Why Europe Lost Semiconductors
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- čas přidán 22. 04. 2023
- Correction:
5:31 - I messed up the visuals with this one here. Viewer and friend of the channel Andy wrote in to remind me that this wasn’t the Transistron but instead two Westector diodes back to back. This wasn’t European in origin - though pretty fascinating anyway. If you want to see the historical image of the Transistron (which costs money to license) go here www.bridgemanimages.com/en/no...
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I worked at a company around 1990 with a guy whose entire job was researching alternative components from around the world; if he could save a penny per product for something which sold a million units, that's $10,000, and he did that several times a week. He said the only data books he routinely ignored were the French ones, because they insisted on making up artificial French words for all the parameters, and he couldn't pick them out of the descriptions. He couldn't read any of the foreign languages, but he didn't need to just for skimming ... except the French data books.
typical ...
Ah yes,.. I had a little book to translate those words to English.
@@user-er8tr9kt8l I worked at an artificial French data company. I couldnt read with a guy around 1990
@@chubbymoth5810 I believe he did too; but it slowed down skimming, so he only used it when nothing else showed up.
who else but the french.....
If you're targeting the global market, use English. Otherwise, be grateful for your local market's demand.
Siemens is similar to Xerox. They have great patents and ideas, they sell the stuff or lose interest, some years later other companies make billions with the knowledge.
You need guys like Steve Jobs, arguably he was a complete git, but his talent for seeing the potential of any given technology is second to none. Apple was dynamic and exciting under his leadership, today they simply incrementally improve their range of products and don't really innovate because they have lost that keen eye that spots new opportunities.
The rule of economics is that if you can't compete, you shouldn't bother. That's why Asia stole the market as they could outcompete everyone else and Philips, Siemens and AEG who were major innovators in their day all gave up trying because the results were not there. But then even Asia is slipping, Sony used to be the company that released nothing but exciting new products and now they are just like any other manufacturer, Samsung took over, but now they are slipping too.
make no mistake though, siemens are still incredibly massive.
@@rotwang2000 Instead we have MBA idiots like the ones at Philips. Great products, but no, "we need to focus on our core business", which they decided was medical, at the time a promising division within the company. Fast forward a bit, and we see them getting wiped out by a single recall on sleep apnea machines.
@@laindump911 Indeed but some years ago Siemens was this:
They built the power plant with turbine and generators, all the transformers and switching gear. This power runs to trains built by Siemens where the restaurants use Siemens kettles using Siemens ICs. Energy (above medium voltage) is now Siemens Energy. The household appliances marketed as Siemens are Bosch. The ICs are now Infineon. Their focus is clearly industrial automation today but it's nothing compared to their former glory.
@@rotwang2000 Yes, these companies need to be more dynamic and work with a vision in mind instead of just the next project.
In England in the late 50s my Father was working at G.E.C with 2 friends he had met through his apprenticeship with them. They were producing germanium transistors, he said so many failed that they had oil drums on the production line filled with duff transistors. My Father stayed at GEC and went on to work with Polaris and Trident guidance systems. His Friend John Carey moved to Canada then to California where he was one of the founders of AMD.
I have a GEC GET-1 transistor still in its original sealed packaging.
@@v8pilot Nice, I have a bag of EW53's which were early development transistors, amazingly they still test good.
@@v8pilot I have original photo slides from their marketing office from back then. GET1 must be from around 1954, in 54 the total transistor production in the USA was around 1 million units ! 30 million by 1957.
suuure. Do you really expect people to believe you?
Why you lying? @simonhanlon
Love your videos!
As a german i feel like a similar thing happened / is happening in the space of Software engineering / information technology, where different automotive companys are striking deals with us-chips and software companies like google/nvidia right now.
I think your assessment that there is an underinvestment towards disruptive technology is absolutely on point.
This also seems to be happening with the chips act, where companies like Infineon will get a lot of money just for building new fabs based on established processes.
Software is sadly lost because there is no way to get similar funds here than the us.
"an underinvestment towards disruptive technology is absolutely on point."
This is actually something the politicians, who allocate the money for funding, but they don't know how to do it/solve it.
@@autohmae,
"the politicians, who allocate the money for funding" -
they are social idiots (puppets) who are not allowed to touch money. Money is allocated by conceptually powerful (subjects of global politics and globalization) - the global predictor or bolsheviks.
Europeans are more obsessed with flag waving and who made what first than disruptions. Also, the egalitarianist mentality suppresses disruptions.
It is the same with ESA, we got 25% of the NASA budget so we are extremly limitead in what we are able to do. Though our politicians does not want to take risks so we will never get rewards because of it. The more risk we take the higher the reward, though the reason why we do not take risks is because of stupid nationalism. Primary because we refuses to pull the resources necessary to get the ball moving. Our combined gdp gives us a 21 trillion dollar economy to play with while a divided EU gives us only 4 trillion dollar economy to play with(germany).
Everything takes a certain amount of resource investment, its just that we need to actually invest those resources to get there. The only way for that to happen is to get rid of idiotic nationalism so that it becomes easier to get a joint effort working. What I guess will happen is that every EU nation will invest in its own fabrication and it will result in no nation getting enough resources to actually build the necessary infrastructure since we will divide up the resources to a extreme extent.
If we had a smaller EU I think coordination is a lot easier which would make it possible to get the concentration of resources to be able to achieve that goal.
I was a student in Electronics in France in 2010. All my professors told us to go and pursue Software engineering instead, due to the state of the local electronics job market.
The year after, the state reformed the degree, changing it to a more software oriented one, getting rid of labs, electronics professors and all forms of handcrafts.
