UK semi industry exposed to supply chain risk, China state ownership UK government may need to revisit the National Semiconductor Strategy to guard against potential supply chain disruptions and succeed in nurturing a successful domestic semiconductor ecosystem for the future. Britain's long overdue semiconductor strategy was published last May by the previous government. It was criticized by …
Ironically, McCain is Canadian, Walkers is ultimately American (long-owned by Pepsico), Tyrell's is owned by KP who are owned by the German Intersnack and only Findus- or at least the current owner of the brand in some markets- is British.
Without a very significant investment we are always going to be too "little too late".
We should never have allowed ARM to be bought by Softbank and, let's face it, ARM was the best in the world. Prior to that, only the failed project we called Inmos comes to mind. Inmos was too late with it's DRAM chips to make any profit, but the Transputer should have been a bigger hit than it was. The Transputer concept was ahead of it's time and the use of ADA rather than a C compiler put developers off.
Interesting fact: In February 1961 Britain exported £76,000 of transistors. Yes, back then, we manufactured transistors. Where did it all go wrong? Probable answer - short sighted Politicians. Like the 1966 rip-up of railway tracks and routes after Beaching's report. Today, we would love to have those routes back.
@steamnut
I played with transputers on my masters degree, I'm sure initially it was Occam as the only language and then concurrent versions of other languages (such as ADA, C) came later.
Used to have quite a few manuals / books relating to them*, they were a fun research tool.
* long since disposed of like too many old interesting stuff (a strong correlation between getting married and suddenly having to dispose of lots of stuff I wanted to keep but were deemed to be unnecessarily taking up space for no useful purpose!)
One thing that went wrong with semiconductors is that Britain had a very profitable valve industry. Early transistors were made using a process that had more in common with valve manufacture than modern semiconductors so they were marketed, packaged and sold like valves (ad at valve prices). Changes in process technology, in particular the planar process first developed by Fairchild in the late 50s, were slow to percolate, there was no need to go to all that trouble investing in the technology especially as a major driver in semiconductor demand, the computer industry, was also withering on the vine because of a systematic lack of investment (and vision). By the time it started to dawn on people that this technology was important, and truly global, the big players had either collapsed (Mullard) or shifted to nice, safe and lucrative government work (Ferranti). Like with other large scale things -- aircraft, computers, cars and so on -- we didn't need to invest in these technologies, the money was to be made financing and insuring them.
(Obviously there's exceptions to this but this was pretty much how everything went.)
In other words, UK industry rested on its laurels, had a navel-gazing viewpoint and didn't see the need to change until it was too late.
IMHO the UK became spoiled by the fact that it once had- and had got used to having- an empire and a captive market to fall back on and the power to get away with this sort of thing.
My guess is that the UK's industrial decline in the decades following WWII was exacerbated not just by the final disintegration of its empire and general decline in its power, but the fact that- even though they no longer had a safety net to insulate them from its consequences- the blasé and arrogant empire-era mentality remained.
Similarly, I've long-believed that much of the reason the UK- or rather many of its politicians and electorate- had a problem with the EU is that they resented the idea that they should be expected to compete and interact with other countries on- gasp!- something approaching an equal basis.
The ultimate conclusion to this was, of course, Brexit. Remember that the UK held all the cards, and the EU was going to be so desperate for a deal that we could dictate the terms? And remember that big deal with the US that Britain was going to get despite the US saying otherwise and which (surprisingly!) still hasn't happened?
So, yeah. More bridges burned and (as many predicted at the time) years squandered with the focus on Brexit and its consequences- including delayed investment in the face of uncertainty (*) the complete lack of planning had led to- while the rest of the world moved on.
The perverse irony being that the UK's backward-looking, delusional obsession with its long-gone era of empire and power is the thing that's hastening its further decline and move towards being even more of a has-been.
(*) Though you can also blame the Tories' decision to use the 2008 recession as an excuse for ideologically-deriven austerity and cutbacks over investment in general for the UK's increasingly shitty performance and for being an increasingly unequal and trashy society.
Exactly what semis to produce, to have a chance of profitability?
This is nonsense virtue signalling, along the Make Britain Great Again line.
Presume that there's a ban on Chinese components (which can't include TSMC in the ban, so not Taiwan, without everything grinding to a halt). There's no margin in discretes, and commodity stuff (op amps etc) are well covered by TI, ADI, Microchip, Philips, ST.
Go complex ICs, and existing patents will kill you, with no competing portfolio to negotiate with.
The whole exercise is pointless anyway unless you plan for a fab, for which $1B is warm up your seats money.
Exactly- I said much the same when the previous government announced they were going to spend £1 billion to bolster UK chip production.
Which I'm sure sounded impressive to the general public if- as most likely aren't- they're not aware that £1 billion is pretty much the base unit when it comes to IC production and that- going by existing prices- even a single fab of any importance will cost several times that.
And it sounds laughable when you realise that this was to be spread out over ten years, i.e. they were planning on spending just £100m a year on a field where anything of note is priced in the billions.
Brexit Britain is an economically broken, isolated end user with patchy bits of (sporadically excellent) tech development. ARM has been sold. Going forward we will always be dependent upon others for working tech systems. If the planet fully tribalises, locked out of the US, EU and China-facing markets, the UK would have to rely on Raspberry Pis, retro kit and paper. I would add landlines, but as they are being removed to save BT a few quid, instead, 'paper cups and string, and shouting'. And the PI doesn't even get on the high street shelves as a viable retail PC. We are no longer major players on our own or as part of the EU. Our public services are vanishing for lack of cash and staff. Our currency has been relegated. The game is done. Get over it and learn to live like the isolated bit player our governments have downgraded us to be.
Side issue. Marvel though it is, when they named the Raspberry Pi, didn't they realise that the plural would look and scan like Raspberry Piss?
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