Samsung throwing the towel in Texas??

[tom66]

Entitlement is probably also playing a big role. People want to get paid US$100 an hour for flipping burgers and retire at 50 years old.

More like entitlement from the world that surrounds them.

They can't accept a job paying less than $20 an hour, because property prices in their area have inflated such that an apartment costs $1,500 a month, and groceries have inflated 50-100% in the last 5 years, and all their other costs are sky high.   They don't control any of this.

I can't blame people for holding out for more pay and unionising to achieve that.  What the unions and workers need to realise though is it goes both ways, if you get paid more, there is the inherent expectation of more commitment.

[SiliconWizard]

Damn people who don't want to work for for peanuts and live in their car.
They force us to outsource!

[Nominal Animal]

Trying to buy lost/neglected/outsourced experience and know-how is always surprisingly expensive and difficult.

The Antikythera mechanism was constructed about 2,200 years ago, but the know-how and capability was lost for well over a millenium.
Ancient Rome had battlefield medicine with survival rates (including amputation) that we didn't regain until 1800s.  And they had hydraulic concrete that sets in seawater and has proven to be very resilient against seawater and wave erosion (harbor structures two millenia old still intact), whose recipe was lost.  Not only was it better, it probably released less CO2 into the atmosphere than our current concretes do (due to Portland cement manufacture), according to Berkeley Labs.

This is analogous to 'institutional knowledge', and workmanship.  Once lost, it is very expensive (and sometimes impossible/unfeasible) to regain.

In Finland, this happened with housebuilding in the last century.  Our climate is harsh, with -30°C to -45°C possible during the coldest part of Winter (depending on latitude), and +35°C to +25°C during the summer.  Because of their mass, old concrete apartment houses in Helsinki built over a century ago, still easily fulfill the most stringent energy efficiency requirements (and have very high ceilings, sometimes over 3m); but most buildings built in the last 50 years have all kinds of issues and most likely a very limited lifetime, with actual defects quite common.  There is no pride in ones work anymore at all, in the building industry at least, so the quality is shoddy at best – very similar quality issues to what have been mentioned wrt. Samsung and TSMC manufacture in USA.

[coppice]

There is no pride in ones work anymore at all, in the building industry at least, so the quality is shoddy at best – very similar quality issues to what have been mentioned wrt. Samsung and TSMC manufacture in USA.

I think its often quite the opposite. There is often too much misplaced pride concluding that a subject is well understood, and operating as well as it can, when real evidence says the opposite. For example, in the 1980s a lot of Victorian metallurgy knowledge had been lost to the point where many things, like bearings, were wearing out fast. This came to a head as more and more 100 year old bearings were just coming up to their first replacement, and the replacements failed very quickly. Then people were humiliated into relearning.

[Nominal Animal]

There is no pride in ones work anymore at all, in the building industry at least, so the quality is shoddy at best – very similar quality issues to what have been mentioned wrt. Samsung and TSMC manufacture in USA.

I think its often quite the opposite. There is often too much misplaced pride concluding that a subject is well understood, and operating as well as it can, when real evidence says the opposite. For example, in the 1980s a lot of Victorian metallurgy knowledge had been lost to the point where many things, like bearings, were wearing out fast. This came to a head as more and more 100 year old bearings were just coming up to their first replacement, and the replacements failed very quickly. Then people were humiliated into relearning.

Right.  I'm not sure "pride" was a good choice of a word; I was looking for a word describing the appreciation of workmanship, the experience required to do things well, and the willingness to do a good job even when nobody sees the results.

[SiliconWizard]

That kind of goes along with the fact we make stuff that is a lot more short-lived, while that was unacceptable in the past (and unworkable, people just didn't have enough "money" flowing to afford that).

Interestingly, we now consider that making long-lived goods is what's too expensive. That's obviously a fallacy in the long run, mainly explained by the fact our economy has shifted toward a debt-based economy, which has the "emerging property" of making quality work not economically viable.

The pride we take or not in our work just follows.

[coppice]

That kind of goes along with the fact we make stuff that is a lot more short-lived, while that was unacceptable in the past (and unworkable, people just didn't have enough "money" flowing to afford that).

Interestingly, we now consider that making long-lived goods is what's too expensive. That's obviously a fallacy in the long run, mainly explained by the fact our economy has shifted toward a debt-based economy, which has the "emerging property" of making quality work not economically viable.

The pride we take or not in our work just follows.

Whether it is a fallacy depends on the product. There was no point in making a long lived cell phone 10 years ago. Things were moving so fast few people wanted to keep their phone, working or not. Generally when things are changing fast, a long lived product has little value. As things mature and change more slowly they do.

[Marco]

Everyone except TSMC has had crap yields on EUV. Korea or US seems irrelevant in this respect.

I suspect TSMC has some secret sauce in their pellicle, the only significant specialized component the fabs can introduce inside the stepper. Possibly even an active component, though the ASML engineers tend to be aghast if you suggest a mere customer messes about in their precious machine ... then again when that single customer buys so much of your companies output they might be able to hide something from some ASML engineers who don't need to know.

[coppice]

Everyone except TSMC has had crap yields on EUV. Korea or US seems irrelevant in this respect.

It seems unlikely that others have poor yields because of EUV itself. Its much more likely they have quirky processes at the fine geometries where they are using EUV, and TSMC has their's running sweetly.

[EPAIII]

NOW you tell me about Martin Marietta. Where were you 50 years ago?

Make continuing education a requirement but make it achievable.  Pass Algebra I, get a raise.  Pass Algebra II, get another raise.  And so on...  But offer the courses during the work day.  No extra child care, no cost to the worker, etc.

   When I worked at Martin Marietta they did exactly that and I took courses from the first week that I was there and until the day that I left. However I found that VERY few employees took advantage of the free courses. Even though it was outside of my career field I took machine shop classes and all sorts of other non-work related classes but I was sometimes the only student in the class.  When I started with them they had 14,000 employees in Orlando but I never saw more than about 20 students in any one class and by the time that the classes ended there were usually about 5 or 6 at the most.  MMC offered the classes after work but they taught in the plant where I worked and MMC provided all of the equipment, all of the instructors and all of the books.  I had just graduated from college when I went to work for MMC and I had had to pay an arm and leg for tuition, books and all of the added college fees and I told my co-workers that they were nuts not to take advantage of what MMC was offering them.

  There is a LOT of talk in the US about free college educations, student loan forgiveness and other related excuses but in my experience in the US military, in college and in industry is that VERY few people are actually willing to put much of an effort into getting an education.  I've known people that were full time students but took 8 or 9 years to complete a four year degree. And most the students that I went to college with never finished getting their degrees. Most of them were there for the parties and so that they could live off of their daddy's money and not have to go to work!

[Marco]

It seems unlikely that others have poor yields because of EUV itself. Its much more likely they have quirky processes at the fine geometries where they are using EUV, and TSMC has their's running sweetly.

It's not like multipatterning was straightforward, yet they could compete much better.

TSMC was the first to use pellicles and still uses its own in house pellicles, I think they have some fundamental trade secrets in there. Even though pellicles are out of the focal plane, deformation will distort the projected image, they can cause yield problems even when they stop the contamination.

TSMC's fab in Arizona is doing just fine ... Arizona ...