Fab lines don't have high labour input costs. So, in principle I don't see why making chips in any western economy wouldn't work: Its pay money to ASML, train a small cohort, have a lot of stable concrete in the ground so shaking doesn't ruin your precision. Be clean. Super clean.
I get that microelectronics assembly at scale is still humans, but VLSI isn't so I don't get why we don't have any in Australia, or why Europe is only targetting far cruder chips in it's supply chain problem (stuff for cars)
Is this just "we want to spend the capex on something else" or what?
We're well down the planning for wwIII -We all know this is strategic, not price sensitive. And yet, here we are in a world where stupid AI tricks (tm) are hoovering up every RAM chip on the planet. Wouldn't you like exploit the bubble and build out?
Fab lines don't have high labour input costs. So, in principle I don't see why making chips in any western economy wouldn't work: Its pay money to ASML, train a small cohort, have a lot of stable concrete in the ground so shaking doesn't ruin your precision. Be clean. Super clean.
I get that microelectronics assembly at scale is still humans, but VLSI isn't so I don't get why we don't have any in Australia, or why Europe is only targetting far cruder chips in it's supply chain problem (stuff for cars)
Is this just "we want to spend the capex on something else" or what?
We're well down the planning for wwIII -We all know this is strategic, not price sensitive. And yet, here we are in a world where stupid AI tricks (tm) are hoovering up every RAM chip on the planet. Wouldn't you like exploit the bubble and build out?