physically demanding. What I'm saying is, you need highly educated personnel who can be mobilized at any time when a problem breaks out in the middle of the night, and who can be hired at relatively low cost. East Asia has a massive educational infrastructure — schools are very large-scale and the system is extremely well-developed — making it hard for other regions to compete. And indeed, the average working hours in countries that do semiconductor manufacturing are extremely long

In other words, it's an industry where you have to grind white-collar workers as if they were blue-collar laborers.

Chip fab locations have traditionally had more political than economic importance. Matrix multiplication chips and RAM have been the recent exception, while TSMC has long been the geopolitical exception. ASML's location only matters to the extent that it gets ordered not to sell to someone.

The AMD spinoff GlobalFoundries has a fab in Dresden.

Intel was supposed to build a fab in Magdeburg, which would have been great, but apparently the reason it was canned (2025) was they couldn't secure enough customers.

IIRC Taiwan took a page out of Singapore's playbook and went all in on electrical engineering and adjecent fields. It was very much a long-term strategy. Germany probably didn't feel nearly as much pressure, and was already very strong in all industry.

Memory has only really recently become lucrative. Germany still has heavy machinery, trains, drilling machines etc all of which will be needed for a long time regardless of whether the "bubble pops" or not.

The Germany fetish still going strong I see.

Siemens?

[flagged]

Germany is done.