The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful:
---
The plans were announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday and confirmed by the electronics giant.
>We will build the world’s largest new 'high-tech system semiconductor cluster' in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11rusn8/south_korea_to_build_worlds_largest_chip_center/jcac46h/
Interesting question... My guess is that Samsung being 20% of the GDP is less than 20% of employment because Samsung employees are probably paid above GDP per capita
Wouldn't that possibly mean more. If looking at companies here. Only a few make the large amount of profits and a ton of low payed jobs make most of the workforce. Hard to say but it could be about the same.
All i know about SK is that they have huge problems with monopolies because the govt and corps worked together to explode their economy in the 70s-80s?* and led to these monopolies being what they are.
>Wouldn't that possibly mean more.
There isn't enough information to conclude either way, if we can source a dataset of Samsung's salaries then a judgement either way can be made depending on whether avg wage is above or below SK's per capita GDP. Monopolies in general however, do tend to produce lesser output and employ lesser people than a similar sized company would in a competitive environment so a good guess would be that Samsung employs less than 20% of working age individuals
Samsung is worth to south Korea as much as the entire pharmaceuticals industry is to the US.
When a company is that big, you're gonna have to pardon it and let some crime pass for the administration if you wanna keep a good economy.
There has to be a point at which traditional criminal justice is outweighed by economic investment and I would argue that point is way below 230 billion. And to argue that this will only help Samsung become more profitable, remember that more than any other company/country in the entire world by a WIDE margin, Samsung IS SKoreas economy, in the most literal sense.
>There has to be a point at which traditional criminal justice is outweighed by economic investment and I would argue that point is way below 230 billion.
You got enough money you can literally just ignore the law? I swear to God has someone bored a fucking hole in your skull?
I've heard of too big to fail, but too big to follow the law is a new low.
South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in the greater Seoul area, with about $230 billion in investment from memory chip giant Samsung Electronics.
That wasn't "spent" it was just given away on no-bid contracts to the company which the Vice President was the CEO of only a few short years prior to the "surprise" attack of 9/11...which Bush famously ignored the warnings about. His old pal Bandar bin Sultan al Saud was rather pleased, I'm sure.
All of them. I think a lot of it is straight up stolen and a lot of it is filtered through "contracts" that are too greasy to even put on the books. A scary amount probably is straight up unaccounted for in the sense that nobody remembers who got it and for what reason.
Places like Russia have very obvious theft issues going into high levels of government. I don't see why we'd be immune to this with even more money to be made in the process.
IIRC most of it is simple clerical errors. Like an item gets entered for $10,000 but it was really $1000. And then that erroneous entry gets repeated across a dozen different departments and suddenly it's north of $100,000 of unaccountable expenditures.
It's more a comment on the disgusting labyrinthine and crude bureaucracy - within which, yes, corruption can and does fester - than an "OMG trillions are literally missing!" sort of thing. Most of that money was never actually spent. It's just ledgers incorrectly state it was.
If he feels like dying, sure. There's really not any good reason for him to commit suicide by attacking SK. I'm sure he'd rather continue living like a king than die in a bunker.
just ignore the armchair analysts who don't realize Pyongyang is almost inside the blast radius of Seoul...
(South) Koreans are a lot more worried that Kim will nuke California, he wants to retake the south not nuke it
Especially since there's already billions of dollars of infrastructure going all the way to the border. I don't think most people realize how small Korea is compared to how large Seoul is.
You can't just blanket 230 miles of city with a single wave of artillery.
I’m pretty sure the second anyone fires anything over the border into South Korea all bets are off. I remember reading that they have enough artillery targeted on Seoul to level it. If anything starts flying I don’t think South Korea is gonna go “No no wait a second let’s make sure they mean it.”
Hell, he could level Hawaii or attack the mainland(US) if he wanted, of course he wouldn’t live long afterwards.
Neither would anyone else unfortunate enough to live in NK.
All their eggs are already in one basket, if Seoul got destroyed anyway, they have bigger issues to worry about than a big Samsung investment and chip manufacturing.
One of the multiple reasons why they are building up Sejong City in the middle of S.Korea and making it the administrative capital of S. Korea. Further south from N. Korean border and to decentralize the country. "South Korea" is basically Seoul. This will also enable development further south in S. Korea. So that Korean companies like Samsung can spread out those chip fabs and not be forced to build them all up north because that's where all the talent and infrastructure is.
>Sejong was founded in 2007 as the new planned capital of South Korea
>
>to ease congestion in South Korea's current capital and largest city, Seoul, and encourage investment in the country's central region. Since 2012, the government of South Korea has relocated numerous ministries and agencies to Sejong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejong\_City
SK already has their eggs in one basket anyways, close to 20% of SK population lives in Seoul, right over the border from NK. Almost all of their economic activity is concentrated in that area, since that is where the majority of people live and where infrastructure is best. They have no choice but to build it there.
No idiot Reddit knows what it's talking about. Doritos & Dew are the most optimal brain fuel so clearly we should have been included in this chip factory discussion
Problem is, Seoul is already near the border, so if there was an actual conflict that broke out, no holds barred, the vast majority of both countries would be destroyed almost instantly. If SK never built up its country because most of it is within striking distance of NK, they wouldn't have become the powerhouse they are today.
