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Japanese Chip Makers to Unite
Doctor Memory writes "The Register reports that several Japanese semiconductor manufacturers (Toshiba, Hitachi and Renesas, and possibly NEC and Matsushita) are in talks to create a "semiconductor superpower" to counter rivals in Taiwan, the US and China. The firms are in talks to create a shared foundry, which might set the stage for the creation of a 45-nanometer process well in advance of the competition."
That the chip makers will also physically unit to form the mighty robot Chiptron.
I have mixed feelings about this.. would be greate for tech but what will happen to the consumer once they kill the competition?
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
"I'll form the head!" -Sorry, couldn't resist.
Just got this from my /usr/bin/fortune:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
Sevenoaks
I, for one welcome our new semiconducting overlords!
~S
"Hitachi, Toshiba and Renesas today announced that they have initiated a joint study on the feasibility of an independent semiconductor foundry business offering advanced fabrication processes to which each of the companies could outsource fabrication."
If you create a company to make a product for you, shouldn't it be called insourcing ?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
So much the eaiser to fix prices if you 'collaborate' your R&D and production.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is great news for the semiconductor market. Hopefully it will stir the pot up a bit and force more serious innovations to occur.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I AM CAPTAIN CHIP FAB!!
Most of this stuff is moving to China as fast as humanly possible.
R&D and (b)leading-edge manufacturing is still in Taiwan, but moving at lightning speed to China ASAP.
As I recall:
Employees cost roughly 1/3 the price of an American worker. Employees in China cost roughly 1/4 the price of a Taiwanese worker.
Is my recollection still true?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Either we have small companies with no money for R&D, and few if any industry wide standards, or we have a few big companies which can effectively pricefix and control the market with ease, preventing further companies from joining.
This seems to be the big dilemma these days, so, honestly, I have no idea if this is a good or a bad thing...
As I recall:
Taiwanese employees cost roughly 1/3 the price of an American worker. Employees in China cost roughly 1/4 the price of a Taiwanese worker.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
All this will do is force Taiwan and the US to stay honest and innovate to stay ahead. A side benefit of course will be lower prices for the consumer. Of course this only works because there are other major players. Competition = good.
http://religiousfreaks.com/has to be a wholly owned company to be called insourcing.
owned by many = not wholly owned by any.
so it's outsourcing.
not that i'm pedantic or anything
Not exactly unusual. Japanese have long been doing this. It is called Keiretsu.
Actually it's too coherent to be in anime. There are no dwarfs or unicorns.
What? There's no such thing as Godzilla? Has anybody told Johnny Socko about this?
now which company will be the Head?
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Hey, I'm cool with it as long as they aren't teaming up with the Germans...
All your chips are belong to us.
If they want to do 45nm "well in advance" of the competition, they'd better hurry. I am in no way associated with Intel, but I think they have 65nm pretty much solved and are already deep in figuring out how to really do 45nm right now.
Look how successful it was at doing manufacturing research collaboratively starting in the late 80s!
So successful that it moved away from semiconductor manufacturing process research into fab equipment research!
You can probably add Nicon to that mix as well. Because I don't think they will be using wafer steppers from outside of Japan.
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
A Keiretsu is a loose grouping of companies working in disparate fields but keeping the same name. An example would be Mitsubishi or, in the West, Virgin Group. What the article talks about is just a normal business partnership between different companies, not a Keiretsu.
Believe me, I do a lot of R&D Testing of products whose manufacture recently was 'shifted' from the US to China. The Chinese who I have encountered (Shenzen region) have zero concept of proactive quality engineering. They will do exactly what they think you told them to do without thinking. Any time there is a problem, they become defensive and opaque, and it becomes very difficult to do anything about the issue.
My feeling is that this comes from years of socalism and group-think within a very regimented culture.
resigned
Lays and Fritos are rumored to be merging to develop a new 45nm sodium chloride process.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
"The firms are in talks to create a shared foundry, which might set the stage for the creation of a 45-nanometer process well in advance of the competition."
Does Brook's Law:
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"
not apply in the least bit to semiconductor shrinking?
That is an actual question, I'm not trying to make a point.
One of the reasons Japan isn't doing so hot is that they can't compete as well as they used to now that their labor wages are so high. I find it amazing that any business leader would think by eliminating all competition in their own country they are going to be more competitive on the world market. Since when has IBM or Sun decided that buying out Intel, AMD, and all the other chip makers is going to make them sell more chips in Asia? No, we in America do precisely the opposite. We stab our own domestic companies in the back unless they can do it for cheaper and better. We would happily see IBM, Sun, Intel, and AMD bite the dust if they bit the dust due to a leaner, more aggressive, and better producer.