Pretty sure this knowledge has almost vanished in the country, due to a mix of people retiring and not having trained enough youngsters. We'll never be able to reclaim the ground we've lost in the last 20 years.
As a 60+ year old U.S. citizen we replaced most skill sets with drug zombies that are government employees.😢😢
This sounds very shortsighted, basically no workforce to maintain all the electronics running around. Forsee all companies charging a premium to French costumers for repairs. Could be a good time to open a electronics workshop in France a la Louis Rossmann?
European semiconductor companies have managed to carve out some niche areas of technology that they are very competitive in. Infineon and STMicroelectronics are arguably the leaders in power semiconductor devices.
NXP is also good, and BOSCH makes great automotive chips, though small production volume
Europe probably has success with smaller markets where they don't have to compete with cheaper manufacturers in Asia because Asia can make the IC 3 cents cheaper on a $7.85 IC. These smaller markets will care less about saving 3 cents and will rather care about parameters like support, reliability and other parameters more important for industrial applications.
@@joaquimbarbosa896 BOSCH is a market and technology leader in MEMS. You find a BOSCH sensor chip in every iPhone. There is just not so much ado about it.
@@Henning_Rech I know, though again, the production volumes are not anything impressive, the quality of their semiconductors are impressive
STM is good at power ICs? Their datasheets are bad and I am unsure about the quality of their high voltage ICs.
The angel food cake metaphor is suggesting the best ideas come from unlikely places and putting out something ordinary might come back as extraordinary.
"Angel Food Cake" is the US name for what the British "Angel Cake". It's a simple sponge cake, often iced (frosted in the USA), where the sponge has a remarkable, very light texture. Once eaten, you'll never forget it. Ask your mother (if she comes from an appropriate culture). Commercial versions are usually a great disappointment when compared with a home-made one.
I LOVE angel food cake. 🙂
The commercial type is more like polyurethane foam than anything edible -- you have to make it at home. It uses a lot of egg whites beaten to stiff peaks with the dry ingredients carefully folded in to avoid squishing all the air out and gets turned upside-down in a special pan to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight as it cools.
Entered semiconductors in the early 1960's as a Manufacturing Process Development Engineer. Began with Sprague Electric producing germanium, then silicon, silicon epitaxial transistors and our first integrated circuits, all within a three year tenure. Next to IBM's SLT Logic Module Program supporting the IBM360 System introduction and liaison to its Essonnes, France Operations. As an insider I can attest to to the frantic pace of development during this period and my choice to subsequently move into computer systems hardware and software manufacturing. This in retrospect was not much better excepting that the end product applications were very exciting!
I always wondered if the EU would have combined forces in a similar way to Japan and how the US did it. I'm curious if this would have changed the industry
In a dream it would be an EU R&D but the findings would be shared among the countries. With I guess a limit on dropping out of the EU just to take advantage of other sister states.
Anyway... Just curious if a alternative timeline would have been interesting to see what would have actually transpired
@@nomore-constipation The margins are too low, better outsourcing it.
You can better invest in ASML, patents that are profitable.
Once again, superb compilation of meaningful historical tech content. Upon seeing the "Beckman Instruments" on the Shockley building, I wondered about the possibility of historical content on electronic test equipment like Fluke, Hewett Packard, Tektronix, Rohde & Schwarz, and Simpson. Any chance in the future?
Yes. Someday if I can get the time ...
@@Asianometry you have until the end of the universe to make them. Sooner would be better.
Yes. Plz.
There is still some nice stuff in the 10% which Europe holds in the semiconductor market. Even beyond ARM and ASML tools, which everybody is talking about. STMicro has a nice niche in the micro-controllers and also in some specialty photonic devices -- like single chip laser rangefinders. They also fab RF, digital beam-forming and modem chips for Starlink user terminals. AMS in Austria has nice magnetic sensors. Nordic is fabless, but their chips go into lots of wireless devices. There are lots of companies with nice products, though of course nothing like Nvidia or Intel.
yeah, not everything runs on top-of-the-line processors; 5g/6g chips, rf-mems, analog circuitry from IHP Germany, photonics from VIGO Poland... it's not like europe lost on anything, they have their own market, and are increasing their share every year
Renesas Electronics in Japan is the world's largest designer and maker of microcontrollers.
Just like there are companies beyong ASML, NXP, ST Microelectronics and ARM in Europe, there are companies beyong SMIC, TSMC, MediaTek, Nikkon, Tokyo Electron, Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcom, AMD, Apple, Nikon, Canon.
There`s a place in the the UK where I worked that makes space chips still.
@@himanshusingh5214 Nope, NXP has larger market share.
2021:
NXP: 17.3%
Renesas: 16.8%
STMicro: 15.4%
Infineon: 13.9%
Microchip: 12.6%
TI: 6.9%
The rest of the list have market share of 2% or less.
With 3 of the top 5 MCU manufacturers being European, I’d say they’re not doing that bad…
I'm shocked .... I own tons of electronics magazines since 1973, including dozens of Scientific American years up to the 90s, including number zero, well, only now that I'm 65 do I learn that even in France the transistor was been discovered....What kind of rubbish have I read to do all these years ? Thank you very much this channel for learning something new, thank you, Asianometry !!!
As a student in what is now called IT, I saw a mainframe computer from Siemens being installed there (around 1975), and became what I used while learning about programming. Technical manuals were in German, but the computer was basically a "compatible clone" of IBM System/360. While it was manufactured in Germany, not much in even trying to be "leading edge", and it became another dead end, and likely not something making Siemens a lot of money.
Jon, this video was super informative. It certainly whetted my appetite for that other video you teased us with.
