back to article UK silicon startups to share £1.3M chump change as part of chip strategy

The UK government has announced the ChipStart program as part of its National Semiconductor Strategy, which will see a dozen silicon startups share £1.3 million ($1.58 million) in funding. This two-year pilot program was confirmed by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as part of a long-awaited …

  1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    £108k

    £1.3m / 12 = £108k

    For that money you won't even find a single competent employee in the sector.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: £108k

      Or to put it another way.

      London to Birmingham = 100mi / 160km

      Cost of HS2 = £56bBn

      So at £350M / km, this is funding of 3m / startup, or in el'reg units 21 linguini per applicant

      1. Ron1

        Re: £108k

        Actually, it's 0.3 m per startup.

        /correction

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: £108k

          >Actually, it's 0.3 m per startup.

          So a foot in the door for British semiconductor success stories

          1. mpi Silver badge
            Pint

            Re: £108k

            Nice one!

    2. Woodnag

      Re: £108k

      That might cover the cost of initial silicon, depending on process node.

      The whole "chip strategy" is virtue signalling that Something is Being Done.

      UK would be better to negotiate low pricing from Cadence etc for qualified startups.

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: £108k

      £1.3m / 12 = £108k

      For that money you won't even find a single competent employee in the sector.

      Well you can divide that figure by two because it's a two-year pilot program.

      What's even the point of doing this, to pay for the cleaning staff's wages down at Infosys?

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: £108k

        And by 2 again, typical overhead for engineering staff is 100%

        1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

          Re: £108k

          Not even enough to hire someone with experience at a chip shop.

          1. TimMaher Silver badge
            Coat

            Re: experience at a chip shop

            I thought these were chip shops?

          2. garwhale

            Re: £108k

            Don't know, might be more than the wage at the local chippy.

    4. Lurko

      Re: £108k

      To be fair, it isn't intended to fund a single employee. It's £1.3m of monetary chaff being blown into the air to convince the hard of thinking that the government is doing something about semiconductors. We're doing the same on AI. But the reason it's so little in this case is actually because government have realised that long ago they missed the boat on making semiconductors. You can argue that the seeds of a semi manufacturing industry were there in years gone by, but over recent decades we'd long lost out to other countries for silicon-bashing. We have bright spots (that are then acquired) like CSR, ARM, Wolfson but they are designers, not manufacturers.

      What's (mostly) happening in other countries throwing billions around is reinforcing an existing manufacturing base as a hedge against China taking Taiwan. So there's big subsidies, but to make use of them needs existing facilities and semi manufacturing talent (which we don't have), a lot of land (which we do have but don't use well), low energy costs (ours are very high by global comparisons), and planning systems that are effective. From time to time we can do this sort of stuff - the JLR battery factory is a good example, but that's the exception not the rule, and even doing this doesn't address the absence of local skills. There's also the culture and work ethic - look at the problems TSMC are having in Texas, where Americans won't work hard enough apparently, yet it's a fact Americans work longer and harder than Brits. Could you imagine how TSMC would cope with the likely workforce in say Grantham, Kilmarnock, or Warrington.

      So if anything you might want to be pleased that they've only thrown away £1.3m. Now, if you want to talk about supporting chip designers that might be a different conceptual kettle of fish, and you might think that's worth more than £1.3m, but immediately that leads down the dead end of government picking winners.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: £108k

        There's also the culture and work ethic - look at the problems TSMC are having in Texas, where Americans won't work hard enough apparently, yet it's a fact Americans work longer and harder than Brits. Could you imagine how TSMC would cope with the likely workforce in say Grantham, Kilmarnock, or Warrington.

        I would bet it's more down to not being able to find local people with the skills which, as the US is not a great chip manufacturer any more, is unsurprising. The solution as always is for employees who do have the skills to work longer.

        So if they were to rock up in Grantham there is no amount of employee overtime that could get them out of that pickle.

      2. garwhale

        Re: £108k

        I imagine they spent more than £1.3 million publicising this.

    5. Tron Silver badge

      Re: £108k

      It's brilliant. It's just enough cash to enable you to market yourself to a US VC and move to California. It will even pay for the flower in your hair.

  2. Howard Sway Silver badge

    describes itself as an "unconventional computation company" that is still in stealth mode

    I hope the government made an effort to find out a bit more than this about whether it is a worthwhile project, as otherwise it's dangerously close to "a company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is" which tried to snare in money during the South Sea Bubble investment frenzy 300 years ago.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: describes itself as an "unconventional computation company" that is still in stealth mode

      All conventional CPU dies are square and have limitations.

      Our new CPU is round, therefore unconventional and therefore logically doesn't have the same limitations

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: describes itself as an "unconventional computation company" that is still in stealth mode

        Ah, how cunning! You have found a way to deal with corner-cases in simulation and test!

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: describes itself as an "unconventional computation company" that is still in stealth mode

          Also avoids that confusion about which way round to put it in socket

      2. Bebu
        Headmaster

        Re: describes itself as an "unconventional computation company" that is still in stealth mode

        《All conventional CPU dies are square and have limitations. Our new CPU is round, therefore unconventional and therefore logically doesn't have the same limitations》

        Ouroborus Design and FabricationTM uses a breakthrough Mobius strip wafer technology which utilizes its unique single sidedness to optimize chiplet interconnects and other novel design opportunities this technology offers to realize our unique semiconductors' unchallenged capabilities, features and performance.

        The next generation will seek to weld together two of our first generation wafers into a Klein bottle configuration for an order of magnitude scale up in chip capabilities and performance.

    2. TimMaher Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: “South Sea Bubble”

      And they sell tons of PPE down the pub.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hilarious

    [DrEvil] One (point three) Miiiiiillion Pounds![/DrEvil]

    uk.gov: Talentless, incompetent 4th-raters with zero idea about semiconductors. Or anything else for that matter.

  4. ecofeco Silver badge

    12 companies share 1.3 million?

    That will barely cover the executive luncheons!

    What were they thinking?!

  5. Winkypop Silver badge

    £1.3M

    Less chips, more a bag of fried scratchings.

    Pickled onion with that sir?

  6. PhilipN Silver badge

    "truly change the way we live our lives"

    Like most blokes, after rising there are three things all beginning with "sh" with coffee somewhere in between. Now tell me again how semiconductors will change that?

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: "three things”

      And, having spent 1.3m on it, government will decide that the correct sequence is shower, shave & shit.

  7. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

    £652.6 million

    "Think what we could do with Bernie Ecclestone’s taxes"

    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/13/think-what-we-could-do-with-bernie-ecclestones-taxes

    That should boost things up a bit - but still small change compared to the waste during Covid lockown

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