What Japan should look at instead of conglomeration is lowering the cost of entrepeneuring, and encouraging young people to start companies. Rather than forcing on the youth the ideal of getting into a good college so you can get hired by a good company, they should push on the youth the concept of rebelling against conventional wisdom and inventing new businesses and technology to slay the dragons. This would keep the existing companies competetive because they would have to compete just to keep their domestic revenue. Instead, they are forming a cartel of sorts that will discourage innovation and competition, and the Japanese people are looking the other way. They don't have a culture of entrepeneurship, and they haven't worked to create one. Now they will get screwed by higher prices and crappier products thanks to an unrestricted monopoly. (Phase 2 of the plan, if it isn't obvious, is tariffs or restrictions on imported electronics.)
Maybe the US system of education is doing well for our country precisely because it is so incredibly broken compared to Japan's. People have a much better chance of succeeding economically by entrepeneurship than education and employment in our country. That's why your local independent plumber and painter are making more money than you are and they haven't even seen the inside of a college campus. And the net result is that people in our country know that the only way to be truly fabulously wealthy is to quit your job and go form your own company.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
This is hardly a nail in our coffin. The US knows that monopolies are bad because they become lazy and charge high prices for crap. If anything, this will ruin the semiconducter economy in Japan as they become equated with bloated prices and shoddy work.
How would you feel if you heard that all the top semiconductor companies in the US were going to merge? Wouldn't your next reaction be something about monopolies and anti-trust? Wouldn't you expect to see higher prices for shoddier work? That's exactly what's going to happen in Japan. I assume the next step is to start using the Japanese government to enforce favorable trade controls to keep the conglomerate alive.
It's competition that keeps U.S. companies honest. If they can't compete, they go out of business, to be replaced by companies that can compete. In Japan (and to a large extend, Korea) mama government will start passing out welfare checks when national corporation X stops being profitable. (We'll see if China is going to behave the same. All predictions say "yes".)
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to hire Mothra to destroy the competition?
on the other hand...
By decreasing the importance of TSMC and UMC, that decreases Taiwan's economic power, allowing China to more easily establish military/political control of the island. Currently, most US presidents honor the economic power of TSMC and UMC and not the alliance from WWII days.Cheers!
There's no doubt about the lower wages, but I think the difference is negated in other ways.
This is an anecdotal example, but Canon moved it's high-end manufacturing back to Japan after attempting to set up in Malaysia. Malaysian wages were lower, but employee turnover was significantly higher than what it was in Japan. This led to increased training expenses, and lower productivity over the long term.
My impression is the the lower-cost countries can be a great way to save money on manufacturing relatively simple items with well-established production techniques, but for newer technologies and R&D, a more highly skilled workforce is necessary.
Per ardua ad astra.
Think bigger still. Why not one world-wide corporation to develop 45nm, 32nm, and whatever-comes-next-after-that-nm processes that are made available to everyone on an equal basis? Better than money spent (wasted) on parallel development and patent fights.
Then you can start competing on the value of your circuit designs.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Aparently you've missed the recent headlines about the ex-Qwest executive's wire fraud charges and the current state of the Enron fraud case. U.S. companies are dishonest slime, just like companies everywhere else. There's a reason why the term "business ethics" gets used as a classic oxymoron - they have none!
In fact, it seems like competition makes companies less honest. Competition seems to get the credit quite often for IBM covertly outsourcing jobs to India and Nikie paying pennies a day for child slave labor in Indonesia. Competition is an excuse to behave like sliime, not a force to keep companies "honest".
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
In North Korea, workers are a tenth of the price of a Chinese worker, and that's to *buy*. None of this capitalist renting nonsense.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
My impression is the the lower-cost countries can be a great way to save money on manufacturing relatively simple items with well-established production techniques, but for newer technologies and R&D, a more highly skilled workforce is necessary.
Yes quite, like us for instance. I often remind my clients of this, a good lecture often makes them forget what they came to ask me to do too.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
for is "Cartel". What we're going to have here is the RIAA of the semiconductor industry. Call it the CMAN - Chip Maker's Association of Nippon.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Have you ever lived and worked in Japan?
Japanese do not work harder than Americans. Yes, if you work there you spend more time in the office, but more time doesn't equal productivity. When I was working there, you were expected to stay until like 800pm at night, and then we usually went out drinking. But, the number of smoke breaks and meetings and things during the day certainly didn't equate to more work done. Lots of meetings here, too, but overall I think the work done is the same.
+5? Does anyone here actually know Japanese? Two others posted before me, so they deserve the mod points.
But, a keiretsu is quite a bit different (see Mitsubishi or other companies for an example). This seems like a much less cohesive venture, and a single one at that. They are just discussing a 'shared foundry' as TFA states. This is nothing like Mitsubishi or the Virgin Group.
