EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology

EU has the tech. ASML is #2 company in EURO STOXX 50 index with 5.69% weight.<p>ASML is the world&#x27;s largest photolithography systems manufacturer and the only one producing extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. These EUV scanners are expensive as hell. Last years model costs $120 million per piece and you need 10-15 of them for TSMC gigafactory.<p>TWINSCAN NXE:3400C (7 and 5 nm nodes, &gt;170 wafers per hour) is probably the most expensive machine in the world.

So, first thing when it comes to big dollar (or in this case Euro) numbers: some of these funds will be loans, not grants. In this case the split will be about 50-50.<p>Second, this is not new money, this is part of recovery funds already allocated in July 2020 for combating the economic recession created by the Coronavirus [1]. These funds were already earmarked for environmental and digital initiatives. This declaration is probably a clarification of how much is given specifically to the digital initiatives.<p>This looks quite smart to me. In the US neither the original CARES act ($1.4 TN) passed in March, nor the new stimulus bill ($0.9 TN) has any funds dedicated to cutting edge industries. There were instead funds for airline companies and cruise lines.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Next_Generation_EU#Recovery_fund" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Next_Generation_EU#Recovery_fu...</a>

ITT bashing on EU without understanding it<p>I believe the 17 signing nations are allowed to inject money into their own economy. Even if the goals are a bit unrealistic.<p>EDIT The 2-3 years is when the funds are allocated. Not when the results are expected.

I might have looked positively at this if the bureaucrats would have actual skin in the game and would be judged by the outcome in 5-10 years. But in the likely case that this will fail and most of the money will be drained through lobbyism etc., nobody will talk about it and they will come up with the next thing they can throw money at to come across as being super innovative.<p>Disclaimer: I used to work at a company that was particularly good in draining these kind of funds without delivering useful outputs.

Serious question: Why is the EU so far behind in tech company influence&#x2F;leadership compared to the US and Asia? Europe has successful tech enterprises, but surely is capable of so much more on a global scale.

Good news. Yes, as with all government money, there is some pork barreling involved, but there is a long history of such government initiatives laying the starting seed for high tech industry development. It means money is invested in Europe tied to a certain purpose. Giving talented engineers a job perspective and companies a field in which they can invest into.

It’s almost become normal now that bureaucrats get to decide which social group to spend money on, or which region to renovate buildings in, but the arrogance of thinking you can spend your way to the most cutting edge of current technology is just the next level of bureaucratic arrogance.

Hint: it&#x27;s going to end up with the same results as European AI - a bunch of inept large companies getting money without any results. Top-down approach from basic MBAs down to engineers never worked.

USA entrepreneur: I need to start a company that will attract VC money. Damn, that means a company with huge potential. I better start working.<p>EU entrepreneur: I need to start a company that can access these juicy governmental funds. Let’s see, what exactly do these bureaucrats want? Hmm, sounds complicated, who do I know in the approval committee? I better start calling.<p>Incentives matter.

The world starts realising all the processors that everyone depends on is mainly from Taiwan. I just wrote an article[1] about the importance of processors and talking about key players such that help the semis industry such ASML, and why it&#x27;s not that simple to get into the game. . It&#x27;s not as easy as pouring money into some companies. Sourcing trusted partners + years (decades?) of R&amp;D might be needed to achieve what TSMC did in Taiwan<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;erickhun.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;world-innovation-taiwan-semiconductors&#x2F;?c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;erickhun.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;world-innovation-taiwan-semicondu...</a>

So, we&#x27;re getting an Airbus for Chips?<p>Or will it more be like our Ariane missiles?

If 50% of this is loans and 50% are grants, and if all of the grants are over 3 years, then that&#x27;s 145&#x2F;(2*3) = 24.17 billion Euros in grants per year, or $29.33 billion dollars per year. By contrast, in the US, US National Science Foundation (NSF) is the grant-giving agency for most basic science&#x2F;math research in the US, except biology which is under a different agency (NIH) (also I think DOE funds some energy-related research)) total budget is $8.3 billion per year. So if these assumptions are correct, then this initiative alone is over 3.5x the total US NSF budget.<p>This is not completely an apples-to-apples comparison because this is obviously applied rather than basic research.