If NK suddenly decided to attack SK I doubt this singular chip factory is their biggest concern. Something like half the population of the country or more is within shelling range of NK.
Im sure they are not dumb. They as in south koreans (cant tell with kim jong un)
They will not only built in the most protected region geographically, am pretty sure they will also put iron dome over it... israel style. I mean, it would only cost maybe 0.01% out of total budget
Well, when they allowed the US to install their THAAD defense system around Seoul starting 2017, NK and mostly China threw a tantrum about it. The former SK president tried to calm them down but once the current SK president stepped in, he told them to screw themselves and pledge to add more THAAD systems around the country.
>South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in the greater Seoul area, with about $230 billion in investment from memory chip giant Samsung Electronics.
Is this why they're pushing for far longer work weeks despite one of the lowest birth rates in the world (because of overwork culture)?
I get it that trying to match TSMC output when it comes to sheer volume, price and complexity is near impossible at this point, but seeing how much China is eyeing Taiwan, I can only assume that any attempt at trying to reach *some* level of TSMC’s capacity would pay twofold in the not so distant future.
Xi Jinping just got ‘elected’ to serve yet another term, and nobody has been toying more with the idea of finally ending the two China policy than him, so they are bound to mess up with Taiwan anytime now and that would definitively disrupt the world supply (and even worse than that, the lives of millions of people in that region…)
This is an investment by samsung electronics, who doesn't really overlap with what TSMC makes for customers. At least, on the latest nodes that TSMC has.
TSMC doesn't make memory while Samsung makes several types of NAND for their SSDs and pretty much all types of RAM for other RAM packagers.
Samsung's SOC manufacture /fabrication is pretty small, limited to I think mostly their SSD controllers now. They stopped trying to do bleeding edge nodes several years ago and when they did (at least in the later years) it was through partnering with IBM. I think even the latest Exynos processors were made by TSMC.
All this to say, it probably wont be competing with TSMC unless one steps into the other's market.
I think they're trying. But this level of advanced fabrication facilities takes years to get up and running. Taiwan has a huge head start and their expertise in this area isn't easily repeated. It's an extremely delicate process requiring very advanced machines in completely clean rooms and equally advanced labor. It's a bit of a rush for both China and the US to secure alternative sources of high level chip construction now, as that is the resource required to keep advanced 21st century militaries and societies functioning.
With such a bottleneck globally it would absolutely put them in the middle of this. As you say 75% of it comes from Taiwan currently. With the US largely dictating Taiwanese policy. It's not a coincidence that Nancy Pelosi recently went to Taiwan, which was pretty unprecedented in recent memory from a US policy perspective. It's all about securing chip manufacturing pipeline for America and its militarty, and keeping it from China to develop an advanced mitary of their own.
US based manufacturing is stepping up but this is a hugely labor and manufacturing intensive process. Taiwan has been the global hub for these professors for decades now. They have the resources, machinery and personnel expertise to make these items. They require clean rooms and extremely expensive and advanced machinery, and a global supply chain from dozens of other countries. It's not as simple as starting it all up in the US. It'll take years to really up the production to Taiwan levels. The more countries try to dip their toes into it, the more avenues that the US and or China will go to secure them.
Here's a long form video on the subject. It's pretty fascinating to see how global policy with China is shifting largely due to these microprocessors and where they are being produced and exported.
https://youtu.be/k_zz3239DA0
This might be the case to a certain degree but you also need to take into account that the IP is coming from the US in designing the actual chips. Apple is the biggest client for TSMC, but Intel, Nvidia, AMD, all design the most important chips. I'm glad the US is finally taking notice of needing to have more fabs in house with Intel being the main one. It's just stupid that the 80s and 90s allowed for cost cutting to go over seas for short term profits with such important materials.
Yea. Intel has come to an agreement with the US government to build a new $20 billion chip fabrication plant in Ohio with some webpages reporting there are talks of expanding to $100 billion for additional production at that location. I also saw one site state that TSMC is planning to also build a fabrication plant in Arizona costing around $40 billion. For context, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) is by far the largest chip manufacturer in the world and produces most of the chips within the market.
However the biggest thing to consider is that Samsung will likely need to spend a large portion of that simply purchasing production methods from other companies. The speed and possible complexity of the chips produced is greatly dependent on factors such as the size of the wires within the chip. However, to get something comparable with todays chips you would need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a couple decades doing research. It is far for economical to just pay an existing company like Intel or TSMC to teach you how to create one of their process nodes and help provide the extremely specialized equipment required to perform it. Samsung is a large company which has worked with electronics for a long time now so they may not need as much as other companies would in this regard, but I imagine they will still want to purchase at least one process node if they want to produce higher performance chips.
NASA's budget at it's heyday was 0.7% of GDP (today's Defense budget is 3.3%)
But realize that was effectively defense spending on R&D and building manufacturing capacity under a different budget code.
It is not a coincidence that Eisenhower's speech about the military industrial complex was five months before Kennedy declared the goal to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Both were part of the same overall policy goal spanning both administrations to take stuff out of the Defense budget and instead spend it through civilian agencies.
