Smart to buy a preexisting fab. From what I understand via from various blogs and YouTube research, building a Feb even if your not doing cutting edge tech like tsmc, say going with an openpdk, still requires that special infrastructure. You need seismic dampening for the fab and to be located in a low activity region preferably, you need cheap water that can be refines, you need affordable electricity, and then supporting infrastructure to get the chemicals, the water, the machines delivered. Doing all of this isn't cheap and I'd bet is a lot of paperwork.
Imagine going to some rural area and trying to build a fab, chances are the town has no clue what your impact or needs are and you would be spending lots of money to basically speed up development of the area.
Side not to Semiconductors fab, where do you even buy one. Sure you can buy talent or machinery and then hire engineers to help get everything working, but if you wanted to for some reason buy a fan that already exists, say just the fab location and the equipment, how do you know what company to approach that might even consider selling. Who can even afford these purchases except massive fortune 500 company's breaking a piggy bank, or some massive credit institution, which I doubt would even do this because it would probably be a massive loan to any buyer. Seems like you need to have the money to build part of a fab if you want to buy one, idk who would even consider loaning that amount of money to a third party.
> Seems like you need to have the money to build part of a fab if you want to buy one, idk who would even consider loaning that amount of money to a third party
Governments are happy to subsidise fabs, and VCs are even happier to invest in AI flavoured semiconductors if you can market it that way.
Also, they bought a fab, and by extension a bunch of knowledgeable employees who can work it and are eligible for UK security clearances.
Once the knowledge of the workers is gone then it would be really hard to spin something up in country, and being the UK we would likely be forced to buy stuff from the US (or go to the far east anyway). If you built a fab in country then you would probably have to get staff from an existing fab to help run it and iron out any issues and gradually switch them out for local staff.
Seems like it was previously owned by Coherent, like some kind of III-V (specifically GaAs mentioned) photonics processes there in the past. This kind of technology is typically quite useful for lasers, LEDs, or potentially image sensors as well. Many LIDAR sensors and even light sources can notably depend on III-V semiconductor sensors. Also widely used by the telecom industry.
Outside photonics definitely useful for high speed electronics, but that would probably take more process development to get going.
"This facility is the only secure site in the UK capable of manufacturing gallium arsenide semiconductors, a vital component in military platforms such as fighter jets."
There was a whole Byte magazine dedicated to it back in the day. It was thought (at the time) that the only way we'd ever break the 1 GHz barrier was to use GaAs, which obviously turned out to be wrong.
Yea fo sho', and it was the Cray 3 supercomputer actually based on gallium arsenide at the time, meaning faaasssttt clock rates, about 6x faster than compeititors in terms of Hz. So that would be something like a 50 ghz processor today, wild
whats the process node it can do. im suprised a fab built in 1991 is stil valuable. the us is trying to build a 5nm fab in arizona and by the time its done well be at 1 or less. granted still probably worth it since it would only be about 7 years old process but 1991. thats gotta be old unless they kept upgrading it
Maybe it's not about processors at all, but about camera sensors, lasers, high-speed analog electronics, high-power semiconductor devices, etc. These are also really important parts of military gear.
Correct. There are two major steel producers still operating in the UK: British Steel's Scunthorpe steelworks in the North East of England, and Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales.
Both have announced plans to convert from blast furnaces to modern electric arc furnaces. This will greatly reduce emissions - they are among the largest industrial polluters in the UK (along with the Drax wood-burning power station). But conversion to arc furnaces also means that fewer workers will be required.
It actually makes sense strategically. Britain already has more steel than it will likely ever need, in fact it's one of the world's major exporters of scrap metals. But it depends on imports for iron ore. Why import iron ore (and coking coal, for that matter) when the resource you need to make better, more valuable steels more efficiently is already here?
Of course it is possible! Around 25% of the world's steel is already produced by electric arc furnaces. 100% in some countries, and over 70% in the USA.
The UK exports 7-8 million tonnes of scrap steel every year, while producing about 5 million tonnes in blast furnaces. There's more than enough feedstock to replace all the UK blast furnace steel production with EAFs and still have some left over.
It’s hardly gonna be mass production with 100 staff, hardly worth mentioning. I think Motorola had a fab in the South West once upon a time. And Inmos in Newport in the South East.
This sure feels like yet another sign that major global powers are all gearing up for war.
This could be as benign as a government ensuring that the 100 jobs aren't lost, but given everything going in in both Europe and the Middle East it sure seems like more than saving such a comparatively small number of jobs. They could have just signed large(r) contracts with the company to financially secure the company, acquisition is a stronger play when the government needs more direct (and more private/secure) control.
A credible deterrent is required in order to prevent the mighty from simply taking everything.
For the last few decades Western countries aside from the US have basically just sat on their laurels assuming that, well, we're in the end of history and nothing will ever go wrong again. A rude awakening.
A sure fire way to ensure that there _is_ war is to sit about and sing kumbaya around the fire until the invaders turn up.
If you've been watching the Russian invasion closely, you'll have noticed that while it's good to have friends and allies with necessary ingredients, it's even better to be as self sufficient as possible. Relying on a foreign orange cheeto might ruin your recipe for self defense.
