Item — HN Reader

As I mentioned about this before [0], this is a compound semiconductor fab - a very critical bottleneck for European industry and a much more worrisome NatSec issue than sub-14nm logical chip fabrication or arguably even AI.

This is not directly related to AI or logical compute, so kvetching about GPUs, SoCs, TSMC, AI, and other buzzwords is dumb.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557914

1 comments

I would also like to see local PCB manufacturers - pcbway etc like. Modern production facilities might even be locally competitive given the amount of automation that can be had.

Does AISLER[1] do the same thing as pcbway? They seem to be based in Germany/EU

[1] https://aisler.net/en

Looks good - will have to give them a go!

Netherlands actually

Company might be registered in NL but phone number + hosting happens in Germany => maybe only tax reducing?

The company seems to be primarily in Germany (Aachen), with headquarters/holding company just across the border in The Netherlands (10km away in Lemiers, right on the border). That region is pretty economically integrated and I believe setups like this are fairly common to make use of the "business climate" of The Netherlands. Think taxes but also less bureaucracy. It looks like at least one of the founders also studied in Maastricht.

double irish dutch sandwich

They should, but sadly it's extremely difficult for PCB board manufacturing to return to Europe.

EU has FTAs with Japan and SK, and others that dominate the segment like Taiwan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and India have already unlocked public-private subsidized for the sector.

Additionally, the big players in the industry like ZDT, Unimicron, Nippon Mekatron, Foxconn, Compeq, TTM, and Flex have much stronger financial and political linkages in Asia or the Americas.

This fab itself is important, but was extremely difficult to stand-up and was largely a result of the supply chain issues that the automotive industry faced during zero covid, so it basically took 6 years to execute on this project. That lag-time is the biggest issue unless individual European states decide to take industrial policy their own hands, which becomes expensive very quickly.

Concentrating on building a niche in compound semiconductors as well as 2.5/3D packaging would probably be the best bet for the EU today, but I expect to see French-German industrial rivalry to undermine coordination.