Granted, I suppose it is possible for it to eventually turn into a keiretsu, but I don't think so. These are MUCH larger, independent companies, than the groups that formed the modern-day keiretsu of Japan.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No... That's not quite right either.
Joint Ventures are typically formed for this kind of strategic alliance.
Joint Ventures are typically owned by the parties involved, so, it's not exactly outsourcing...
ToHiRe
Or...
ToHiReNeMa...
Butt, I am sure the US-based chip makers will not only have a CHIP on their SHOULDER, they'll have a new... (ToHiR)-eNeMa... Or, a Pentuple Eneme
(image word: triple...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
to just have a link to the goatse guy
and interestingly enough the security word was "mouthful"
If the competition couldnt compete .. too bad for them. So now people can't make money because fools think corporations are out to get them. Well let's do some economic analysis.
.. CREATING JOBS.
.. until people start saying they need no more services .. no more homes .. no more vacations .. no more jewellery .. no more medicine. Who's rich and can say "I don't need anything else"?
Company A makes really cool product (like say as popular as iPod).'
Company B, C, D cant acheive volumes and reduce production cost
Companies B, C, and D go out of business.
VAlues of shares in Company A rise.
Owners of company A get mad rich.
Revenue growth rate of Company A slows
Company A reduces prices to gain even more customers from peopole who couldnt afford product and from different countries etc.
Shareholders pull money out of company because stock is not rising fast enough.
Shareholders fund (via Venture Capital firms) FUND NEW BUSINESSES.
Shareholders spend money on luxury homes, feraris
Miserly shareholders put money in bank accounts. Capital within banks used to give out loans to those who start businesses. Banks try to get more customers by giving loans to people of higher risk and at lower rates. Banks give out $10 in lonas for every $1 in assets. These loans are used by people to start businesses (construction?) and build homes. Others such as teenagers in their mom's basement use a bank loan money TO START A BUSINESS THAT OUTCLASSES COMPANY A's PRODUCT.
As long as there are people who are allowed to work, our quality of life can be improved. Every human can make a contribution to improving global quality of life, simply by providing legitimate services to others
Government should not prevent people from implementing ideas by setting up barriers to people who are not stealing (definition of stealing = taking something that isn't yours). If a company acheives a monopoly without forceful means, so be it.
It's competition that keeps U.S. companies honest.
You should be in showbusiness, hahahahahahaha.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu
The cost of FAB has been growing and will grow all the time. At same time production capacity of a FAB has gone up even faster.
DEC died because its management though they couldn't afford the increasing cost of fab in long run.
IBM:s semiconductor business makes losses, just because its TOO SMALL.
[In IBM:s case the profits come from consulting for systems build from the components that semiconductor business unit makes.]
Its all about capability of filling the minimum unit size with products, that bring the cash. Also its about putting all their research for entire group to utilize.
There is plenty of reasons why they want all their semiconductor research to be utilized. And if this move bring them a process generation ahead of competition, then their margins could go sky high. [By halving the per chip costs.]
Intel seems to be only one capable of staying in business completely alone.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
I, for one, welcome our new 45 nanometer overlords.
All your 45nm base belong to us!!! mwah ha haa
DVD Writer RoundUp this becomes even more fun when you read the conclusion:
"Of all the units we tested for this article, two models had the best overall performance: the NEC ND-3540A and the Toshiba SDR-5472."
Where is Enron today? GONE! The second--yes, the very second--word got out that they were dishonest, their stock prices tanked and people began leaving. Here today, gone tomorrow. These sick kids that thought they could play a joke on the market are learning really fast that we don't take this kind of crap. Where are they now? Having nightmares of serving long sentences for fraud. Do you think they will ever see their salaries and stock options again? Do you think they will ever get a job working within 3 miles of a account book? Heck no.
Yes, Enron was dishonest. But they are gone now. That's what happens: The market corrects for them.
This is very different than the business culture in Asia. If a company does poorly, or is caught in some scandal, the government bails them out. Not so here, except for rare exceptions.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
You have an excellent point.
I do have a friend in the hardware business. He says that because the cost of building a fab plant are skyrocketing, that the fab plants are becoming independent. His own company makes a deal with a fab plant that has the right setup for their particular chip. They send off the design, get 5 or 6 back, and test them. Then when they are satisfied, they put an order up for several million of them.
This is the way of the future. The fab plants will be an entirely separate business, charging money to fab stuff for various companies.
Now, if Japan decided to consolidate all their fab plants into a single interest, with no competition, that would be bad. It's precisely because the competition we're facing in Taiwan and China that people are using those fabbers from time to time (cheaper, but not better). It's sad to see it go overseas, but it is way too expensive to run one here in the US nowadays.
BTW, you need very highly educated people to run a fab plant. These are no sweatshops, nor can they ever be.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.