Yeah. As a European I feel humiliating how fumbling the EU has been to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and feel glad that our American friends are around to pick up the slack even though I'd be happier if we didn't need them :-/ so thank you on behalf of my moronic continent.
Off-topic as far as the article above goes, but do you think it's more likely for global(-ish?) war to erupt because of Europe/Middle East compared to Taiwan? A lot of the discussion around global war pre-2022 was for the late 2020s when China attempts to invade Taiwan. I personally doubt the major global powers will allow the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine to escalate to Western countries actually engaging in combat (but they do seem to want to personally defend Taiwan).
I have been expecting that, if another world war were to kick off, theaters of war would exist both in Europe/Africa/East Asia as well as the Pacific.
A big risk for Taiwan, at least in my amateur view, is China feeling emboldened both by seeing an anemic response to other major conflicts and a West that is already distracted by said major conflicts.
I grew up with the story that Hong Kong was just as off limits to China as Taiwan was. No one came to Hong Kong's defence though, even the British who should be on the hook for that situation just sat by in silence while the Chinese took complete control of HK and installed their own puppet government to manage the transition.
the brits gave up hong kong in the 90s. as soon as that happened no one was expecting them to back the case. however, i suppose the brits were optimistic so they didnt have to have regret about losing a colony.
i think taiwan might get some defense but only cause shit is made there and the west cant pretend the chinese wont flex their power
War is momentum based. If the US gets dragged in a war with Iran and is also supplying Ukraine with weapons, China might perceive this particular moment as an advantage to start their Taiwan campaign. From there, more countries will see the chaos as an advantage to settle their border disputes. And there you have it, a global world war.
The most likely reason for war is to move the competition with China onto a military footing rather than an economic one. The US would win the first, and that result would help the second. If you’re seeing western powers gear up for war, it might be to secure their economic future rather than a just intervention
I think that’s the point. I’m old enough to remember Bush and Blair wanting UN support for Iraq but ditched the idea when they wouldn’t get it. And young enough that my parent’s generation have never seen a war and so don’t remember why the UN was created in the first place. We live in dangerous times with very poor leaders and politics
Ya just don’t buy EU or UK would start ww3. There are much smarter and better economics and influence strategies to play out that are much less bloody to its own population.
Some major global powers (i.e. China) have a vested interest in that escalation. Having the US tied down in two other conflicts means significantly less resources.
Which means Middle East and Ukraine are already part of a global-ish war. Proxy wars, so far, but in service of a larger goal. (No, I don't think China necessarily instigated, but they're sure supporting ongoing conflict)
As part of that, I'd also assume that the US nudged the UK to maybe consider their supply chain in case the US can't cover Europe's ass. (They can't, not if they expect a Taiwan conflict)
I'm under the impression that time is actually working for China and that they don't really require a war; they'll catch up economically soon enough (5-10y) that a war doesn't benefit them at all, and only the US would benefit from one right now, while they still have a chance of nipping their primacy in the bud.
If Nationalism weren’t a factor, there is essentially zero reason for the PRC to ever invade Taiwan.
Nationalism is a factor and the PRC is a totalitarian dictatorship. They’re going to go after what they consider their “rogue province” sooner or later, and whether it benefits them economically or not is a footnote.
Them being a totalitarian dictatorship doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid. I doubt they would risk their economy just because of Taiwan. They may go after it at some point in the future when the odds are in their favor (because they're obviously not right now), but I doubt it'll be soon.
This, and to reinforce this: two things tend to happen with dictatorships: they either face a succession crisis at some point which brings it to its knees, or the existing guy becomes less rational in his old age after a few decades of being surrounded by bootlickers.
The PRC has actually managed to successfully stave off a few leadership crisis’s already, but one of the ways they did so was by moving away from a dictatorship of one and establishing term limits and a model that encourages leadership to think about the next generation and ready a successor. Xi Jinping just re-established a dictatorship of one with an unlimited term length and will presumably serve as the PRC’s strongman dictator for the rest of his natural life creating new opportunities for a succession crisis or for himself to just fall prone to old age. He wasn’t shy about killing off anyone that could have challenged him during his initial election to Premier and associated offices, we have no reason to think he’ll be any different than any other tinpot dictator in history and kill off anyone that looks like they might be gathering too much influence under his rule or looking just a little too eager to be his successor.
I think we're currently starting to see behind the facade of Chinese economy news. It's not all rosy.
But also: For China, Taiwan is only to a very limited extent about the economy. It is about ideology. For the US, a war now would be a bad idea - only slightly better than it would be a little later. There's an increasing gap in naval abilities (that'll - so the Pentagon thinks officially - close in the 2030s)
That means that we're currently in an unstable time. War is possible, but not a given. Meanwhile, if war happens, the US can't fight on three fronts. And so both Ukraine and the mideast conflicts strengthen China's hand if it comes to war, and weaken the US's. Similarly, an independent EU with at least some manufacturing capability lessens US constraints.
At the moment, things are all about shaping the odds.
As someone who went through conscription in Germany, the last year to do so (I think), it's a huge relief to me. Almost three decades of neglect and naivete have made the world less safe, not more. Deterrence works.