I heard of very interresting history about the European semiconductor industry, but Europe did produce a few large semiconductor companies. Philips was named many times, but besides that they were a semiconductor giant, we nowadays have four large semiconductor companies that originate out of Philips (ASML, TSMC, NXP and Nexperia). Likewise, SGS Thomson was mentioned a few times, but how they became Europe's current largest chip producer...? How did Infineon came into existance out of Siemen's memory division? So I think a large part of the story still needs to be told.
I would include in the confusion the French Sesco. At some point SescoSEM. A connection to Italian company and politics by the French government. Eventually the the SGS Thomson. My personal memory about Sesco was that we used some of their products, above all their Unijunction transistors and 2N692 SCRs. I also remember how I used to study Sesco data sheets and still occasionally argue with my American friends that I understand just a little French strictly because in technical terms it is so close to English. They react quickly that I am totally wrong. That being what it is, I would add some more European semiconductor manufacturing history out of my memory. Swedish ASEA had some high power diodes, which they presumably developed for their electric locomotives. Same happened in Switzerland, by Brown Bovery. Siemens had some big SCRs. Regarding SCR support, Siemens published an excellent handbook that along with a similar book by Westinghouse was the "bible" of SCR applications.
Also the implosion of the GDRs ROBOTRON is chapter worth mentioning.
You make an important point. Production numbers in terms of how many chips you make don't mean much. More important is who owns the technology. The technology to make the machines that produce chips is ASML and is based in The Netherlands. They control 80-90% of the total world market of the production of chip making machines.
Infineon struggled with memory....but bought Cyprus Semi and International Semi among others. Having a stable markets seems to be very elusive for the europeans, especially with their current politicians. expecting them to loose even more relevance.
Daniël Mantione
TSMC is basically Philips Taipei, outsourcing it all.
EUV, Japan was not able to do it themselves, ASML did the masks and all, the laser, wow !
semiconductors, outsourcing it all !
In the mid 1990s, Europe tried to push transputers, Thomson memory chips and the chorus operating system. None of those things really worked out.
"Difficult to do semiconductor research here" - things like this are why yours are the best technology history videos.
I can only highly recommend Technology Connections channel to that
23:14 No. It means “a bank with an attached *electrical* division”, which is a very different thing. Throughout this video you’ve referred to Siemens as a consumer electronics company, but that is not at all what they were, then or now. Siemens was an early pioneer in _electrical_ equipment, not consumer electronics: telecom, power generation and distribution, motors, locomotives, etc. While their history did take them through various areas of electronics, consumer electronics was never a large part, and even electronics as a whole was dwarfed by their electrical products. Today, their main business is industrial automation, followed by healthcare (MRI machines, etc.), building automation (HVAC, etc) and so on.
Yes, Siemens has always been largely a B2B company, even in the S&H days. I'd also mention their industrial automation division, which might not have invented PLCs proper, but they have had several of the most popular lines, and the supply chain of Siemens Automation is and remains euro-based to a surprising degree. Their stuff is ubiquitous in specialty machine building, both in the EU and globally. And of course their other divisions, particularly Energy, draw from that, too.
Infineon is a spin-off from Siemens. Siemens tried to compete in memories, but gave up to Infineon; later, Infineon gave way to Qimonda for the memories, and Qimonda went bankrupt in 2009.
Siemens dealt with consumer electronics by just buying them from others and slapping on their own brand or having joint ventures (such as with Bosch for somewhat dubious white goods).
@@mjouwbuis Bosch-Siemens Hausgeräte is not “dubious”, it’s considered a quite good manufacturer.
Basically Siemens is a German version of a industrial zaibatsu.
And yet there are dozens of semiconductor fabs in Europe, with more on the way… Europe may not be big in computer CPUs, but they do lots of discrete semiconductors, microcontrollers, etc. as well as power semiconductors.
Idk how you do it sir, but every video is so fascinating. Without fail, you consistently continue to exceed my expectations and for that, 👏 👏 👏 🥇
i should comment more, I'm not on your patreon so it's the least I can do. when I see you've posted a new one i wait til i have a good moment to really settle in to watch it. it's hard to believe that you can make such exquisite stuff and for it to be worthwhile for you, hence the patreon I guess. i am unemployed, i don't have much spending money, it is such a pleasure to watch these videos for free thankyou
Speaking of lost opportunities for Europe, you have to do a video about Olivetti
No information about those insane conspiracy theories are available in anything but Italian because no one outside of Italy cares. In Sweden there's a guy named Håkan Lans who supposedly invented color graphics (despite the fact that it was already available commercially when he supposedly did) and he has gotten a lot of publicity for his stories, but no one outside of Sweden cares.
I can't imagine how much research goes into the videos. Thank you so much for recording these histories.
Great memories…
Angel Cake… a birthday favorite.
DEC PDP11…. What ever happened to digital equipment corp? Their foray into the personal computer arena with their DEC Pro350 surprisingly required an expensive 10meg hard drive to work… instead of working on a dual 5 1/4” floppy drive…
Fortran77 was the bomb!
Their PC showed up in Movies, nice product placement… but never took off.
Must have been absorbed by Compaq….?
The top management at DEC was quite old-fashioned, and they failed to adapt to the evolving conditions. The company did have a very innovative high-performance workstation microprocessor (DEC Alpha), but they did not successfully pivot towards it. At the end, Compaq bought them for their large sales/service network, not for their technology. Very sad. DEC was a remarkable company.
