Power outage at Hiroshima facility may hit DRAM supply Memory maker Micron says it experienced a prolonged power disruption at the Hiroshima DRAM manufacturing facility on Friday 8 July, resulting in a complete shutdown of its production lines. Micron Technology HQ in Boise, Idaho Micron's HQ in Boise, Idaho The incident is expected to result in a loss of production output and …
What would have to happen so we could have a high tech industry here?
Do we make anything or everything has already been outsourced so that we can pretend to be green and workers' friendly?
Seems like our tech industry is actually just people engaged in reselling and repackaging.
The software front we used to be strong at is also slowly being crushed and pushed offshore.
Why would you become an engineer if best you'll be doing is repairing or testing Chinese kit someone else designed and manufactured?
Lower energy costs, lower cost clean water supply, adequate numbers of STEM trained college leavers.
We're short on cheap energy, water and have a severe deficit of STEM students.
Consequently the UK is incredibly unfavourable for any form of manufacturing other than at the most specialised / low volume levels. (See Jaguar price tags for comparison of what happens when you try to operate on level playing field).
The only way out is to negotiate tax breaks with the national government that make it favourable to come here. Cough, BMW, Honda, Nissan, others.
What would have to happen so we could have a high tech industry here?
Do we make anything or everything has already been outsourced so that we can pretend to be green and workers' friendly?
I've been musing this for the past few weeks and I've actually come to the conclusion that if the rest of the world wants the fabs, let them have them. Provided there is sufficient distribution of them to ensure supply I don't see an issue. Semis are high value compared to their size and weight so transporting them is a non issue.
OTOH fabs are incredibly capital intensive, employ comparatively few people and have fairly short life spans. Took some recent figures for cost of a fab and numbers employed and it worked out well over $3m per employee, if we assume 30% government subsidy as common in the West the taxpayer is forking out $1m per employee for a job that may last 10-15 years tops. Is that really a good deal?
Of course enormous value is created along the way but we know how good these companies are at moving their profits around so presumably little payback comes via that route. I freely admit I may be missing something but I can't see the point.
Shutdowns, and certainly unplanned ones, are very bad indeed for cleanroom environments because your environmentals controls go, and thus the controlled conditions you need to produce. That's not just true in the silicon industry, it also applied to medical facilities.
When power returns it's not just restarting, getting back to the operational standard is an iterative and failrly lengthy process.
Yes, I can see the problem. Downtime seriously sucks.
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