Deterrence + autocracy is pretty unstable, because eventually the generalissimo gets to thinking that if he already has military capability sitting around...
Had, until July 2011. This isn't unique. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and others have something similar, varying in details. (I think it's more commonly called military service or equivalent.)
Based on contract ramp-ups from folks I know in sales having record years/quarters tied to the US DoD (while the rest of the sales divisions miss their numbers by huge margins) - I think that it's a foregone conclusion the powers that be expect a major uptick in hostilities sooner than later.
But that's just my opinion, man. Could also be the tail wagging the dog.
Either way, I think it's pretty clear we are moving from a unipolar world to at least a "more" multipolar world in the near to midterm future. Covid laid bare how utterly fragile the current supply chains are for almost everything from raw material to base chemicals to advanced chips and beyond in the western hemisphere - so it only makes sense for this to happen regardless.
Having access to chips independently has deep economic effects as well, and that was the trigger in most countries.
Defense though can be a much more easier talking point from a political and budgeting perspective, especially when trying to unlock an ungodly amount of money towards a potential risk.
Not an expert at all, but wasn't part of The Cold War playbook to outspend the USSR?
Investing in capability isn't necessarily a signal that we expect to deploy that capability. But it does force the enemy to level up, then when that enemy runs out of money, they tend to implode.
I literally have no idea, so more than happy to be educated!
Well I'm shooting from the hip here and sharing only my gut intuition, so welcome to the party!
In my opinion, governments buying (or taking over) producers that are necessary for the military feels like a drastic departure to how the military industry has operated for decades.
At least in the US, though I think also in Europe, governments have been happy to keep up the status quo of writing massive checks to military contractors that, at least on face value, provide military equipment and training at a massive markup. In the US that markup also tends to be shared with those in power writing the checks through "gifts", campaign donations, and high paying jobs.
Military contractors generally don't seem to be hurting for capital to pay employees, especially the actually vital contractors. If the government takes them over, the most likely motivator I see is for the military to have full control over production, projects, and information security.
Enacted in October 1939, and retroactive to 1 September, it was the final domestic coup-de-grace necessary to activate the Reich's war machine. Don't expect for a moment that it will be any different for the Allied powers.
The most advanced optical lithography for 6 inch wafers is I-line (365 nm wavelength). For compound semiconductor fabs, they can use e-beam lithography which allows for shorter gate lengths. Some companies are also clever about taking I line lithography and patterning tricks to make smaller features for gates.
A lot of the tricks used on 193 immersion tools for lithography scaling requires sophisticated deposition and etch processes which are not available on old 6 inch tools. Given that this factory was used for faceID parts, I suspect it was making VCSELs or other optoelectronics. These components don’t require fine lithography so it’s probably a 0.35 um capable fab.
'With global semiconductor demand rising, this move positions the UK to meet future technological needs, including advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and 6G'?
advancements in artificial intelligence depend on mass production of 4nm silicon cmos, not 100 people doing gallium arsenide for high-speed analog. 'quantum technologies' is vague enough to not be literally a lie (transistors depend on quantum physics to work, as do wires) but in this context it's clearly designed to trick people into thinking 'quantum computing' which is also unrelated to what these guys are doing
I think this view is a bit narrow in terms of what "AI" advancements may depend on. I think it's very easy to argue that large scale AI adoption will require orders of magnitude higher bandwidth than what we currently have. It's not clear that long term electronics will win in all applications, especially with the strong resurgence in interest of photonic computing. Fundamentally, photonic platforms have much higher potential bandwidth (at the cost of power and size currently) than electronics.
GaAs (and other III-V) would likely be an essential material for some kind of photonic or hybrid compute system.
The response below addressed the quantum sensors, but I would be careful of calling "everything" quantum such as image sensors. Sure they rely on the photoelectric effect which is quantum, but not really in the sense of what we would consider a 'quantum sensor' today.
I suspect what could be more relevant are III-V based SQUID Qubits. These are highly sensitive systems that multiple nations are exploring for submarine detection. More near term, quantum communication via quantum light sources also can leverage a III-V platform.
sure, it's totally possible that the advantages of photonics or optoelectronics could win out, and iii–v semiconductors are pretty important for optoelectronics, though not for pure photonic systems like second-harmonic generation. sometimes people even use gaas for that, especially historically
what are iii–v based squid qubits? google scholar is not helpful except for finding https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResea.... i thought a squid was a josephson junction device made out of superconductors and insulators, not semiconductors. gaas isn't a superconductor, is it?
this doesn't sound like a quantum communication and squid research lab though. it sounds like a 50-year-old radar chip fab that's being put on life support as a pork barrel project
brain fart on my end, you're definitely correct that SQUIDS are not something demonstrated quite yet, I should have said Josephson junction, but even that seems more niche than I had thought when I wrote the comment.
your comment oscillates between incorrect and incoherent. squids have been demonstrated for decades (i didn't assert they hadn't been) and are made of josephson junctions, whose nicheness is not at issue in this discussion. i hope you get better because you clearly were not well when you wrote this
good point. I'd bet this tech is completely useless by now (maybe used in 60s radar and night vision), the company was going to shut down, some politician saw a way to turn a news of layoffs into "I'm bringing AI to my county"
Quantum sensors rely on very precise control of doping conditions. Also these kinds of alloys are used in photonics computing, which is used to interact with qubits. Sounds like that’s what they’re talking about here.