23:43 Some part of AEG survived until the 1990s, at which point it bought the East German LEW Hennigsdorf plant for manufacturing electric locomotives (that plant belonged to AEG before the Cold War). And in the same decade, that same part of AEG was absorbed into ADTranz, which was several years later bought by Bombardier, whose former rail vehicles division is now owned by Alstom. The Hennigsdorf plant still operates today.
Excellent video as always! Well done!
As always it was very informative video. Great job. Thank you
One thing not mentioned here is there is a stable OEM Semiconductor production in Europe which is now even growing gain after the Covid-19 shock: Bosch is producing Semiconductors for their own Products and other European Manufactureres for Car Products. Those Semiconductors are not openly traded, so not visible on the market, but they have a big Fab running and are expanding. But they use big processes like 65nm and maybe 28nm because they are more stable for Car Products.
It would delight me if you a make video on Texas Instruments. It's quite an important (to say the least) mature node semiconductors company on which there are no nuanced video on CZcams.
Also NatSemi who are now a part of TI. Could possibly also mention Analog Devices and Linear Technology.
Not to exclude the fact that TI has also had multiple manufacturing sites in Europe over the years, and still has manufacturing in Germany, I believe.
Are they still alive? Haven't heard anything from them since the 80's
Who, TI? Yes, they are. Open up a piece of electronic equipment and you'll probably find a lot of the support components like voltage regulators, op amps, battery chargers and microcontrollers with their logos on.
@@larryc1616 Not just alive, but its stock has grown multiple times past decade, and in the recent years it was considerably more resilient than that of most other large tech companies. It's just that B2B companies are considerably less often talked on in the media.
Honestly, thank you for your work. Very informative and extremely well done. Have you ever considered including the sources of your informations? Wish you the best
Banger of a video mate. I learned a lot
You're missing out if you haven't tried angel food cake, it's a dense white and airy marvel
For the record: The building on the picture at 24:36 is Palast der Republik, which was in eastern Berlin.
I wish you would do a video comparing the major chips programs of the US, the EU and China thats currently ongoing, what key diffrences they have, who the big players are and what difficulties they might face.
They're all failures or b-level including Intel. Only TSMC and Samsung will live and thrive for the next +10years ✨️
Angel's food cake is a light and fluffy cake, opposed to the Devil's food cake, which is heavy and dense. They seem to typically be vanilla and chocolate flavored respectively. That said, I am not sure sure how these apply to bread and lakes. At best, you might be able to transmute some avians into dinner after luring to them to the pond.
I always asked for confety Angel Food cake for my bdays. Great w whipped cream, icecream, raspberry (the juice bleeds int the cake perfectly), or pretty much any addon you would wish.
It can easily 'fall' while baking tho, which is why it has its own specific 2-piece baking pan.
A sweet whipped egg white cake
It's a reference to a verse of Ecclesiastes; whoever casts his bread upon the water will find it again after many days. In other words investing money is a good idea.
Video: about semiconductors
Comments: about angel cake
The pattern I see at 25:50 is that companies which rely on government for leadership and research end up losing their way and eventually going broke. Somehow reminds me of Airbus's A380, seemingly built only to be bigger than the 747, when all market research said midsize airliners were the future.
well, you need govt funding to bootstrap to a viable level. you then need to chart a path to profitability minus subsidy.
so, chip companies use the funding to get a basis of expertise and a niche that makes money, but have to reinvest so that losing the subsidy doesn't kill them. likewise, the a380 is nice for bragging rights, but if it's more effective to get a bunch of 737 sized things that run efficiently, do that instead
If you live under the Heathrow flight path then the A380 is understandable. I am sure other European capitals are not too different.
Chinese solar Industry, battery industry, display and semiconductor Industries were funded by government until they turned profitable.
@@dercooney A similar issue is now happening with container ships. Size has increased to the point where scale becomes a liability. While moving a massive volume of containers in one ship is great, any issue leads to serious problems. Some are calling for a return to smaller ships, but faster and with more redundancy.
The A380 was more of a prestige project to finally close the gap or even surpass Boing. The A380 was also meant, to enable the seemingly emerging "hub-and-spoke" model in aviation travel routes at the time. Though these market expectations simply didn't came to pass for several compounding reasons. Nevertheless it did gain Airbus alot of attention and in the meantime their more conventional sized and marketed Models like the A320/A321, A330 A350, etc. became very successfull in their own right, and are receiving regularly undergoing further modernization/updates.
Partially due to Boeings continueing and seemingly deepening crisis after they've encountered failure after failure for several years now, Airbus in reverse, is doing extremely well right now and have a huge backlog in orders. Taken on its own, Airbus has more than catched up to Boeing's cpabailities and is well positioned to expand their different divisions' product portfolio and market share and crucially also invest a lot into further RnD.
Especially their defense division will probably grow a lot in the coming years and with several new projects under development, such as a major component for the upcomming FCAS air-combat system and further growth of their helicopter business. SAF and Hydrogen propulsion are also under active development.
Wonderful video, thanks
thank you for your excellent videos on the semiconductor industry!
You do a great Job in helping explaining the Importance of Taiwan to the world.
Thank you
Well said
Angel food cake, or angel cake, is a type of sponge cake made with egg whites, flour, and sugar. A whipping agent, such as cream of tartar, is commonly added. It differs from other cakes because it uses no butter. Its aerated texture comes from whipped egg white.
And combined with butter cream frosting, it's a taste of heaven. Get your hands on a recipe and make it if you've never had it. You won't be disappointed.
I think he was being sarcastic. Jiggly japanese cheesecakes have been the rage for some time now.
Thanks for the lesson
Greetings from Germany!
I just wanted to post a long explanation of my view of these developments, but I chose to forego that last second.
