ST and Europe drop basic chip process R&D

You can be sure the Americans would never countenance any such move. The Taiwanese, the Koreans, the Japanaese have never contemplated such a step.

As the former president of STMicroelectronics, Pasquale Pistorio, used to say repeatedly, an advanced society needs controlled access to advanced microelectronics technology.

Now, a new president of ST is announcing, effectively, that Europe’s only controlled source of advanced microelectronics technology is to be closed down by the end of the year.

The argument of semiconductor business leaders throughout the history of the industry is that, if you have to rely on another region for fundamental enabling technology, you will put yourself at a competitive disadvantage.

ST says it will get its basic technology from another consortium. That means either the IBM cluster in Albany under the control, obviously, of IBM; or the Samsung/Infineon/Chartered/IBM consortium; or the Japanese.

Whichever way it jumps, ST will lose control of access to the technology, and so will Europe.

When Europe started its collaboration on fundamental process technology with the Philips/Siemens megaproject in 1983, it did so because Europe’s leading companies were five years or so behind the US and Japan in fundamental process technology.

That meant they trailed in both the semiconductor market, and in the electronic equipment market, as also-rans

Is this the start of a long decline back to the relative state of European technology in 1983? Well it could be. Hopefully the world has changed since then and these consortia will allow all members to have access to technology at the same time, on similar terms, with equal access, without anyone gaining a competitive advantage.

But for that to be the case, human nature would have to change as well.