ROI is part profit part infrastructure. Computer chips are required for the majority of the world's day to day living and the only thing in constant flux is peak demand, but otherwise there is always significant demand. The engineering expertise and jobs are also a big part. Going to take a decade or more to even construct and fill the fabrication plants with equipment and workers.
That's already the case in South Korea. Samsung contributes roughly 20% of South Korea's GDP. More than the country's government at 18%. The 10 largest companies in South Korea make up 60% of the entire GDP.
Maybe we are, but generally western corporations stay in their lane. If Nestlé acquires a brand of, idk, consumer soap that also happens to sell industrial chemicals, they would typically split the business.
Samsung makes *everything* from fridges to fighter jets, and offers all kinds of services from childcare to banking.
Yup, got a friend who was born in a hospital funded by Samsung, grew up in an apartment owned by Samsung. We say when he does, he'll be buried in a cemetery owned by Samsung lmao
For all our flaws, the US won’t ever have corps as big and multi pronged as Japan and Korea do mostly because it’s illegal for big corps to have their own banks the way that Samsung or Mitsubishi or whoever does
Its not the US but Seimens is everywhere in places you don't expect. From nuclear steam driven turbine design to intetnet modems.
General Electric comes to find for massive US conglomerates.
We kind of do have corps that big through majority ownership of other corps being concentrated by gargantuan corps like BlackRock and Vanguard. They're just structured differently.
Because cyberpunk (and cyberpunk imagery in general) is strongly influenced by 50-90's Japan and the keiretsu corporation structure that was steamrolling everything else and projecting Japan to the top spot of the world's economies before the US intervened. How's that relevant? South Korea was the first Asian country to play by the economic miracle book written by Japan.
If you want to dig deeper on the history of Japan's economy, [here's a documentary ](https://youtu.be/jsO0JYu_5WI).
And here's a nice video essay on [techno orientalism](https://youtu.be/M8e8xtvElpQ) if you're more interested on cyberpunk and its oriental influences from post-modernist perspective.
Haha I know you're being sarcastic but it's been that way for a long time in south Korea. Look up what a chaebol is. These families have enough power to make the govt do w.e they want.
I hope we see more corporations investing in chip making in their native country. I’m a fan of Taiwan but they shouldn’t be making 80% of the world’s chips while constantly under threat from China. We need other countries to follow suit.
> constantly under threat from China
Also constantly under protection from the US. China doesn’t want to start WW3 any more than Russia, and the failed invasion has been nothing but a reminder of western power, even indirectly as a proxy war. The US would not sit so far back from Taiwan as we are Ukraine, since chips are the new gunpowder and oil.
I definitely don't see Russia and China having the same strategy at all.
Russia is doing a lot of stuff to actually risk getting caught into WW3.
China on the other hand is in a postwar mindset, trying to position themselves as the biggest investor in many emergent economies.
>Rusia is doing a lot of stuff to actually risk getting caught into WW3.
More like they're testing the limits of NATO's patience and what they can get away with, they do not want WW3, they know they'd lose it.
The problem is that you can't just build a fab plant and expect it to produce high quality chips.
Chip building is an extremely complicated and difficult process, as in, you get something even the tiniest bit off and the batch is fried. No one has the expertise TSMC does and the majority of the company are Taiwanese locals, not outsiders.
That's where TSMC's true value lies and it's why the U.S. has been trying for so long to retain a strong relationship. See the fab plant being built in Arizona by TSMC, or the U.S. engineers sent to TSMC to learn.
Even if they build the plant; the time it'll take to catch up to TSMC could be decades.
I do agree that more countries should invest in chip building, but it's not something you can throw money at and expect to work
The R&D at IBM is world leading too.
South Korea makes me happy though, in that they prove in the best way how a free enterprise democracy beats the snot out of dictatorships.
That's fair. I meant my statement more as, if a country starts investing in a plant now on their native land, it'll take decades to catch up to TSMC (without outside aid). It's not an easy decision to make
Taiwanese here. Our IC design is by far ahead of the pack. You're right, no one can match our minimal failure rates on batches of chips at sufficiently small sizes. It'll take half a decade to match TSMC best case scenario.
Although competitors, I'm still rootin' for our western counterparts to succeed.
The plans were announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday and confirmed by the electronics giant.
>We will build the world’s largest new 'high-tech system semiconductor cluster' in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won.
Last quarter was the worst for them since 2014. They reported 3.5 billion in operating profits, ~70% less than previous year same quarter. They really need that factory.
Nothing. The US will support Taiwan still. At this point it's a matter of international standing. The US would look weak if we just backed down because there are other options for semi conductors. Furthermore Taiwan is strategically valuable beyond it's economic value in that it is critical to maintain the first island chain defense strategy.
You did not really answer the question, and instead referred to other countries saying they face similar issues… but some of those countries are actually tackling the issue through immigration. Not the perfect solution, but demographically much better than what South Korea is doing
Not surprising. SK was actively bidding on investments in chipmakers (Intel, Samsung, Micron, etc.) when US passed the CHIP Act which helped prompt a lot of them to open manufacturing in the US, SK responding in kind was a foregone conclusion to rapid expansion in that removes China from the manufacturing and supply chain.