In the sense in that literally everything in the world is quantum, sure. But no, I mean sensors which derive their input channel from explicitly quantum effects. Gravometers, magnometers, atomic clocks, etc. are often quantum sensors.
possibly you meant 'gravimeters'; a gravometer is evidently a 19th-century density measurement instrument. plenty of gravimeters are as purely classical as anything electrical is, and those that prominently feature quantum effects are superconducting gravimeters. i don't see how a gaas fab is relevant to either mems gravimeters or superconducting gravimeters!
similarly 'magnometers' are not a thing, and magnetometers are generally either superconducting or pretty classical, so i am getting the feeling you are just trolling me to see if you can get a reaction by posting stuff without any consideration for whether it is true or not
I'd love to know more about what you mean by that -- is it that the North East of England (which this factory is certainly in, it being in County Durham) is not the same as the North East of the UK (which I guess would be Aberdeen)? Or is there more to it than that?
That’s pretty much it. If you visit somewhere like r/CasualUK you will get people talking about “up north” and “being a proud northerner” and such like. They are all English people talking about England. Which is fine, but it’s supposed to be a UK subreddit.
Even when foreigners are asking about travel advice. Must confuse the hell out of them. Or maybe some foreigners think that England = UK anyway so it all balances out?
England == UK isn’t a thing here in Canada, but I imagine it isn’t in any commonwealth nation. I think we learned more about the UK as kids than we did about the United States.
It makes no sense but it’s common parlance. It’s like “Northern Rivers” in Australia meaning “an area on the east coast south of Queensland”. Similarly “The North East” rarely means an area containing Aberdeen, which would make more sense.
My experience is that only people in England think it is common parlance. If you are taking to someone in Scotland about the uk and mention the “north east” with no further context, they are not thinking about England.
The "North East" is the proper name of a NUTS 1 [0] region of the UK. It is distinguished from your interpretation of it as the "north east of the UK" by its use of capital letters, as is standard in English [1].
It seems to be used both with and without.
In the main table with the maps it's not directly after, there's a comma. The ", England" is specifying the country, same as where it says "Yorkshire and the Humber, England", "East Midlands, England", etc. There's no comma part for "East of England", because there it is part of the name. In the demographics table it is directly followed by "England".
It’s definitely not common parlance in Scotland to say “north east” when talking about the UK and mean England, but I can’t speak for NI or Wales.
A UK website making international articles should at least use “North East of England”, or perhaps “North East (England)” to comply with the official ONS ITL name as someone else pointed out. Even UK wide articles should do this.
Smart to buy a preexisting fab. From what I understand via from various blogs and YouTube research, building a Feb even if your not doing cutting edge tech like tsmc, say going with an openpdk, still requires that special infrastructure. You need seismic dampening for the fab and to be located in a low activity region preferably, you need cheap water that can be refines, you need affordable electricity, and then supporting infrastructure to get the chemicals, the water, the machines delivered. Doing all of this isn't cheap and I'd bet is a lot of paperwork.
Imagine going to some rural area and trying to build a fab, chances are the town has no clue what your impact or needs are and you would be spending lots of money to basically speed up development of the area.
Side not to Semiconductors fab, where do you even buy one. Sure you can buy talent or machinery and then hire engineers to help get everything working, but if you wanted to for some reason buy a fan that already exists, say just the fab location and the equipment, how do you know what company to approach that might even consider selling. Who can even afford these purchases except massive fortune 500 company's breaking a piggy bank, or some massive credit institution, which I doubt would even do this because it would probably be a massive loan to any buyer. Seems like you need to have the money to build part of a fab if you want to buy one, idk who would even consider loaning that amount of money to a third party.
> Seems like you need to have the money to build part of a fab if you want to buy one, idk who would even consider loaning that amount of money to a third party
Governments are happy to subsidise fabs, and VCs are even happier to invest in AI flavoured semiconductors if you can market it that way.
Also, they bought a fab, and by extension a bunch of knowledgeable employees who can work it and are eligible for UK security clearances.
Once the knowledge of the workers is gone then it would be really hard to spin something up in country, and being the UK we would likely be forced to buy stuff from the US (or go to the far east anyway). If you built a fab in country then you would probably have to get staff from an existing fab to help run it and iron out any issues and gradually switch them out for local staff.
Seems like it was previously owned by Coherent, like some kind of III-V (specifically GaAs mentioned) photonics processes there in the past. This kind of technology is typically quite useful for lasers, LEDs, or potentially image sensors as well. Many LIDAR sensors and even light sources can notably depend on III-V semiconductor sensors. Also widely used by the telecom industry.
Outside photonics definitely useful for high speed electronics, but that would probably take more process development to get going.
They were closing because their major contract had been with Apple for FaceID components https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/05/27/apple-changes-l...
Gen III night vision relies on it; I don't know if they ever made it there, tho.
I didn't realize that! That seems like the most practical application from a defense perspective.
Why gallium arsenide? It's quite fussy.
