Arm co-founder: Britain's chip strat 'couldn’t be any worse' Another of Arm's founders has criticized the UK government over its technology strategy, or rather the lack of it, as the country's long-awaited semiconductor blueprint has still yet to be published. Jamie Urquhart, one of the co-founders of the Brit chip design company and who now works as an adviser, said the government's …
"couldn't be any worse" has proved to be a fairly temporary state of affairs with the current government. This is the same group that gave us Brexit, The Hostile Environment, Trussonomics and replaced Patel with... Braverman. They're certainly up to this challenge.
Exactly. Makes you weep for the strong and stable administration of Gordon Brown.
The worse thing is that none of the problems around lack of strategy, were anything hampered by EU Membership - indeed Horizon membership and EU equivalent the Chips Act would have. Roughy structured investment opportunities.
It’s everywhere. Look at the clusterfuck around even a single Battery Giga-factory.
@Red Ted
"Given it has been the same lot in power for over 12 years now, that isn't really an excuse either!"
Not quite. While the same party has been in power for 12 years including a stint in coalition with the lib dems it is difficult to say the same lot have been in power all the way through. There have been moves left with a jaunt to the right here and there but the Tories are a bit fragmented. Kinda like labour when the commies took over. Hell they even had to plot against one of their own who was voted in by conservative members to get the existing government. And it seems Boris and his group are against Sunak.
Just a bunch of infighting tribes it seems instead of a government to run the country.
I would imagine an IT industry becoming a runaway success in the UK would have the financial industry in a tither.
As it currently stands, the UK's financial industry is by any measure our only industry, and that gives them clout in every political decision that has ever been made in this country, and by their hopes, ever will be.
In America, where the IT industry, by its shear might has political power, that perhaps in some scenarios outguns that of the financial world, our financial services sector has perhaps looked on that and taken steps to ensure their dominance in the lobbying halls of Westminster will never be challenged.
It is clear, the IT sector in the UK is not short of mega star talent to get us there, but the finances required will never materialise, beyond a smattering of venture capital and woefully inadequate government grants, which will no doubt filter back towards some rather dubious "investors" via consultancy fees to their associates.
Large amounts of political competence that doesn't exist within the UK influenced UK positively.
Are we really going to try and argue the EU's record on political competence given that just sitting in the top headlines at the moment we have the Ukraine war caused by the EU greenlighting the invasion to Putin and blocking Ukraine joining NATO at Putin's request, a continent wide energy crisis caused by EU policies, a worldwide food crisis caused by EU policies, and even the Guardian (the staunch EU nationalist paper) is arguing that running the same regulations as when we were in the EU is risking a disastrous food scandal from dangerously unsafe food imported from the EU?
About food imports, if the UK were still party to single market agreements it could do something about substandard food. As it is, the whole of the EU knows that the substandard stuff can be dumped on the UK which now has no in-market controls or legal remedies and has chosen to waive import controls to avoid slowing down the supply chain even more. Before this food would probably have been destroyed.
I'd dispute that. While Sunak is probably the wealthiest Tory, most of the them are what would be considered wealthy with wealth running from a couple of million to hundreds of millions. Just because they have enough money to live comfortably, even luxuriously, on, does not mean they don't want more. In fact, the kinds of people who get their bank balances up that high often aren't satisfied with a few million. They want 4, then 8, then 16 and so on.. If people didn't think like that, we'd have fewer billionaires, as they'd get to a couple of million, think "I'm comfortable now" and give up.
That's not to say everyone is like that. I've known people who got their bank balances up into the low millions, and actually did decide they can live comfortably on that, and give up working.
That is more than one or two electoral cycles into the future. What interests politicians are things that they can brag about when next at the hustings. Even worse the other lot might be in power then, so why do work today to help the opposition in the future?
"I think the government are just either unwilling to grasp the nettle or maybe they've got way too many things to do and aren't thinking about it."
...OR, the obvious option: perhaps they simply don't know anything about how to go about solving the problem.
And, not to put too fine a point on this: "...aren't thinking about it." is a foregone conclusion, and direct evidence of not knowing anything about how to solve the problem.
"The government's official semiconductor strategy was expected at least as far back as April last year, when Lord Callanan informed the House of Commons that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was working on one "to be published shortly.""
Err, why would the DCMS be looking at semiconductor strategy? Surely it ought to be a science or technolgy or business-led strategy/policy/whatever? !!! :(
I read elsewhere that it is no longer under the remit of the DCMS, but now under the newly formed "Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)". Quite bizarre that it ever fell under the same department as sport in the first place, but at least it's been promoted to a sensible department now.