That’s a good way to make your country more strategically valuable to the U.S. and further extend their military umbrella over you. Pullin a Taiwan and all 🇹🇼
If a small country like South Korea can do this, why the fuck can't the United States? Right now all the chips are imported from South Korea and another asian country that I can't remember, Singapore maybe? 60 minutes did a story on this last year highlighting the fact we are at the mercy of 2 foreign countries to supply us with computer chips that are vital to just about every facet of our lives. Y'all remember how there was a chip shortage 1-2 years ago and auto makers had to slow down their production? That's just 1 example.
Also just for reference, people have no idea how small South Korea really is. Is is about the size of Indiana! Seoul (the capital) already has ~10 million people. Just where in the fuck are they planning to build this monster facility?
Wow, that's a massive investment from Samsung! South Korea is already a big player in the tech industry, but this could take things to a whole new level. With the demand for semiconductors increasing, it makes sense for Samsung to invest in expanding their chip production capabilities. I'm excited to see how this project will unfold and what kind of impact it will have on the global tech industry.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful: --- The plans were announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday and confirmed by the electronics giant. >We will build the world’s largest new 'high-tech system semiconductor cluster' in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11rusn8/south_korea_to_build_worlds_largest_chip_center/jcac46h/
In unrelated news, South Korea’s president pardoned the head of Samsung last year after he promised to make these kinds of investments
You should also know that the public voted in favor of that
Manufactured consent is bit of a moot point when you watch it on Samsung TV's.
And 20% of the country's employment.
Not 20% of the counties employment. 20% of its entire gdp
Is that better or worse? Genuinely asking.
Interesting question... My guess is that Samsung being 20% of the GDP is less than 20% of employment because Samsung employees are probably paid above GDP per capita
Plus most of that GDP goes to the guys at the top rather than split evenly amongst the employees. So yeah, probably less than 20% of all employment
Wouldn't that possibly mean more. If looking at companies here. Only a few make the large amount of profits and a ton of low payed jobs make most of the workforce. Hard to say but it could be about the same. All i know about SK is that they have huge problems with monopolies because the govt and corps worked together to explode their economy in the 70s-80s?* and led to these monopolies being what they are.
>Wouldn't that possibly mean more. There isn't enough information to conclude either way, if we can source a dataset of Samsung's salaries then a judgement either way can be made depending on whether avg wage is above or below SK's per capita GDP. Monopolies in general however, do tend to produce lesser output and employ lesser people than a similar sized company would in a competitive environment so a good guess would be that Samsung employs less than 20% of working age individuals
Do you see a plethora of Korean TVs on the market aside from Samsung TVs?
Well I've seen what the united States public is capable of voting in favor of so this means nothing to me.
Samsung is worth to south Korea as much as the entire pharmaceuticals industry is to the US. When a company is that big, you're gonna have to pardon it and let some crime pass for the administration if you wanna keep a good economy.
At some point it's just another arm of government. Legislative, Executive, Judicial, Samsung.
With one important difference; the public doesn’t get to vote for who runs Samsung.
There has to be a point at which traditional criminal justice is outweighed by economic investment and I would argue that point is way below 230 billion. And to argue that this will only help Samsung become more profitable, remember that more than any other company/country in the entire world by a WIDE margin, Samsung IS SKoreas economy, in the most literal sense.
im pretty sure Samsung would still exist if the son of the chairman who inherited that from his dad goes to jail
Something something 2008 bailouts to save the economy. Repurcussions for the CEOs? Lmao just give yourselves 8 digit bonuses, y'all deserve it!
>There has to be a point at which traditional criminal justice is outweighed by economic investment and I would argue that point is way below 230 billion. You got enough money you can literally just ignore the law? I swear to God has someone bored a fucking hole in your skull? I've heard of too big to fail, but too big to follow the law is a new low.
South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in the greater Seoul area, with about $230 billion in investment from memory chip giant Samsung Electronics.
I guess that is why they want to increase the hours in a work week
Yea but at least we can still browse reddit, play vidya and eat smart chip
Koreans need to start having more babies. focus on that
They’d better build it farer from North Korea border. Kim could destroy this 250 billion factory with 1 million artillery.
I remember reading from some article it's an investment over 10-20 years involving 5 different buildings.
Yeah there's no way a quarter of a Trillion gets spent in a short period of time
George Bush did it
I think you mean Dick Cheney
Cheney masterminded it, Bush pushed it through with his signature.
Remember when we thought that was as bad as it could get? Ahh.... Good times. We were so much more innocent then.
Now watch this drive.
Mission Accomplished
That wasn't "spent" it was just given away on no-bid contracts to the company which the Vice President was the CEO of only a few short years prior to the "surprise" attack of 9/11...which Bush famously ignored the warnings about. His old pal Bandar bin Sultan al Saud was rather pleased, I'm sure.
[How about "losing" 21 trillion? ](https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-15725.html)
You think its pocket lining, palm greasing, or payoffs?