"This facility is the only secure site in the UK capable of manufacturing gallium arsenide semiconductors, a vital component in military platforms such as fighter jets."
It's much more effective at extremely high frequencies used in compact radars, like the kind used on fighter jets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#GaAs_advantag...
There was a whole Byte magazine dedicated to it back in the day. It was thought (at the time) that the only way we'd ever break the 1 GHz barrier was to use GaAs, which obviously turned out to be wrong.
Yea fo sho', and it was the Cray 3 supercomputer actually based on gallium arsenide at the time, meaning faaasssttt clock rates, about 6x faster than compeititors in terms of Hz. So that would be something like a 50 ghz processor today, wild
My phone is faster.
Your phone operates roughly 10x slower in terms of Hz.
According to page 10, the Cray 3's clock speed was 500 MHz: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...
Phones beat that by a factor of x2-x4.
And has 1-16 processors of 1 gigaflop each; depending on how much precision you want, a phone can beat that by a factor of just over x2000.
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whats the process node it can do. im suprised a fab built in 1991 is stil valuable. the us is trying to build a 5nm fab in arizona and by the time its done well be at 1 or less. granted still probably worth it since it would only be about 7 years old process but 1991. thats gotta be old unless they kept upgrading it
Maybe it's not about processors at all, but about camera sensors, lasers, high-speed analog electronics, high-power semiconductor devices, etc. These are also really important parts of military gear.
The way things are going having any kind of chips is more valuable than whatever build process they use.
Same applies to maybe starting having again some kind of national OSes, and programming languages, not subject to export regulations.
Wasn't the last British owned semiconductor factory in the UK sold to Chinese investors within the last year it so.
The last steel furnace closing too?
The last of the steel industry is Indian/Chinese owned and is in the process of closing down [1].
There’s actually 23 semiconductor fabs in the UK, presumably with a diversity of owners [2].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/10/bri...
[2] tech uk report: https://pixl8-cloud-techuk.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod/p...
It's not closing down, from the article they are moving to newer furnace technology which requires less workers to run.
Correct. There are two major steel producers still operating in the UK: British Steel's Scunthorpe steelworks in the North East of England, and Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales.
Both have announced plans to convert from blast furnaces to modern electric arc furnaces. This will greatly reduce emissions - they are among the largest industrial polluters in the UK (along with the Drax wood-burning power station). But conversion to arc furnaces also means that fewer workers will be required.
As I understand it, Britain will no longer be able to produce steel from iron ore, only from scrap. Which doesn’t sound good strategically.
It actually makes sense strategically. Britain already has more steel than it will likely ever need, in fact it's one of the world's major exporters of scrap metals. But it depends on imports for iron ore. Why import iron ore (and coking coal, for that matter) when the resource you need to make better, more valuable steels more efficiently is already here?
Because it's questionable whether that's even possible.
Of course it is possible! Around 25% of the world's steel is already produced by electric arc furnaces. 100% in some countries, and over 70% in the USA.
The UK exports 7-8 million tonnes of scrap steel every year, while producing about 5 million tonnes in blast furnaces. There's more than enough feedstock to replace all the UK blast furnace steel production with EAFs and still have some left over.
It’s hardly gonna be mass production with 100 staff, hardly worth mentioning. I think Motorola had a fab in the South West once upon a time. And Inmos in Newport in the South East.
Motorola’s plant was in Swindon, not sure what’s there now
Newport, South Wales has a fab that specialises in silicon for power electronics
Newport is in South Wales.
This sure feels like yet another sign that major global powers are all gearing up for war.
This could be as benign as a government ensuring that the 100 jobs aren't lost, but given everything going in in both Europe and the Middle East it sure seems like more than saving such a comparatively small number of jobs. They could have just signed large(r) contracts with the company to financially secure the company, acquisition is a stronger play when the government needs more direct (and more private/secure) control.
A credible deterrent is required in order to prevent the mighty from simply taking everything.
For the last few decades Western countries aside from the US have basically just sat on their laurels assuming that, well, we're in the end of history and nothing will ever go wrong again. A rude awakening.
A sure fire way to ensure that there _is_ war is to sit about and sing kumbaya around the fire until the invaders turn up.
If you've been watching the Russian invasion closely, you'll have noticed that while it's good to have friends and allies with necessary ingredients, it's even better to be as self sufficient as possible. Relying on a foreign orange cheeto might ruin your recipe for self defense.
Yeah. As a European I feel humiliating how fumbling the EU has been to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and feel glad that our American friends are around to pick up the slack even though I'd be happier if we didn't need them :-/ so thank you on behalf of my moronic continent.
Off-topic as far as the article above goes, but do you think it's more likely for global(-ish?) war to erupt because of Europe/Middle East compared to Taiwan? A lot of the discussion around global war pre-2022 was for the late 2020s when China attempts to invade Taiwan. I personally doubt the major global powers will allow the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine to escalate to Western countries actually engaging in combat (but they do seem to want to personally defend Taiwan).
I have been expecting that, if another world war were to kick off, theaters of war would exist both in Europe/Africa/East Asia as well as the Pacific.
A big risk for Taiwan, at least in my amateur view, is China feeling emboldened both by seeing an anemic response to other major conflicts and a West that is already distracted by said major conflicts.
