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AMD Receives $683M for Dresden Plant
Cocooner writes "Infoworld has an article explaining how AMD received $683 million in grants from Germany and the state of Saxony for its next-generation microprocessor wafer facility. The new plant will be located in Dresden, adjacent to Fab 30 and will be called Fab 36. It will be the first AMD 300mm manufacturing facility."
That may seem initially true, but there are bound to me massive general economic effects from employing 1000 highly skilled workers and their families, and all the increased support business that would come up around them.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
No, it isn't a typo. They are talking about the size of the silicon wafer, not the processor itself. If you had RTFA, you would have known that the whole point of this is that is more cost effective to use bigger silicon wafers since more processors can then be made out of a single wafer.
Why would the government give a $683M break to AMD to get 1000 jobs? That's two thirds of a million bucks per job.
Well, first of all it's in grants and allowances, so the governemnt probably doesn't look at it as "real money" - and I'm guessing it's probably spread out over a long period of time, ie tax breaks for the next x years.
Secondly, they are probably figuring that the plant will make suppliers and customers of AMD move nearby, thus providing more jobs and taxes. It's debateable if this actually works, but that's probably their thought process.
I have blog like everyone else
Just look at how many people work at the International Space Station.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
And because of their size these are called 'Pizza Wafers'.
The die size of an Athlon XP is about 129mm^2, so at 3/4 surface usage about 410 Athlons would fit on a single wafer. Must be really cheap to produce those things...
-- www.linux-laser.org - Open Source Laser Show Software for Linux
"...AMD received $683 million in grants from Germany and the state of Saxony for its next-generation microprocessor wafer facility."
:)
it's not like AMD is gonna change the money into
euro coins and stack them to make a nice looking
factory made from coins, no sir.
the question really is:
who owned the land before AMD bought it (tax?).
who is building the factory(tax?).
who is supplying power(tax?).
who is building the generators that produce
the needed electricity(tax?).
who gets to have a peek at the technology (know-how) once complet(no tax!)
who gets know-how for building a chip
producing factory? (def. more to come!)
etc.
this is a micro investment and the reward is def.
going to pay off as long as people have to use
computers (e.g. no telepathy available).
they are probably figuring that the plant will make suppliers and customers of AMD move nearby
Wafer fabs usually spend a relatively small amount of money in local economies. The bulk of the cost of a new fab is allocated to new equipment, which is mostly imported from the U.S. and Japan.
Still, there are the 1000 local permanent jobs, local jobs for construction of the actual building, money spent by equipment vendors support personnel in hotels, local costs for water and power, and local taxes.
A fun anecdote regarding water consumption: I write software for wet benches. I shipped a bug once to a fab in Phoenix that caused their DI water consumption to skyocket. The fab's DI water plant hit max capacity, and the City of Chandler had problems keeping up with the plant's consumption.
Here in Boise, local philanthropist J.R. Simplot built the city a park with a dozen or so soccer fields. The real purpose behind this park - a place to distribute processed waste water from the Micron plant. Not that I have any problem with that.
So will 36 trendy gay men decorate the factory and have the workers wear something stylish?
no, but the other 2billion Euro's that AMD is spending will stay in the german ecconomy..
So the govermnet spends 600millon,
to put a total of 2.5 billion in the ecconomy.
you are right, its not 1 becomes 2,
its 1 becomes 4.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
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Eastern Germany suffers from extreme unemployment (up to 20% in some areas) and has been in an economical crisis since the wall came down. The unemployment is the reason for the collapsing German welfare state.
Creating jobs and building an industry should be the #1 East German priority. The government did the right thing.
when a US company builds a US factory.
In the same way it would not be remarkable when a German company built a German factory, nor when an Indian company built an Indian factory.
It is a bit more remarkable when the US business drones without brains build another facility outside the US, then complain that US consumers arent buying it's products. Everyone is worried about the "jobless recovery", but they fail to point the fingers at themselves for shipping the jobs ( and salaries ) overseas. Mind you, I am not nessesarily of the "protectionist" mindset, but it does seem that some moderation is called for.
emt 377 emt 4
No. You must be unaware of the 'multiplier effect' in economics, you can read up here. Basically, if there is surplus productive capacity in a economy (which Germany surely has) a stimulative effect at employing that surplus will have spill over benefit to everyone (chip makers need bakers, burger flippers etc) economically 'near' them. The money goes round the economic circle and multiplies.
As Germany is in a depressed economic position (lots of deflationary pressures) such fiscal stimulus is useful (this was the argument for the Bush tax cuts - but that was probably unnecessary in the US (and was not 'directed' to undercapacity areas of the economy), but is much more necessary in Germany), not that this is a cure-all as German is suffering really bad structural problems too.
Then there is the money multiplier concept (a not very good definition here) which explains how money increases as the definition broadens - is cash money, but the amount of money on deposit is greater than all cash in circulation and in bank tills This is a seperate issue and not relevant to this discussion, but a fine demonstation that of all things in life, money is one ofthe finest examples of something which multiplies.