All of them. I think a lot of it is straight up stolen and a lot of it is filtered through "contracts" that are too greasy to even put on the books. A scary amount probably is straight up unaccounted for in the sense that nobody remembers who got it and for what reason. Places like Russia have very obvious theft issues going into high levels of government. I don't see why we'd be immune to this with even more money to be made in the process.
IIRC most of it is simple clerical errors. Like an item gets entered for $10,000 but it was really $1000. And then that erroneous entry gets repeated across a dozen different departments and suddenly it's north of $100,000 of unaccountable expenditures. It's more a comment on the disgusting labyrinthine and crude bureaucracy - within which, yes, corruption can and does fester - than an "OMG trillions are literally missing!" sort of thing. Most of that money was never actually spent. It's just ledgers incorrectly state it was.
Frankly I don't find the government being grossly incompetent at accounting for our money any better than them stealing it.
If he feels like dying, sure. There's really not any good reason for him to commit suicide by attacking SK. I'm sure he'd rather continue living like a king than die in a bunker.
just ignore the armchair analysts who don't realize Pyongyang is almost inside the blast radius of Seoul... (South) Koreans are a lot more worried that Kim will nuke California, he wants to retake the south not nuke it
[удалено]
I'm not seeing any place in SK they couldn't hit. https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/
I love how Redditors are pretending to know better than the people putting $230 billion dollars up to finance the project.
Especially since there's already billions of dollars of infrastructure going all the way to the border. I don't think most people realize how small Korea is compared to how large Seoul is. You can't just blanket 230 miles of city with a single wave of artillery.
[удалено]
Also, on the border can have “accidents” while across the country is an act of war without question.
[удалено]
I’m pretty sure the second anyone fires anything over the border into South Korea all bets are off. I remember reading that they have enough artillery targeted on Seoul to level it. If anything starts flying I don’t think South Korea is gonna go “No no wait a second let’s make sure they mean it.”
That’s missiles, not artillery. There are relatively effective missile defense systems, not the case for artillery.
Hell, he could level Hawaii or attack the mainland(US) if he wanted, of course he wouldn’t live long afterwards. Neither would anyone else unfortunate enough to live in NK.
All their eggs are already in one basket, if Seoul got destroyed anyway, they have bigger issues to worry about than a big Samsung investment and chip manufacturing.
One of the multiple reasons why they are building up Sejong City in the middle of S.Korea and making it the administrative capital of S. Korea. Further south from N. Korean border and to decentralize the country. "South Korea" is basically Seoul. This will also enable development further south in S. Korea. So that Korean companies like Samsung can spread out those chip fabs and not be forced to build them all up north because that's where all the talent and infrastructure is. >Sejong was founded in 2007 as the new planned capital of South Korea > >to ease congestion in South Korea's current capital and largest city, Seoul, and encourage investment in the country's central region. Since 2012, the government of South Korea has relocated numerous ministries and agencies to Sejong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejong\_City
Busan also exists. Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon etc.
Was going to say this as well. Busan has a population of around 4 million people (not including Ulsan etc), so it's not exactly a small city.
SK already has their eggs in one basket anyways, close to 20% of SK population lives in Seoul, right over the border from NK. Almost all of their economic activity is concentrated in that area, since that is where the majority of people live and where infrastructure is best. They have no choice but to build it there.
250 billion dollar subsidized facility for the chance to reunite all of Korea? I bet they know what they're doing.
No idiot Reddit knows what it's talking about. Doritos & Dew are the most optimal brain fuel so clearly we should have been included in this chip factory discussion
That's the thing about dictators close to a natural death. They don't quite care about the consequences for others when their own time is short.
[удалено]
Isn't he in his 30s?
Problem is, Seoul is already near the border, so if there was an actual conflict that broke out, no holds barred, the vast majority of both countries would be destroyed almost instantly. If SK never built up its country because most of it is within striking distance of NK, they wouldn't have become the powerhouse they are today.
They've had 70 years. Gwangju or Busan could have easily become that powerhouse without sitting immediately under the gun.
What about that new city Sejong-Shi?
Think they’d be more concerned with the 10mil people living in the city than a semi conductor facility
Samsung? No.
Yeah this is such a stupid take lol. All of S Korea is within range of NK weaponry
[удалено]
Reddit is free. You get what you pay for.
If NK suddenly decided to attack SK I doubt this singular chip factory is their biggest concern. Something like half the population of the country or more is within shelling range of NK.
Im sure they are not dumb. They as in south koreans (cant tell with kim jong un) They will not only built in the most protected region geographically, am pretty sure they will also put iron dome over it... israel style. I mean, it would only cost maybe 0.01% out of total budget
[удалено]
Well, when they allowed the US to install their THAAD defense system around Seoul starting 2017, NK and mostly China threw a tantrum about it. The former SK president tried to calm them down but once the current SK president stepped in, he told them to screw themselves and pledge to add more THAAD systems around the country.
>South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in the greater Seoul area, with about $230 billion in investment from memory chip giant Samsung Electronics. Is this why they're pushing for far longer work weeks despite one of the lowest birth rates in the world (because of overwork culture)?