I grew up with the story that Hong Kong was just as off limits to China as Taiwan was. No one came to Hong Kong's defence though, even the British who should be on the hook for that situation just sat by in silence while the Chinese took complete control of HK and installed their own puppet government to manage the transition.
> I grew up with the story that Hong Kong was just as off limits to China as Taiwan was
Not sure when you grew up but that has been obviously false for at least 40 years
the brits gave up hong kong in the 90s. as soon as that happened no one was expecting them to back the case. however, i suppose the brits were optimistic so they didnt have to have regret about losing a colony.
i think taiwan might get some defense but only cause shit is made there and the west cant pretend the chinese wont flex their power
With the New Territories due to be handed back at the end of their 99yr lease, Britain decided it wasn’t viable to keep the rest of Hong Kong
War is momentum based. If the US gets dragged in a war with Iran and is also supplying Ukraine with weapons, China might perceive this particular moment as an advantage to start their Taiwan campaign. From there, more countries will see the chaos as an advantage to settle their border disputes. And there you have it, a global world war.
The most likely reason for war is to move the competition with China onto a military footing rather than an economic one. The US would win the first, and that result would help the second. If you’re seeing western powers gear up for war, it might be to secure their economic future rather than a just intervention
So they would start a war and kill people for economy's sake? In this case what make them any different from any other war criminals?
I think that’s the point. I’m old enough to remember Bush and Blair wanting UN support for Iraq but ditched the idea when they wouldn’t get it. And young enough that my parent’s generation have never seen a war and so don’t remember why the UN was created in the first place. We live in dangerous times with very poor leaders and politics
Ya just don’t buy EU or UK would start ww3. There are much smarter and better economics and influence strategies to play out that are much less bloody to its own population.
It may not make WW status and they might not be directly involved in fighting it
Some major global powers (i.e. China) have a vested interest in that escalation. Having the US tied down in two other conflicts means significantly less resources.
Which means Middle East and Ukraine are already part of a global-ish war. Proxy wars, so far, but in service of a larger goal. (No, I don't think China necessarily instigated, but they're sure supporting ongoing conflict)
As part of that, I'd also assume that the US nudged the UK to maybe consider their supply chain in case the US can't cover Europe's ass. (They can't, not if they expect a Taiwan conflict)
I'm under the impression that time is actually working for China and that they don't really require a war; they'll catch up economically soon enough (5-10y) that a war doesn't benefit them at all, and only the US would benefit from one right now, while they still have a chance of nipping their primacy in the bud.
If Nationalism weren’t a factor, there is essentially zero reason for the PRC to ever invade Taiwan.
Nationalism is a factor and the PRC is a totalitarian dictatorship. They’re going to go after what they consider their “rogue province” sooner or later, and whether it benefits them economically or not is a footnote.
Them being a totalitarian dictatorship doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid. I doubt they would risk their economy just because of Taiwan. They may go after it at some point in the future when the odds are in their favor (because they're obviously not right now), but I doubt it'll be soon.
> Them being a totalitarian dictatorship doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid.
No, but it does mean that they are significantly more prone to irrational decisions. And Xi's not exactly ultra-rational to start with.
This, and to reinforce this: two things tend to happen with dictatorships: they either face a succession crisis at some point which brings it to its knees, or the existing guy becomes less rational in his old age after a few decades of being surrounded by bootlickers.
The PRC has actually managed to successfully stave off a few leadership crisis’s already, but one of the ways they did so was by moving away from a dictatorship of one and establishing term limits and a model that encourages leadership to think about the next generation and ready a successor. Xi Jinping just re-established a dictatorship of one with an unlimited term length and will presumably serve as the PRC’s strongman dictator for the rest of his natural life creating new opportunities for a succession crisis or for himself to just fall prone to old age. He wasn’t shy about killing off anyone that could have challenged him during his initial election to Premier and associated offices, we have no reason to think he’ll be any different than any other tinpot dictator in history and kill off anyone that looks like they might be gathering too much influence under his rule or looking just a little too eager to be his successor.
I think we're currently starting to see behind the facade of Chinese economy news. It's not all rosy.
But also: For China, Taiwan is only to a very limited extent about the economy. It is about ideology. For the US, a war now would be a bad idea - only slightly better than it would be a little later. There's an increasing gap in naval abilities (that'll - so the Pentagon thinks officially - close in the 2030s)
That means that we're currently in an unstable time. War is possible, but not a given. Meanwhile, if war happens, the US can't fight on three fronts. And so both Ukraine and the mideast conflicts strengthen China's hand if it comes to war, and weaken the US's. Similarly, an independent EU with at least some manufacturing capability lessens US constraints.
At the moment, things are all about shaping the odds.
The list of countries "casually arming up" and talking about bringing back conscription is a little concerning.
As someone who went through conscription in Germany, the last year to do so (I think), it's a huge relief to me. Almost three decades of neglect and naivete have made the world less safe, not more. Deterrence works.
Deterrence + democracy.
Deterrence + autocracy is pretty unstable, because eventually the generalissimo gets to thinking that if he already has military capability sitting around...
Question from a fellow European - Germany has conscription? What?
