Chinese-owned Firm Acquires UK's Largest Semiconductor Manufacturer (theguardian.com) 41
The UK's largest producer of semiconductors has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia, prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips. From a report: Nexperia, a Dutch firm owned by China's Wingtech, said on Monday that it had taken full control of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK's largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles. Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP for Tonbridge and Malling and the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, told CNBC on Monday that he would be very surprised if the deal was not being reviewed under the National Security and Investment Act, new legislation brought in to protect key national assets from foreign takeover. "The semiconductor industry sector falls under the scope of the legislation, the very purpose of which is to protect the nation's technology companies from foreign takeovers when there is a material risk to economic and national security," he said. The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has previously said that the government was monitoring the situation closely, "but does not consider it appropriate to intervene at the current time."
Let's state the obvious. (Score:3)
China will use this to perform supply-chain attacks. Duh.
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Damaging to whom? Apparently not the UK, or they would have held on longer.
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would be deemed to economically damaging
Too late
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There is a company C in UK.
It's owned by a UK entity.
It builds things in the UK, using UK workforce and it has some UK and some international suppliers and customers.
Chinese company buys it.
Next you know, the know how (however much it is) gets transferred to China, the production is moved to China, the local suppliers get replaced by Chinese companies.
In the end, some money change hands but UK loses both work (workers, suppliers, ...) and the actual production capacity and must fully rely on imports.
How lon
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Maybe, but that is not the problem that we are facing now.
About 20 years ago, I worked for a company that used to supply chips to AC/Delco the auto parts manufacturer
As a result, they had bought up tens of thousands of out dated 3" silicon wafers, because that was the technology step that AC/Delco operated at since they were getting "good enough" results with that tech level and refused to spend anymore to advance to 12" tech step
I am pretty willing to believe that AC/Delco and the rest of the auto parts ma
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Sounds like it.
Oh, Hyundai seem to know what they're doing too.
Re: Let's state the obvious. (Score:2)
They were using "just in time" sourcing, which had been touted as a relatively new "best practice". It just shows that "best practice" is often situational.
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There are a lot of power semiconductor components that can be manufactured on cheap older technology equipment with small wafers, long gate lengths and imprecise control over layer thickness and diffusion or implant. It would be insane to make these components in a state of the art FAB.
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Hahaha, for a little chicken shit $160M foundry that makes hybrid analog/digital "mixed signal" chips? Crank down the tension on your tin foil hat, this sale doesn't matter globally.
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Hahaha, for a little chicken shit $160M foundry that makes hybrid analog/digital "mixed signal" chips? Crank down the tension on your tin foil hat, this sale doesn't matter globally.
Hybrid analog/digital mixed signal chips are rather important in the grand scheme of things. However there are plenty of players and if you can't get you buck/boost controller from SGS, Maxim, Analog Diseases or one of the other many such companies will happily step in.
Sad state of semi fab in the UK (Score:3)
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it makes "mixed signal" chips, hybrid digital/analog and the usual app would be A to D converter. North America and Asia have the bigger players than Europe anyway.
ARMing the enemy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP for Tonbridge and Malling and the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, told CNBC on Monday that he would be very surprised if the deal was not being reviewed under the National Security and Investment Act, new legislation brought in to protect key national assets from foreign takeover. "The semiconductor industry sector falls under the scope of the legislation, the very purpose of which is to protect the nation's technology companies from foreign takeovers when there is a material risk to economic and national security," he said.
So how's that ARM deal holding up?
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Except it isn't cutting edge technology. 0.18u was cutting edge 20 years ago and positively ancient technology now.
Put in more current units, that's 180nm. We're pushing at 14nm and trying to get to 7nm. Basically the cutting edge processor then was the Pentium III which moved from 250nm to 180nm.
It's unusual for China to want something that old - it's not like it can be upgraded (it's cheaper to open a new fab than upgrade fabs), it only does 200mm wafers instead of the industry standard 300mm nowadays (30
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The Chinese company which is buying it plans to make MOSFETs on this fab. These are discrete ICs so you do not need that much wafer space for it.
UK regulators asleep at the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not only are you an offensive racist, you're also an idiot. China != India.
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Nah, some Tory or one if their pals is getting rich. That's far more important than some guff and silicone chips.
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Silicon. They use silicon to make semi conductors. Silicone is used for plastic surgery.
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Unless one's building a sexbot, then it's mostly the latter.
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Even then, silicone is rarely produced in "chips" of the US or UK variety.
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Whoosh.
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Whoosh - Nah, bollocks.
Trying to claim you're "clever" & were pulling one over, when your original post was utter nonsense, is not good.
Ponce.
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Nah, some Tory or one if their pals is getting rich. That's far more important than some guff and silicone chips.
It sad how true this is, but profiteers would not have built anything if they didnt expect to be able to do it so its better this way then not
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Nah, some Tory or one if their pals is getting rich. That's far more important than some guff and silicone chips.
That plastic food in the windows of Japanese restaurants probably includes silicone chips.
Re:UK regulators asleep at the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
Our current government is incompetent beyond the point of a calling it a joke. In the miasma of national embarrassment upon national embarrassment, a small chip fab I'd never heard of is probably of little consequence. If chip fabs are important to the national economy and security, we need substantially larger, better and newer fabs than this. The ARM thing is worthy of far more government scrutiny, but I have less faith in our current government's competence than Dawkins has in the Bible.
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NWF.. (Score:2)
The NWF started as the Inmos factory building transputers.
Then SGS brought Inmos and it continued, but became a more general fab after the demise of Inmos.
I assume that's what it still is and they sold it to the Chinese.
As fabs go, it was building the world's fastest CPUs in the 90s. No so much these days.
meh (Score:2)
Really? (Score:3)
"prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner "
Really? They sold everything else, ALL the car companies, the steel factories, the drinking water, the oil, the gas, the electricity, ...the list is endless.
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Context, this is limited output and outdated tech (Score:2)
> which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles
NWF makes 180+ nm on 200mm wafers, both of which are from the mid to late 90s. We're not talking bleeding-edge technology. This explains why the whole company sold for £63 million when new individual fabs typically cost $3-4 billion to make these days.
There's still a market for the sort of thing that NWF makes, but 180nm fabs are not as rare/expensive/exclusive as 5nm or 7nm fabs are.
Just deserts (Score:1)
idiots (Score:2)
they are idiots to allow this