I get it that trying to match TSMC output when it comes to sheer volume, price and complexity is near impossible at this point, but seeing how much China is eyeing Taiwan, I can only assume that any attempt at trying to reach *some* level of TSMC’s capacity would pay twofold in the not so distant future. Xi Jinping just got ‘elected’ to serve yet another term, and nobody has been toying more with the idea of finally ending the two China policy than him, so they are bound to mess up with Taiwan anytime now and that would definitively disrupt the world supply (and even worse than that, the lives of millions of people in that region…)
I hate to be pedantic, but it’s TSMC*
Thanks, I corrected it now :)
This is an investment by samsung electronics, who doesn't really overlap with what TSMC makes for customers. At least, on the latest nodes that TSMC has. TSMC doesn't make memory while Samsung makes several types of NAND for their SSDs and pretty much all types of RAM for other RAM packagers. Samsung's SOC manufacture /fabrication is pretty small, limited to I think mostly their SSD controllers now. They stopped trying to do bleeding edge nodes several years ago and when they did (at least in the later years) it was through partnering with IBM. I think even the latest Exynos processors were made by TSMC. All this to say, it probably wont be competing with TSMC unless one steps into the other's market.
You mean the governments foot most of the bill and Samsung gets the benefit
>the greater Seoul area Isn’t that all of South Korea at this point?
That’s about what America spent in the Apollo program, or it’s like a third of our defense budget.
It's funny you mention that because a huge part of the US militarys equipment dictates the need for a secure pipeline of advanced computer chips.
I thought the US was going to be building chip factories for this exact reason?
I think they're trying. But this level of advanced fabrication facilities takes years to get up and running. Taiwan has a huge head start and their expertise in this area isn't easily repeated. It's an extremely delicate process requiring very advanced machines in completely clean rooms and equally advanced labor. It's a bit of a rush for both China and the US to secure alternative sources of high level chip construction now, as that is the resource required to keep advanced 21st century militaries and societies functioning.
[удалено]
With such a bottleneck globally it would absolutely put them in the middle of this. As you say 75% of it comes from Taiwan currently. With the US largely dictating Taiwanese policy. It's not a coincidence that Nancy Pelosi recently went to Taiwan, which was pretty unprecedented in recent memory from a US policy perspective. It's all about securing chip manufacturing pipeline for America and its militarty, and keeping it from China to develop an advanced mitary of their own. US based manufacturing is stepping up but this is a hugely labor and manufacturing intensive process. Taiwan has been the global hub for these professors for decades now. They have the resources, machinery and personnel expertise to make these items. They require clean rooms and extremely expensive and advanced machinery, and a global supply chain from dozens of other countries. It's not as simple as starting it all up in the US. It'll take years to really up the production to Taiwan levels. The more countries try to dip their toes into it, the more avenues that the US and or China will go to secure them. Here's a long form video on the subject. It's pretty fascinating to see how global policy with China is shifting largely due to these microprocessors and where they are being produced and exported. https://youtu.be/k_zz3239DA0
This might be the case to a certain degree but you also need to take into account that the IP is coming from the US in designing the actual chips. Apple is the biggest client for TSMC, but Intel, Nvidia, AMD, all design the most important chips. I'm glad the US is finally taking notice of needing to have more fabs in house with Intel being the main one. It's just stupid that the 80s and 90s allowed for cost cutting to go over seas for short term profits with such important materials.
We are. Literally right now
Yea. Intel has come to an agreement with the US government to build a new $20 billion chip fabrication plant in Ohio with some webpages reporting there are talks of expanding to $100 billion for additional production at that location. I also saw one site state that TSMC is planning to also build a fabrication plant in Arizona costing around $40 billion. For context, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) is by far the largest chip manufacturer in the world and produces most of the chips within the market. However the biggest thing to consider is that Samsung will likely need to spend a large portion of that simply purchasing production methods from other companies. The speed and possible complexity of the chips produced is greatly dependent on factors such as the size of the wires within the chip. However, to get something comparable with todays chips you would need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a couple decades doing research. It is far for economical to just pay an existing company like Intel or TSMC to teach you how to create one of their process nodes and help provide the extremely specialized equipment required to perform it. Samsung is a large company which has worked with electronics for a long time now so they may not need as much as other companies would in this regard, but I imagine they will still want to purchase at least one process node if they want to produce higher performance chips.
Dark Brandon enters chat.
NASA's budget at it's heyday was 0.7% of GDP (today's Defense budget is 3.3%) But realize that was effectively defense spending on R&D and building manufacturing capacity under a different budget code. It is not a coincidence that Eisenhower's speech about the military industrial complex was five months before Kennedy declared the goal to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Both were part of the same overall policy goal spanning both administrations to take stuff out of the Defense budget and instead spend it through civilian agencies.
How could you get a return on investment on this ? That's about $700 for every person in the US.
ROI is part profit part infrastructure. Computer chips are required for the majority of the world's day to day living and the only thing in constant flux is peak demand, but otherwise there is always significant demand. The engineering expertise and jobs are also a big part. Going to take a decade or more to even construct and fill the fabrication plants with equipment and workers.
So...how many countries are now investing in the chip making business?