Let's just say I am still astounded as to what our industry has achieved and where we are now, considering how hamstrung everything here is, when you want to do something out of the ordinary or in a different way, to try something new, to step off the established ways.
Haha it's the German way of doing things.
"Das haben wir schon immer so gemacht" "Das haben wir noch nie so gemacht"
All the reasons you mentioned are valid but I believe it all comes down to one thing, money.
In the 50s and 60s American (both the government and the civilians) had more money than they knew what to do with. In such an environment it's no surprise that even smaller companies that are "riskier" can easily secure funds.
As for Japan... Well it was a single large nation with incredibly low labor costs and a government that had a strong hand in the private sector. Europe is made of multiple countries and as mentioned the governments of those countries were never as aggressive as the Japanese government was.
Yep, WW2 already ruined Europe and governments had to face challenges the US never had.
Yeah, even though Japan had two nukes dropped on it, it actually pales in comparison to the entire continent that was demolished twice in 40 years. China is the only other region that was as thoroughly ruined as Europe in the same time period (aside from the usual colonial shenanigans the kept and keep Africa from attaining any domestic wealth). The fact that Europe had any skin in the game within 20 years of being completely flattened (and converted for warfare where still standing) is a testament to its academic robustness and industrial resilience
@@TAP7a destroyed buildings means little. What's in the brains of people are more important.
Great video covering 70s to 90s - I whish you could make something similar covering the more recent 90s to 20s, the emergence of mobile phone industry Nokia Ericsson Alcatel Siemens story and why it failed too, the more recent rise of new European semiconductor players ams and soitec - the SOI story inside the story - ending now with massive influx of American production might Glofo and Intel - there are some reasons to it : IMEC, but also CEA and FRAUNHOFER are part of it.
Telegraph to the universal SMS protocol language over GSM Gen1
FRAUNHOFER are specific Social Government Projects, why you need them ? Protocols is better, try to do messages over GSM ! What impact it was ....
The fact that today, the only place where you’ll still find the Telefunken name is as a fake brand on cheaply made Turkish TVs is a sign of the times just how badly we squandered our lead here in Europe…it’s infuriating and sad.
I've seen Chinese made home appliances in Taiwan with the Telefunken brand name
Anything from Philips is basically the same fake "joint venture" stuff too
Luxor is owned by the same Turkish company.
@doalwa I saw a WW2 documentary and hitler was making a speech and there was telefunken branded microphones , I think that's where I recognize😐 the brand
High end microphones are still being sold under the Telefunken brand world wide. The company is American and is called Telefunken Elektroakustik.
Love the edible chips at the start of the video and this channel. Keep up your fine work! 😊🎉
Really love your work. I would really appreciate it if you could cite some of the sources you've used in this video. I often pick abd choose key words, phrases and sentences to look up various kinds of records that reference the things you mention and I am rarely successful in getting access to it. If you could cite the sources it'd be a huge help for going indepth and getting a better sense of the policy measures, the choices, intend and consequences of those various measures and why theu happened the way they did. Just a suggestion, no pressure.
I taught in the MBA program at the University of Maryland. This would make a fine thesis.
The united kingdom is not on the european Union but it is still europe, not including it does not make sense.
0:12 that just shows the headquarters of thr firms, not where semiconductors are actually designed, produced and assembled.
I've been binge watching your content and support you on Patreon. Continue the good work! Also, any reason you say "S-ram" for SRAM but "dram" for DRAM [i.e., not "Dee-ram"]? It isn't a unit of measurement like dram (the other definition). You're the only person ever in my 30+ years of life that pronounces DRAM like this. I'm wondering if different places in the world say DRAM differently is why I ask. My exposure is primarily West world but you have Eastern experience/knowledge. I ask mainly because I can't stop thinking about it every single time you say it in your videos lol.
It's really something how germans were pioneers of large number of today's most useful and treasured technologies, that too in 1950's. makes us wonder what exactly did those guys do differently than rest of the world?
culture peculiarity which cannot be copied by other countries. similar to japan
Well, I’d say this: plenty of university research; a culture of attention to detail; willingness to look at longer-term planning. These traits are shared by the Swiss and Japanese, too, for example.
Germany continues to be a major manufacturer; for example, the actual liquid crystals used in LCD displays are mostly supplied by BASF in Germany. Germany and Switzerland are major manufacturers of advanced industrial automation gear, but moreover, they both are major manufacturers of high-tech materials, precision parts, and tooling used by manufacturers all over the world. So their products are often “invisible”.
lotsa fancy words..
Scarcity of natural ressources within their national border and the fact that education and scientific research were valuated extremely high. Combine that with the strong urge in the past centuries to become a superior military power in the world and funding would be agreed on more easily then in today's Germany. That's also why during the world war periods so many technology innovations or inventions came out of Germany. It also shows some similarities to the post WWII technology culture in the US which, as it was shown in this video, was primilarily driven by big military spending compared to other countries.
they used the blood of jews and soldiers leftover from the war to conduct research. it was effective
I used to work in Kista, a suburb of Stockholm. It's pronounced "SHEES-tuh". It's a long story, but 'k' becomes the 'sh' sound when the following vowel is soft (such as i). I won't even get into the 'sj' and 'tj' sounds because it took me months to come to "oh! It's a 'k' without the stop at the start... an 'h' from the back of the mouth instead of the front."
Europe and EU are often mixed up by people. Due to the lack of tectonic cracks, the UK is still part of Europe, just not the EU.
The problem is that people confuse geography and organization, or use Europe and the eu interchangeable even though they are not!
