Could EuroFab fly? Heinz Kundert the European president of SEMI proposes the idea of a joint fab for
We've been here before of course. Crolles was exactly that - a medium-scale production facility with R&D where the costs were split between ST, NXP, Freescale, France Telecom (owner of the Crolles site), and the EC.
Then the Wall Street moneymen, Blackstone and KKR, bagged up Freescale and NXP and within six months of that happening, both Freescale and NXP had been pulled out of Crolles.
Fundamental CMOS R&D was abandoned at Crolles but ST took over the production facilities. Now there's an attempt to re-visit the model.
" Who can afford to put 6 billion into a fab that needs to be depreciated over five years?" asks Kundert, "it's not do-able any more by Qimonda, by Infineon. It needs an Intel, a Samsung or maybe another conglomerate with the support of the government that is able to build the fab."
"We have already done that in Europe", says Malcolm Penn, CEO Future Horizons, "we used that model in Crolles 2 where Freescale, ST and NXP combined in sharing the costs, and shared the output. It was very successful. It worked very well."
Of course if it were to be done again, the ownership of the fab would have to be put beyond the reach of Wall Street's finest. That should be no problem.
Undoubtedly
"I don't understand why people aren't considering that option", says
If
Without EuroFab, Europe's companies will have to trot of to an Asian foundry for process, most likely to TSMC, where their chips will be made on the same processes as everyone else's chips are made on.
I have a simple question:
while I understand that having a fab in Europe is good for european people and their jobs, isn't it a risky game not to use TSMC proven process quality? I mean, what if the performance of their wafers is just better because they are established for a longer time, and arrive at each process nodes earlier (seems obvious, isn't it?). For instance, would ST-Ericsson + EuroFab be able to compete against Qualcomm + TSMC?
An excellent point Djonne, the proof of the pudding would be in the eating. But, with fabs, every new generation is a challenge which levels the playing field somewhat. EuroFab would have access to the same equipment as TSMC and the same wordwide skills pool. So there's no reason it couldn't build a world-class fab. Would it have the same logistics capabilities for customer support as TSMC? Probably not. But the European companies involved would be monitoring their own throughput so maybe that wouldn't matter too much. As to yields, process parameters etc - it would have to be competitive with TSMC or go out of business. Maybe Europe could do it now but, a few years down the road, if it's not done, the idea might become unfeasible.
Good one David, A Pan European collaborative Fab that can compete with TSMC sans EC support! I've not laughed so hard in a long time.
Maybe after that is finished you can build an efficient package and test back-end as well, that proposal is bound to scare the Chinese! NOT
You may mock, Robert, but Crolles wasn't a bad pan-European fab. And i did specifically say WITH support from the EC.
The best argument for a EuroFab is resilience rather than efficiency. It is not prudent for the EU to be completely dependent on Taiwan/China/Korea for chips.
Europe is a very large economic block, it should have some chip manufacturing capacity for the same reasons it should have its own agriculture, steel and shipbuilding. It should also have a trusted fab where EU countries can make chips for military and critical applications.
Tom I completely agree. Pasquale Pistorio always preached that every major economic region should have controlled access to the latest microelectronics technology - for exactly the reasons you mention.