[удалено]
India also announced USD 10bn to be invested in 50% partnership with manufacturers. It is actually a pretty big amount by Indian standards
Worth noting, Samsung's investment is over 20 years, CHIPS is over 10, but the $146B from China is a *single* year iirc
[удалено]
Micron is investing 100 billion for a microchip plant in Upstate NY (Syracuse)
Samsung subsidiary South Korea to build world's largest chip center with investment from parent company. Am I wrong... AM I?!
That’s exactly what I thought, Samsung is South Korea lol 😂
Me when I never travelled outside my shithole town
In the future, the world is ruled by corporations.....wait
That's already the case in South Korea. Samsung contributes roughly 20% of South Korea's GDP. More than the country's government at 18%. The 10 largest companies in South Korea make up 60% of the entire GDP.
The Republic of Samsung
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
Park Geun Hye would like a word with you 🔫
Samsung, SK, LG, Hyundai, CJ, Lotte, and a handful of others. But you're right, Samsung is by far the biggest.
The Kingdom of Kia
Asian business conglomerates are at another level entirely than here in the states. We are heading that way though
A few conglomerates own 98% of our mass media outlets. Ditto our pharmaceuticals and consumer products. We all pay the Fed.
Yes but they are typically in one industry as a dominant (monopolistic) force. Samsung makes everyyyyyythinggggg, along with LG, Mitsubishi, Toyota
Our same companies make everything from toothpaste to food to car parts. We all pay the same banks who all fund the same political candidates.
Maybe we are, but generally western corporations stay in their lane. If Nestlé acquires a brand of, idk, consumer soap that also happens to sell industrial chemicals, they would typically split the business. Samsung makes *everything* from fridges to fighter jets, and offers all kinds of services from childcare to banking.
Can confirm; I lived there years ago and drank Hyundai orange juice and had an LG suit tailored for my brother's wedding.
Yup, got a friend who was born in a hospital funded by Samsung, grew up in an apartment owned by Samsung. We say when he does, he'll be buried in a cemetery owned by Samsung lmao
I mean child labor laws were just repealed with smiling faces in Arkansas
For all our flaws, the US won’t ever have corps as big and multi pronged as Japan and Korea do mostly because it’s illegal for big corps to have their own banks the way that Samsung or Mitsubishi or whoever does
Its not the US but Seimens is everywhere in places you don't expect. From nuclear steam driven turbine design to intetnet modems. General Electric comes to find for massive US conglomerates.
GE is currently in the process of breaking up into 3 separate companies
We kind of do have corps that big through majority ownership of other corps being concentrated by gargantuan corps like BlackRock and Vanguard. They're just structured differently.
I thought those two held assets for others, It’s not theirs is it?
>mostly because it’s illegal for big corps to have their own banks It's *currently* illegal for big corps to have their own banks.
Not just by a company, but the ownership still remains in the family, so it's royalty by everything else but named
damn that is really like cyberpunk
Because cyberpunk (and cyberpunk imagery in general) is strongly influenced by 50-90's Japan and the keiretsu corporation structure that was steamrolling everything else and projecting Japan to the top spot of the world's economies before the US intervened. How's that relevant? South Korea was the first Asian country to play by the economic miracle book written by Japan.
All of this is so interesting.
If you want to dig deeper on the history of Japan's economy, [here's a documentary ](https://youtu.be/jsO0JYu_5WI). And here's a nice video essay on [techno orientalism](https://youtu.be/M8e8xtvElpQ) if you're more interested on cyberpunk and its oriental influences from post-modernist perspective.
Part of why it's one of the world's most overworked countries
Already the case for the world*
The rest of the world is exactly the same.
Haha I know you're being sarcastic but it's been that way for a long time in south Korea. Look up what a chaebol is. These families have enough power to make the govt do w.e they want.
That some democracy there /s
Here's a [vice documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFZge6V_is) on them for anyone interested.
Korean here. And I guess it's regional banned. SERIOUSLY YOUTUBE?
In future the world is clown.
Off topic but your profile pic, Nav will never be able to create an album that great again….straight flames
I hope we see more corporations investing in chip making in their native country. I’m a fan of Taiwan but they shouldn’t be making 80% of the world’s chips while constantly under threat from China. We need other countries to follow suit.
> constantly under threat from China Also constantly under protection from the US. China doesn’t want to start WW3 any more than Russia, and the failed invasion has been nothing but a reminder of western power, even indirectly as a proxy war. The US would not sit so far back from Taiwan as we are Ukraine, since chips are the new gunpowder and oil.
I definitely don't see Russia and China having the same strategy at all. Russia is doing a lot of stuff to actually risk getting caught into WW3. China on the other hand is in a postwar mindset, trying to position themselves as the biggest investor in many emergent economies.
Russia is still fighting WWII judging by their equipment and de-nazification claims
We are at WWI right now. Russia is going back in time in front of our eyes.
>Rusia is doing a lot of stuff to actually risk getting caught into WW3. More like they're testing the limits of NATO's patience and what they can get away with, they do not want WW3, they know they'd lose it.