And there's this small little dot right in the middle of the EU ... I think it's called Switzerland ... being Swiss I just thought I'd mention it as well, although we have absolutely nothing to do with the semiconductor industry, as far as I know ...
People routinely mix up America and the USA and nobody bats an eye.
It is a group of islands voluntarily isolated from the European continent. Other than Switzerland.
Micronas Holding was a Swiss semiconductor company, while more a holding, e. g. of the former Intermetall site (mentionend in the video) in Freiburg/Germany, before the company was sold to TDK/Japan. They produce Hall sensors for the automotive industry in Freiburg.
Back in the 80s Sinclair research has a spin off company called anamartic that focused on licensing some kind of Sinclair research patents to design and manufacturer computer chips based on the idea of wafer scale integration (which is basically using an ENTIRE silicon wafter for one IC instead of using the principles of VLSI to make multiple ICs from one wafer) , nothing ever came of this idea and it's not well know , the company doesn't have a Wikipedia page and in the industry as a whole wafer scale integration also didn't really take off as a way to produce chips for super computers or servers in the 80s and 90s.
RIFA, of capacitor fame
Somewhere in my spares box I have some Westectors. A Westector is a plastic tube containig copper discs oxidised on one surface so there are around ten of them in series and held in firm contact with a spring. The discs are around 2mm in diameter and 1mm thick.
So it's simply a copper oxide diode with the trademark westector
@@BD-cm7xc Yes. WESTinghouse detECTOR. The one pictured is a double diode (which I have never seen myself). Usually they were single diodes. With several of the copper oxidised disks in series, the voltage rating was reasonably high.
My copy of "Wireless World Valve Data" (1957) lists twenty or more types, ranging from W1 (piv = 6V)...W15 (piv = 90V). 50µA reverse current at piv. 5mA forward current at +2.4V for type W1. My guess is that the number following the "W" in the type number indicates the number of copper discs in the unit. Also types WX1 ...WX15 with smaller forward current and smaller reverse current. Their use is listed as "Detectors, a.g.c noise suppressors, clippers, etc".
Great video ❤
nice video, thank you. I belive it can be interesting to do a similar one about east europe and russian IC industry (there were multiple fabs over there)
And gigantic military budgets, too.
I think it boils down to disruptive innovation being implicitly disincentivized in planned economy (hard to plan around something that doesn't exist yet).
So by the end of the 1960s USSR government abandoned most domestic R&D (10+ incompatible architectures) and focused on building compatible System/360 replicas.
Umm... Angel food cake is light vanilla counterpart to the rich, dark chocolate Devils food cake. Its airy and light, made with only the egg whites i believe. How you toss a slice of bread and get that cake is a truely mysterious metaphor though.
It's not to everybody's taste, it is different, but everybody who likes cake ought to try it once at least.
Casting your bread on the water is reference from the Bible that says "cast your bread upon the water and after many days, it will return to you".
I can't believe I've never thought about the symmetry of the cake names before. Was one invented before the other? Did someone eat a devil's food cake and set out to create an exact opposite cake. A quick google comes up with stories but very little verifiable info. Someone please waste a couple weeks of your life in research and post a deep dive video on the subject. thanks
not that mysterious - toss something basic, get back the fancy
@@joekennedy4093 The most I heard on the subject is is the Good eats episode on it, which pretty much starts with a skit of someone inventing the angel food cake after being beaten by a devil cake at a county fair. No clue where he got it from, though. Sometimes you can find interesting stories for the name; others just get a the first one to come to mind, like the opposite of Devil food cake would be...
Angel food cake does exist. Do not confuse with angel hair (cabell d'angel) cake. The former is an whipped egg whites' cake, while the latter is based on caramelized finely grated pumpkin instead. The whites spread massively as they become fluffy by addition of air (much like the related meringue) and that's probably what was meant by the analogy.
To explain it to a non-American. It tastes like *freedom*, which is a poor phrase to choose because non-Americans could never grasp the concept of freedom.
@@MissourHanzai - Your comment is not just stupid but also xenophobic. Freedom is not a SUV, it's more like a bycicle.
Also when you say "America", I'm guessing you mean Mexico or Brazil, right?
@@LuisAldamiz Nah, greater Israel.
OMG, you quoted exactly what I had written in my parallel comment about Siemens. Indeed, a bank with an electro appliance department! 😆
Good history - but you completely ommitted early UK semiconductor research and innovation (Mullard) in the late 40s: also, where is the impact of the Thatcher government's decision to act on the Alvey report's conclusions, and the developments in UK semis that led to the Transputer, INMOS and the ARM? Curious omissions given the impact that INMOS had on parallel processing, InTel's multi-processing/Hyperthread concepts (licensed)? Don't forget your previous coverage of how Intel licensed ARM as StrongARM which affected their development of several parallel and pipelined architectures, including Itanium (sound of sinking ocean liner). And, the liason between Philips and Mullard that led to a merger and eventual tech innovations taken up by Hollandse Signaal Apparaaten and Philips Semi (that led to NXP)?
There is some scope here to expand your analysis beyond this already good one - please consider an update.
Given the UK is no longer part of the EU, it, and it’s computing history, were outside the scope of this video.
It appears you missed the beginning of the video where he said that UK was not covered due to Brexit. There will be another video later on UK.
@@stevewilson6193 Also, there was already a separate video about the UK and why the UK semiconductor (or computer, I am not sure) industry failed.
@@mrb692 For the period covered by this video, the UK was very much within the scope of this, evidenced by Siemen's, Philips' and Fujitsu's investments during the 5th gen/Alvey project. Something that Philips Semi directly benefitted from, and lead to the creation of the spin-off ASML (where I had some involvement).