This is NOT how innovation works. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;How-Innovation-Works-Flourishes-Freedom&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0062916599" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;How-Innovation-Works-Flourishes-Freed...</a>

Sweden missing from here is a surprise. We have Ericsson who still design their own chips for telecom devices - one of the few companies left in Europe to do so. And Volvo and Scania might be interested for self-driving cars.

Article says this is for 2-3 years? Seems crazy. Semi-conductor R&amp;D is something where I would expect commitments to be 10 years or more, not just a couple of years...

This makes me so excited as an electrical engineering student pursuing her masters degree in the European Union, as a dual US|EU citizen!

Hmmm... Just after I watched this <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=hF3sp-q3Zmk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=hF3sp-q3Zmk</a> and thought the future was RISC-V

Are there any companies in EU who are developing chips now? I only know ASML but that only makes the wafers.<p>I ask as I can&#x27;t imagine the government doing this. So there must be some company behind this deal.

I can&#x27;t decide if this is comical or depressing. The EU realizes they need to own the ability to manufacture processors. Meanwhile here in the US we&#x27;ve got hedge fund managers trying to gut Intel, national security be damned:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;activist-hedge-fund-advises-intel-to-outsource-cpu-manufacturing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;activist-hedge-fund-...</a>

Anyone familiar with EU politics care to comment on how likely it is that this funding actually goes through, and a probable timeline?

Well, I hope all of the naysayers are wrong. I’m looking forward to what more competition will bring to this space.

China is bound to win in the long run, given the resources, captive market and most importantly competitive&#x2F;cost of talent.<p>Japan, US, India and possibly some EU countries are partnering today to build an alternative to Huawei in 5G. This is coming 10 years late.<p>We might be repeating the same mistake but now in semiconductors.

I always find these discussion around the business of chip production interesting and since there&#x27;s always many knowledgeable people on these I wanted to ask if anyone has a good recommendations for books on the business of chip production?

Exciting development. Not many power blocs has the prerequisites to pull this off, though EU coordination capabilities still questionable.

Just by looking at the digit, it&#x27;s 6 times bigger than the US programme on money spent per year.<p>As unsubstantiated news suggest, the most of American program will be spent on attracting few, amazingly expensive, one off projects.

2nm... then what - 1nm? 500pm after that?

That&#x27;s awesome, congrats!

Planned economy at works.

Intel must be thrilled

so thats where the NATO money went

2nm tech, and not only just the tech, but the whole fab for it in two-three years?<p>that how eu is spending 145 <i>billions</i> while allocating 1bn to fighting covid?

I&#x27;d like to see more government investment into domestic industries, however I believe that the semiconductor manufacturing market is already heavily saturated. R&amp;D is welcome but beyond ensuring independence from foreign manufacturing there are not that many benefits that you would expect from this example of government stimulus. This industry primarily hires high skilled workers but unless they also directly fund the education of those high skilled workers it&#x27;s not going to result in less underemployment.<p>I mean come on, the existing semiconductor industry in the EU has found it&#x27;s niche. It&#x27;s already well developed. If there really was a shortage of domestic semiconductor products then these companies would have been able to make a killing with their local fabs because corona related shipping restrictions resulted in a lack of supply from foreign nations. They wouldn&#x27;t need the government stimulus and stand on their own.<p>It would make more sense to use this government stimulus on reducing CO2 emissions because most nations do not have economic incentives for reducing CO2 emissions. With our current economic models environmentalism amounts to charity and charity is one thing the government is very good at. The reason why I bring up CO2 reductions is because they are inherently domestic. You cannot put CO2 or electricity on a container ship and move the problem to a different country. A lot of the work also involves simple manual labor which helps with the underemployment problem for low skilled workers.