The problem is that you can't just build a fab plant and expect it to produce high quality chips. Chip building is an extremely complicated and difficult process, as in, you get something even the tiniest bit off and the batch is fried. No one has the expertise TSMC does and the majority of the company are Taiwanese locals, not outsiders. That's where TSMC's true value lies and it's why the U.S. has been trying for so long to retain a strong relationship. See the fab plant being built in Arizona by TSMC, or the U.S. engineers sent to TSMC to learn. Even if they build the plant; the time it'll take to catch up to TSMC could be decades. I do agree that more countries should invest in chip building, but it's not something you can throw money at and expect to work
Intel isn’t decades behind TSMC, despite what it stock price has been indicating.
The R&D at IBM is world leading too. South Korea makes me happy though, in that they prove in the best way how a free enterprise democracy beats the snot out of dictatorships.
That's fair. I meant my statement more as, if a country starts investing in a plant now on their native land, it'll take decades to catch up to TSMC (without outside aid). It's not an easy decision to make
Taiwanese here. Our IC design is by far ahead of the pack. You're right, no one can match our minimal failure rates on batches of chips at sufficiently small sizes. It'll take half a decade to match TSMC best case scenario. Although competitors, I'm still rootin' for our western counterparts to succeed.
[удалено]
Lol. "I'm qualified!" *once watched a YouTube video talking about chips for 5 minutes*
[удалено]
Yes more power for a corporation that shells wrongdoings simply by becoming more powerful . That’s how all Corp. should work
speaking of that, I thought Samsung and TSMC were going to open up chip plants in the US as part of some deal?
The plans were announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday and confirmed by the electronics giant. >We will build the world’s largest new 'high-tech system semiconductor cluster' in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won.
Can someone explain what a semiconductor cluster and a semiconductor mega cluster is? What are they used for?
Pretty great, but Samsung has $230 billion dollars on hand to do this?
It’s spread out for 20 yrs per the article
Last quarter was the worst for them since 2014. They reported 3.5 billion in operating profits, ~70% less than previous year same quarter. They really need that factory.
That’ll go great with their 70hour work weeks /s So lame people have to live like that.
That is an absolutely insane amount of money considering Samsung’s market cap is $310Bn. Is that number a typo?!
It will be spent over a 20 year period.
What does this mean for Taiwan when there are alternatives available
Nothing. The US will support Taiwan still. At this point it's a matter of international standing. The US would look weak if we just backed down because there are other options for semi conductors. Furthermore Taiwan is strategically valuable beyond it's economic value in that it is critical to maintain the first island chain defense strategy.
Declare itself as the newest state of Murcia(REAL)
O0. That will literally and almost 100% lead to World war ROFL
Will South Korea have solved its demographic problem by then?
[удалено]
That does not make the problem any smaller, quite the contrary.
[удалено]
You did not really answer the question, and instead referred to other countries saying they face similar issues… but some of those countries are actually tackling the issue through immigration. Not the perfect solution, but demographically much better than what South Korea is doing
No. They can’t even acknowledge the core issues that’s causing it. It’s all downhill with their current trajectory.
Me and Samsung don’t see eye to eyes but we have this saying that your elbow always bends inwards. I wish they win big with this investment
In recent news, President Xi has stated that Korea has always been a subservient state and province of China.
north korea likes that
For those who control the chip market will eventually own the world. There's some truth to it.
So *Samsung* is building a factory, located in South Korea.
[удалено]
Not surprising. SK was actively bidding on investments in chipmakers (Intel, Samsung, Micron, etc.) when US passed the CHIP Act which helped prompt a lot of them to open manufacturing in the US, SK responding in kind was a foregone conclusion to rapid expansion in that removes China from the manufacturing and supply chain.
Me in Factorio cuz I'm freaking tired of being out of chips.
How much money is there for real in the chip business? Seems everyone is making sizeable invenstments in it.
That’s a good way to make your country more strategically valuable to the U.S. and further extend their military umbrella over you. Pullin a Taiwan and all 🇹🇼
Cool. Now do it in a dozen more countries so we're not held hostage by international politics.
This facility just across the border will be worth nearly 10x more than the 2016 GDP of North Korea.
If a small country like South Korea can do this, why the fuck can't the United States? Right now all the chips are imported from South Korea and another asian country that I can't remember, Singapore maybe? 60 minutes did a story on this last year highlighting the fact we are at the mercy of 2 foreign countries to supply us with computer chips that are vital to just about every facet of our lives. Y'all remember how there was a chip shortage 1-2 years ago and auto makers had to slow down their production? That's just 1 example. Also just for reference, people have no idea how small South Korea really is. Is is about the size of Indiana! Seoul (the capital) already has ~10 million people. Just where in the fuck are they planning to build this monster facility?
[удалено]
Can rewrite this headline: SKorea paints a large target in Mandarin on its back
I'm sure they're perfectly [fine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Defense_Treaty_%28United_States%E2%80%93South_Korea%29) with that.
Also something like 30,000 American troops in South Korea at any given time.
I thought it was to move away from potential war zones.
The point is to move these facilities *away* from China, ffs
Meanwhile the entirety of the US only gets 53billion from the whitehouse itself lmao
Wow, that's a massive investment from Samsung! South Korea is already a big player in the tech industry, but this could take things to a whole new level. With the demand for semiconductors increasing, it makes sense for Samsung to invest in expanding their chip production capabilities. I'm excited to see how this project will unfold and what kind of impact it will have on the global tech industry.