Nothing but deluded oxbridge BA graduates in the Cabinet room, so no surprises there. Even go to the tech capital of the UK, Cambridge where ARM is headquartered and you will find nothing but out of touch upper-middle class folk from the private school system in leadership positions well beyond their skill level. It's an old boys club and anyone with talent is exploited and underpaid to keep the class system structures in place.
All ARM's serious designs are done in the US for that reason and their little cores will probably follow suit. 110 Fulbourn road is full of do-nothing jobsworths and middle managers and Softbank hasn't copped on that all the real talent got fed up and left years ago.
This analysis is broadly correct, but let down by:
"Nothing but deluded oxbridge BA graduates"
and
"the tech capital of the UK, Cambridge where ARM is headquartered"
The "bridge" part of "oxbridge" stands for Cambridge. Where ARM is headquartered. You can't bash Oxbridge while praising Cambridge, unless you've got a serious downer on Oxford.
Which is possible, I suppose.
-A.
I wasn't intending to praise Cambridge, it's just the reality that companies have consolidated here or tried to open small satellite offices, you've got 5 big name companies all within 500m of one another at the train station. But the culture in Cambridge is reflective of the UK tech scene in general, the only way to get to a 500k house is getting a management position, through your friends and alumni network and it turns out to be an old boys club, tech workers are exploited and not even on 40k and quickly leave, the better negotiators can get to 80k/90k, but still, there is many unseen networks in such a small city.
ARM Cambridge is representative of this, lots of product managers and very few skilled CPU designers. Everyone wants to be a manager because the UK class system dictates that "manager" is higher up the importance and salary ladder as someone with 15 years of in-depth experience. Very few have the chops to keep up in something as competitive as computing these days. We are seeing Intel and IBM in the late stage of this culture and the results are not pretty.
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Note both Oxford and Cambridge give BAs for all their first degrees - I hold a BA (Oxon) in Chemistry
But a large part of the problem is successive ministers have seen the science and technology budget as there to fund their own pet projects, rather than supporting any coherent national plan. IMO millions have been hived away and wanted that way. Boris Johnson and George Osborne are especially at fault here.
"I think the government are just either unwilling to grasp the nettle or maybe they've got way too many things to do and aren't thinking about it," Urquhart said.
He was being polite. They don't have a clue and are filling in their time looking busy pursuing anything that will distract the public.
What's odd is that Tories are usually chasing 'the next big thing' as a means of putting tax payer money in their bestest pal's back pockets, earning a back-hander and party donation for their efforts, ensuring a lucrative career when they leave politics.
So what does it say that there's no sign of any interest in having a tech strategy?
It makes me shudder speculating on what they might know which no one else does.
I presume they see tech as some kind of manufacturing industry, incompatible with their brexit vision of making Britain a third world country while they wall themselves up in their Singapore on Thames enclave with the bankers and the rest of the elite mega-rich scum.
>It makes me shudder speculating on what they might know which no one else does.
What it says is "There's more money in buying up smaller landlords and jacking up rents" (for example). Why work at building an industry when you can just squeeze monopolies?
To give you some idea of the kind of mess we're in the US's much vaunted "lets bung 50 odd billion at the industry (but with this restriction, that restriction and we'll need oversight to make sure China isn't getting any of it indirectly) is rather larger, but not that much larger, than the pot of money on offer from just one Chinese province.
The deLorean......remember it?
"Small state" can be taken too far. When the government stops governing, what't the point of having it?
The minimum task for the government is to uphold a balance that makes the country run well and the people reasonably happy, and free from suffering.
The Tories have failed in doing this for a very long time now -but the people is used to this sort of thing, and seems to positively enjoy hardship. (As long as arriving small boat people can be made to suffer more.)
It's very hard to have a chip fab strategy when you don't even have a stable power supply strategy.
Fabs need a lot of stable power. Taiwan has multiple power stations dedicated to supplying theirs. Its not the kind of facility you can run off generators if everyone decides to put the kettle on.
The problem is that the average "people" have no idea what they are doing, which is not just evidenced by the fact that the same "people" happily vote for snake oil salesmen and autocrats (as it happened numerous times throughout human history).
Ancient Greece already knew that for democracy to work, an educated populace is required. With "people" mostly voting based on fear and ignorance, it shouldn't come at no surprise that the resulting government is subpar.
How does this differ from a complete lack of a whole bunch of other strategies needed for Agriculture, European and International Trade, Energy, Teaching, Workforce planning, or a hundred other areas with well documented failings?
There's one consistent feature about it. It's the incumbent government behind it.