Had, until July 2011. This isn't unique. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and others have something similar, varying in details. (I think it's more commonly called military service or equivalent.)
Based on contract ramp-ups from folks I know in sales having record years/quarters tied to the US DoD (while the rest of the sales divisions miss their numbers by huge margins) - I think that it's a foregone conclusion the powers that be expect a major uptick in hostilities sooner than later.
But that's just my opinion, man. Could also be the tail wagging the dog.
Either way, I think it's pretty clear we are moving from a unipolar world to at least a "more" multipolar world in the near to midterm future. Covid laid bare how utterly fragile the current supply chains are for almost everything from raw material to base chemicals to advanced chips and beyond in the western hemisphere - so it only makes sense for this to happen regardless.
Having access to chips independently has deep economic effects as well, and that was the trigger in most countries.
Defense though can be a much more easier talking point from a political and budgeting perspective, especially when trying to unlock an ungodly amount of money towards a potential risk.
Not an expert at all, but wasn't part of The Cold War playbook to outspend the USSR?
Investing in capability isn't necessarily a signal that we expect to deploy that capability. But it does force the enemy to level up, then when that enemy runs out of money, they tend to implode.
I literally have no idea, so more than happy to be educated!
Well I'm shooting from the hip here and sharing only my gut intuition, so welcome to the party!
In my opinion, governments buying (or taking over) producers that are necessary for the military feels like a drastic departure to how the military industry has operated for decades.
At least in the US, though I think also in Europe, governments have been happy to keep up the status quo of writing massive checks to military contractors that, at least on face value, provide military equipment and training at a massive markup. In the US that markup also tends to be shared with those in power writing the checks through "gifts", campaign donations, and high paying jobs.
Military contractors generally don't seem to be hurting for capital to pay employees, especially the actually vital contractors. If the government takes them over, the most likely motivator I see is for the military to have full control over production, projects, and information security.
> This sure feels like yet another sign that major global powers are all gearing up for war.
Keep an eye out for analogues to Aktion T4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
Enacted in October 1939, and retroactive to 1 September, it was the final domestic coup-de-grace necessary to activate the Reich's war machine. Don't expect for a moment that it will be any different for the Allied powers.
What lith node is that?
The most advanced optical lithography for 6 inch wafers is I-line (365 nm wavelength). For compound semiconductor fabs, they can use e-beam lithography which allows for shorter gate lengths. Some companies are also clever about taking I line lithography and patterning tricks to make smaller features for gates.
> Some companies are also clever about taking I line lithography and patterning tricks to make smaller features for gates.
Well that's the critical question. Is that being used?
Lithography using 193nm light varies from 130nm down to 10nm, if not wider.
365nm probably doesn't vary as much, but just saying the wavelength doesn't give a clear answer about the node size.
A lot of the tricks used on 193 immersion tools for lithography scaling requires sophisticated deposition and etch processes which are not available on old 6 inch tools. Given that this factory was used for faceID parts, I suspect it was making VCSELs or other optoelectronics. These components don’t require fine lithography so it’s probably a 0.35 um capable fab.
All I can find is that the plant works with 6 inch Gallium Arsenide wafers.
so it wasnt to save them from insolvency?
what a load of crap
'With global semiconductor demand rising, this move positions the UK to meet future technological needs, including advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and 6G'?
advancements in artificial intelligence depend on mass production of 4nm silicon cmos, not 100 people doing gallium arsenide for high-speed analog. 'quantum technologies' is vague enough to not be literally a lie (transistors depend on quantum physics to work, as do wires) but in this context it's clearly designed to trick people into thinking 'quantum computing' which is also unrelated to what these guys are doing
I think this view is a bit narrow in terms of what "AI" advancements may depend on. I think it's very easy to argue that large scale AI adoption will require orders of magnitude higher bandwidth than what we currently have. It's not clear that long term electronics will win in all applications, especially with the strong resurgence in interest of photonic computing. Fundamentally, photonic platforms have much higher potential bandwidth (at the cost of power and size currently) than electronics.
GaAs (and other III-V) would likely be an essential material for some kind of photonic or hybrid compute system.
The response below addressed the quantum sensors, but I would be careful of calling "everything" quantum such as image sensors. Sure they rely on the photoelectric effect which is quantum, but not really in the sense of what we would consider a 'quantum sensor' today.
I suspect what could be more relevant are III-V based SQUID Qubits. These are highly sensitive systems that multiple nations are exploring for submarine detection. More near term, quantum communication via quantum light sources also can leverage a III-V platform.
sure, it's totally possible that the advantages of photonics or optoelectronics could win out, and iii–v semiconductors are pretty important for optoelectronics, though not for pure photonic systems like second-harmonic generation. sometimes people even use gaas for that, especially historically
what are iii–v based squid qubits? google scholar is not helpful except for finding https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResea.... i thought a squid was a josephson junction device made out of superconductors and insulators, not semiconductors. gaas isn't a superconductor, is it?
this doesn't sound like a quantum communication and squid research lab though. it sounds like a 50-year-old radar chip fab that's being put on life support as a pork barrel project
brain fart on my end, you're definitely correct that SQUIDS are not something demonstrated quite yet, I should have said Josephson junction, but even that seems more niche than I had thought when I wrote the comment.