I agree that Brexit has essentially closed off any future participation, but the sheep have spoken.
"By 1960 even the Japanese produced more transistors than the French." Somehow this made me lol.
Around 700, it is critical to have a cross functional process integration team. The absolutely best process integration engineer I have ever met, had a particle physics background.
Particle physicists had quite a demand for ICs - I took a course in VLSI chip design at a European university and that was hosted by the High Energy Physics department. They did have the commercial design software which they not only used for teaching but also making special mixed signal chips for detectors in accelerators. But the people doing this are of course specialised in that. Production was contracted out to commercial chipmakers.
When you showed a picture of potato chips I thought you were talking literally I was like "huh?" when you showed the graph right after lmao
Good one.
Your pronounciation of my country’s transistor place (Sweden) was awesome! 😁
Oooh, 30+ minute Asianometry video!!! ❤❤❤
What did we do to deserve such a treat from you? 😂
Thanks Jon!
It seems governments, especially European, were quite willing to subsidize development of the early IT-industry. A deeper analysis of the reasons for this, the nature of the subsidies and the consequences of thereof could be really interesting.
Yes, Europeans have quite a history of doing catching-up subsidy programs. Most recent ones are probably the attempts to get ahead in AI and battery manufacturing
Thanks great information.
I did not see the chip joke coming within the first minute bravo!
Could it be because Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is a powerhouse of talent, dedication, and a need for self preservation against Chinese Communist hostilities.
Founded by Philips. The decision by Philips to let TSMC do the cutting edge processes and produce larger process nodes in their own fabs, was likely the final nail in the coffin for the European Semiconductor industry and a very crucial one: If Philips would have chosen to upgrade their own fabs up to the same level as the Taiwanese fabs, we might be living in a different world right now.
No.
Go work for Taiwan TSMC for a year or two, you will understand why microchip only successful in Asia but difficult in the North America or Europe.
Why? Tell us
@Larry C Taiwan TSMC paid very well, but the staffs work their head off, almost like lifeless if one work for TSMC, basally the staff is sleep and work only, don't be surprise if they have 12 hours work shift, because of these hard working staffs, this is what make TSMC so successful, it is extremely hard not only for Westerner to work in such TSMC culture and environment, not many Asian can do it as well. There are many cases the staffs of TSMC committed suicide due to work pressure.
in Europe we insist on having time to enjoy life outside work and we still do the exciting part, the r&d, the specialized high end production, equipment design etc. High volume manufacturing is not very profitable anyways, and Europe still makes a lot of money indirect with the production in asia. It's only because of geopolitics that the west wants again more in house production, not because of economics.
@@eveleung8855 Inhumane
Makes you think that CEO Chang is hestiant to let his chaebol branch out to Nigeria and/or Bangladesh.
"What on earth is angel food cake?" Why it's nothing short of one of the worlds great culinary treats. If you haven't had you are missing out
The two episodes of European semiconductor is great. Could you talk about Infineon in the future? Thanks
You're forgetting NXP. Its by no means big but thye're petty big in the automotiv industry. There's a good chance your car has NXP chips.
A lot of them are made in Asia now though (mostly China).
@@nicholasvinen Are you sure? As Nxp does have 2 fabs right here in The Netherlands. 🤷♂
@@FullFledged2010 you're right, also Germany, China, Malaysia and Philippines. I know they have significant investment in China but I don't know what percentage of the products come from where. I tried to find out but it seems I need to actually buy the chips before I get the information on where they were made...
@@nicholasvinen Well Actually i've worked at NXP Nijmegen. They do have fabs in the US. But never heard anything about china 🤷♂
It’s cool how Japan wanted to make the very first SoC way back in 1976 with VLSI. It’s amazing how connected the world is and the consequences of that… 🧐🧐🧐
The picture at 21:53 is not West Germany... at lest it's written in French, so I'd be curious to know which city that can be, if it's indeed in West Germany.
Those DIPs pictured are very old tech. Fine pitch SMT and other newer packaging tech replaced that stuff long ago on state of the art electronics.
It's comparative advantage. It's simply not profitable for Europe to produce semiconductors. You can't say a place is "lagging behind" in an industry, it's like saying "the US is lagging behind in coffee production
And whats wrong with saying that the US is lagging behind in coffee production? I mean, no one cares about it, but its still factual.
@@Mr30friends because saying "the US is lagging behind in coffee production" doesn't invoke any images, while "Europe is lagging behind in semiconductors" makes people imagine a world where the east Asians colonize the west and takes all of our jobs because our politicians didn't "plan enough" or something like that
@@joaovitormatos8147 The fact that local production of semiconductors is crucial isn't really something controversial at this point. Especially after covid.
And yes, the politicians do have to plan for that stuff or the only thing the EU will be producing is handbags, cheese and regulations.
@@Mr30friends There is a local production also in the EU. Just not the leading edge and latest semiconductors. And to be honest, it's not even that necessary. People are not buying anymore every year the latest, shiniest tech. It is just getting too expensive today. A 5-year-old computer and a smartphone from 2020 can still run most things today. Gamers are also not upgrading to the latest 40 series GPUs because nVidia is out of reality with pricing.
@@gpsoftsk1 Sure, there is production. Just not anything that can be used widely in supercomputers, ai, or most cutting edge fields in general. Cutting edge doesnt just mean iphones and gpus for gaming.
T: 13:58 "By the mid 1960s 85% households had TV and there where 1,239 channels?" Seriously 1239? I know Jappan had been pioneering with some technologies but it must be mistake. I have checked Wiki, and found information about several dozen terrestrial stations, and line about 600 companies somehow involved with cable broadcasting - it doesn't mean all where separate TV channels. Can you recheck your sources and text and answer this question? I find you as author respectful of facts and usually good at work of important facts check. So could you check this particular information?