Fully expecting downvotes from die-hard defenders, but it is time for the incompetents and charlatans to go.
Fully expecting downvotes from die-hard defenders, but it is time for the incompetents and charlatans to go.
As someone whose political views are more "conservative" than anything else it grieves me that I cannot at the moment think of a single argument in support of the current government.
Perhaps it really is time "for the incompetents and charlatans to go" but I cannot find any enthusiasm for anything any other party is likely to bring to the table. As a constituent of the present Mr Speaker I will have no vote at the next General Election so at least I am to be spared the agony of having to make a choice.
A very fair point. Old-school conservatism has certain desirable features.
Labour aren't exactly top of my favourites list; but in the absence of a voting system that allows people to meaningfully vote for an option of their choice (i.e. MMPR instead of FPTP) your only options are the ERG-lead Conservative party; or Labour.
I'll take a change over the status quo, if only to force the issue of addressing the incompetence and cronyism of the incumbents.
Not too familiar with UK traditions, but why is the gobermint responsible for the chip industry? Just build the fabs already and start burning silicon; it's called free market. If nobody wants to buy from you because somebody else is doing it better and cheaper then go think of something else you can manufacture better than anybody else, like cars for example.
Since when has any Gubbermint in the UK had a strategy for any industry other than to let it wither on the vine?
I'm old enough to remember Mr Harold Gannex and Pipe Wilson cancelling the TSR2 and buying the US made Phantom 4. That killed a lot of the UK Aerospace industry. Subsequent Governments of both parties have continued this trend. BREXT killed more investment in one go than the last 7 PM's combined.
We are Doomed....
Successive governments have been killing off UK industry since they helped destroy the car and then computer, chip, and electronics industries, among others. Their only interest has ever been in the short term finance and "service" sectors and they seem to have cleverly even managed to doom these sectors now. They can't even provide a sensible strategy for UK farming and are in the process of subjecting us to the worst of the world's agriculture with GMOst thrown in for good measure.
In the EU they did not have a clue how to cope with state sponsored industries from other companies and let them do what they liked in the UK at the same time encouraging foreign takeovers of anything remaining in the UK that looked promising.
Cleverly we are now out of the EU and instead of supporting UK they are doing the opposite.
Every other country in the world looks after its own except th UK - what a mess.
Just for good measure the NHS no longer exists.
Oh - one success story - UK libel laws are so appalling that the rich and famous choose to litigate here.
quote: we are waiting for the government to come out with a semiconductor strategy.
Why are we waiting? Everything the British government touches, fails. Especially in tech. They are the last people you want to involve themselves in your sector.
Nationalised tech has always been little more than a sexy version of British Leyland. I guess they want free money to build a chip plant and replicate what half a dozen other countries are now doing. The nationalist dream is not very green is it? It also costs billions and takes a decade. The UK doesn't have the cash any more and Sterling is worth 25% less courtesy of Brexit and everything is priced in USD, so what we do have doesn't go so far.
The UK needs better water management. It needs green power and EV infrastructure. It need to grow more fruit and veg. All of this needs subsidies. What do you prioritise?
Maybe the biggest problem is that VC in the UK works like an ATM. Money in, money out. Never much of an attempt to build a GAFA-style business. The US have Google. We have Crapita.
We do have great innovation. Sir Clive was attempting to build electric vehicles decades before Musk. Imagine what a decade or two of development in association with someone like Lotus might have come up with.
Does the UK even need to be technologically self-sufficient, when we build bugger all? We were brilliant in the 80s. But aside from the Raspberry Pi, how much retail tech do we build here? The jewel in the crown, ARM, got flogged off, with big payouts for some folk.
The future is not in AI, but it may be in distributed processing. Only nobody is trying to build GAFA 2.0 by doing that. And it is actually quite cheap - no subsidies required.
quote: Europe and the UK needed to have access to critical technologies so as not to be dependent on other countries such as the US.
Why clump Europe and the UK together? The EU is now a competitor. A dependency upon the EU is no different to a dependency upon the US or Japan. We jumped out of the window and we haven't even hit the floor yet. The UK is now isolated. It doesn't have enough people to dig up carrots, it can't afford the energy to plant tomatoes and some hospitals are ending gas painkillers for giving birth - switching back to old school screaming I guess. This is (badly) managed decline and you want free cash to build a miniature silicon valley here? Building anything increases your carbon footprint at a time when people are being fined for driving into cities and have to crawl from A to B in residential areas at walking pace in their EVs. Drought incoming for the summer again, despite plenty of warnings. This country has no future. You want to do well in tech, emigrate.
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