your comment oscillates between incorrect and incoherent. squids have been demonstrated for decades (i didn't assert they hadn't been) and are made of josephson junctions, whose nicheness is not at issue in this discussion. i hope you get better because you clearly were not well when you wrote this
good point. I'd bet this tech is completely useless by now (maybe used in 60s radar and night vision), the company was going to shut down, some politician saw a way to turn a news of layoffs into "I'm bringing AI to my county"
Quantum sensors rely on very precise control of doping conditions. Also these kinds of alloys are used in photonics computing, which is used to interact with qubits. Sounds like that’s what they’re talking about here.
sure, photonics could make sense. what do you mean by 'quantum sensors'? are there any sensors which are not quantum?
In the sense in that literally everything in the world is quantum, sure. But no, I mean sensors which derive their input channel from explicitly quantum effects. Gravometers, magnometers, atomic clocks, etc. are often quantum sensors.
possibly you meant 'gravimeters'; a gravometer is evidently a 19th-century density measurement instrument. plenty of gravimeters are as purely classical as anything electrical is, and those that prominently feature quantum effects are superconducting gravimeters. i don't see how a gaas fab is relevant to either mems gravimeters or superconducting gravimeters!
similarly 'magnometers' are not a thing, and magnetometers are generally either superconducting or pretty classical, so i am getting the feeling you are just trolling me to see if you can get a reaction by posting stuff without any consideration for whether it is true or not
Always pivot to Ai.
microchips aren't going to do much in a fire fight, they should probably re-industrialize
Small arms dumb weapons aren’t going to do much by themselves either. Anything more than a rifle? Chips
I think it's the [artillery shells](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-...) that's been a bottleneck thus far in Ukraine. It's like NATO keeps around 3 serious war days worth of ammunition on stock.
They estimate that radiation poisoning and starvation will prevent the armed forces from running out of shells.
in an actual great power conflict, it will be more about cruise missiles and drones - at least initially
Everyone who worked for Inmos rolls their eyes..
Yes, it's difficult to see how this won't end up needing constant infusions of cash whilst delivering very little to nothing.
Here come the warm jets
Isn't it not how market works, by paying good price and allowing fabs to compete for it?
Anyone care to share why downvoting?
> The acquisition is expected to secure up to 100 skilled jobs in the North East and safeguard a critical part of the UK’s defence infrastructure.
The “North East” in the context of the UK and “the North East of England” are not interchangeable.
I'd love to know more about what you mean by that -- is it that the North East of England (which this factory is certainly in, it being in County Durham) is not the same as the North East of the UK (which I guess would be Aberdeen)? Or is there more to it than that?
That’s pretty much it. If you visit somewhere like r/CasualUK you will get people talking about “up north” and “being a proud northerner” and such like. They are all English people talking about England. Which is fine, but it’s supposed to be a UK subreddit.
Even when foreigners are asking about travel advice. Must confuse the hell out of them. Or maybe some foreigners think that England = UK anyway so it all balances out?
England == UK isn’t a thing here in Canada, but I imagine it isn’t in any commonwealth nation. I think we learned more about the UK as kids than we did about the United States.
Same in Australia. But my Dad was a Scotsman so I had it well emphasised
In the same way that England isn't the UK, reddit isn't HN.
If you want to complain about a subreddit, go there.
It makes no sense but it’s common parlance. It’s like “Northern Rivers” in Australia meaning “an area on the east coast south of Queensland”. Similarly “The North East” rarely means an area containing Aberdeen, which would make more sense.
My experience is that only people in England think it is common parlance. If you are taking to someone in Scotland about the uk and mention the “north east” with no further context, they are not thinking about England.
North East of London, obviously.
Don't get me started on Midwest in the US...
Coming from the Best Coast I’d call it the Mideast if that wasn’t already taken. I begrudgingly accept calling it the Midwest for only that reason.
The "North East" is the proper name of a NUTS 1 [0] region of the UK. It is distinguished from your interpretation of it as the "north east of the UK" by its use of capital letters, as is standard in English [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Territorial_Leve...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun#Modern_English_cap...
Unless I am missing it, all references to “North East” in your first link are accompanied by “England” directly after.
It seems to be used both with and without. In the main table with the maps it's not directly after, there's a comma. The ", England" is specifying the country, same as where it says "Yorkshire and the Humber, England", "East Midlands, England", etc. There's no comma part for "East of England", because there it is part of the name. In the demographics table it is directly followed by "England".
A more official source puts "England" in brackets, as if it's not part of the name but just to disambiguate: https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/ukgeographies/e...
It's a UK website. In common parlance in the UK, they are interchangeable.
I live in the UK. In my experience only English people think they are interchangeable since they use it a lot implicitly.
I also live in the UK. I mean, sure I agree with you, but that doesn't stop it being common parlance.
It’s definitely not common parlance in Scotland to say “north east” when talking about the UK and mean England, but I can’t speak for NI or Wales.
A UK website making international articles should at least use “North East of England”, or perhaps “North East (England)” to comply with the official ONS ITL name as someone else pointed out. Even UK wide articles should do this.