Great history. Thank you.
Must be weird coming to work one day and your lab is bombed
107 views in 18 seconds!... Not to shabby lol
400 in 5
5k in 50 minutes
Europe has ASML and the EUV machine. It seems more important to build the machines that make the chips.
I also think that would be a better path instead of concentrating on the cookie cutter fabs that makes the chips.
European countries were once leaders in electronics. From the day of Volta, and even during the time of Edison and Tesla (when America was catching up), European inventors and manufacturers were at the bleeding edge of technology.
Now, even ASML use American and Japanese patents (including for their EUV) to build their machine, and China is almost (if not already) able to reverse engineer and copy the tech.
Europe is a shadow of its former self. From practically the tech wonderland, by far the most technologically advanced region in the world (during mid 18th to early 20th century) to stagnating and increasingly backward region compared to the US and East Asia.
ASML depends heavily on the US and Japan for the components of the EUV machine.
@@rajavignesh8790 Without US light source techs , ASML could not challenge Japan Nikon and Cannon.
@Immanuel Herman
We are still the largest manufacturer and exporter of specialized machinery and tools. China tried to copy that knowledge for the past 25 years but the garbage leaving their factories still can't compare.
As for the US...well, look at them. An open-air mental asylum that will probably see balkanization in the next few decades.
Thank you and much Love from the Philippines❤.
A little unfair to Europe. ASML might be a small company, but still is probably the most important company in semiconducting and arguably the world
It does seem that the EU chip act is a close the barn doors after the horses have bolted type situation. I think the EU would be better off putting more emphasis into EUV, the supporting equipment for these processes and R&D past the current generation EUV. The funding for general chip production is likely in the short term to slow these efforts and allow others to match or exceed the current advantage in EUV equipment.
ASML relies on a lot of outside suppliers. Some are in Europe, but many are in the the US and Asia, where the EU doesn’t have the kind of leverage America does.
As far as I understand it, the EU chip act is a bit different to previous approaches. It aims to have American & asian companies build fabs in Europe, instead of trying to compete with them. It is more about supply chain security than about developing European chips.
I think we should be investing into what makes Europe not competitive. Lack of fabless companies requiring advanced chips is one, high energy prices, burocracy, lack of skilled labour and solid suply chains
It seemed to me, as a retired electronic engineer, that both here in the UK and in mainland Europe, that government investments in tech generally failed because the politicians didn't understand the technology, but listened to the opinions of the existing big producers. It's a lot easier to have lunch with a few CEOs than to talk to thousands or start-ups or even worse, tech users. This way of course lies calcification of the industry.
The issue is the same today people that are in politics aren’t particularly intelligent especially when it goes to engineering. Even with a degree through the process of stepping slowly up they loose the track of technology.
I would say politicians do not understand science or engineering. It is just none of their business.
Well, the US also has their big military producers. I don't think the US gov bought ICs directly from Fairchild to put them into missiles and fighter jets. So the existence of big defense companies alone cannot explain the difference in outcomes. Could it be that they had different approach to the make-or-buy decision? Would be worth an analysis.
Absolutely great video. This how economy should be taught.
3:30 why sneak Phil Collins into this story 🤣? Great job as always!
It's no fun being an illegal alien 🙃🙃
Well TSMC makes chips because of the dutch and the germans manufactoring their equipment so without them probably no small nm production for tsmc... I mean by that its not that europe lost semiconductors its just that there is a need to mass produce them in europe or at least up until today maybe things will change the following years.
Please make a video about MERCK. I am surprised it is a German company instead of a USA one. Also, it is related not only to chemicals but also LCDs and OLEDs!
Most of big chem companies originate from Europe, especially France and Germany. Guess throwing chemicals ar each other's faces for 2 world wars was a good way to stimulate research.
Fun fact: agro chem and chem warfare shared the same famous scientists during the 20th century.
Fritz Harber once said "A scientist belongs to his country in times of war and to all mankind in times of peace". He was both father of nitrogen-based fertilizers and of weaponized gases during ww1.
LCDs and OLEDs are based on chemistry (semiconductor materials, too, btw). Germany was always strong in chemistry.
If I can remember correctly Merck (originally Germany) wanted to establish a US subisdiary in the beginning of the 20th century. Shortly after WWI broke out and the US government confiscated the US subsidiary and sold it to one family member of the Merck family who moved to the US to lead the US subsidiary and for which he already became a US citizen. That's why there is the original Merck corporation in Germany which is not allowed to sell products in North America under their original name and the US Merck corporation which is not allowed to sell products under the Merck name outside of North America. To this day there are disputes going on concering the corporation names.
@@davinnicode Similar case to the Carl Zeiss split, then
Chemical industry and by extension pharmaceuticals are a deep rabbit hole in Europe
Absolutely amazing!
I can't even imagine how long did that take you.
Honestly with all that, you are the official youtube IC information source!
I watch your videos as I truly appreciate your love for chips...
netherlands has left the chat
"by limiting imports, Japan managed to build its domestic semiconductor industry"
guess we are helping Schina build their semiconductor industry now, like it or not.
Yea, lets make China great again. Time to take down US leadership right?
I wish that the video would have given a more summarized analysis rather than this long narration of events which I found hard to follow. The lack of visuals especially make it hard for me as a visual learner.
Looked up Angel Food Cake and it seems delicious. If you ever decide to change your channel to cover food then please make a video about it.