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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba revealed the $65 billion plan this week. Reuters saw an early draft of the proposal, which is scheduled to be submitted during the country's next parliament session, and notes its support of domestic chipmaker Rapidus among others.
The homegrown semiconductor manufacturer was founded in 2022 with support from several major Japanese tech companies including Sony and Kioxia, and entered into a strategic partnership with IBM in December 2022. The outfit expects to start mass production of advanced chips built on a 2nm process by 2027. It is an ambitious goal, but one that could be helped along with a significant infusion of cash.
[...] As Tom's Hardware highlights, it took many years for established players like TSMC to get to where they are today. The publication questions whether or not Japan has enough workers with the skills necessary to achieve their goals. As we have seen both domestically and abroad, finding workers with the smarts to get the job done can be a real challenge. Even China, with its heavy investments and accusations of IP theft, hasn't been able to compete toe to toe with leading chipmakers.
It remains to be seen whether or not Japan's investment will pay off, but it is hard not to think that increased competition will benefit the masses via lower prices and a more robust supply chain.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Username on Monday November 18 2024, @11:07AM (2 children)
Almost all major camera optics or sensors come from Japan. Sony, Nikon, Sigma, Olympus, Pentax, Fujitsu, etc, all Japanese. I think Canon and Samsung are the only ones to have their own fabs, but still get other electronic parts from the former. Leica and Zeiss are probably the only other well known lens manufactures.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday November 18 2024, @11:31AM (1 child)
Considering how much Japan dominated the electronics industry in the 80s and 90s (especially with semiconductor electronics) I am quite frankly surprised to hear they did not have their own domestic chip production until 2022.
I always thought their electronics industry used primarily home grown silicon, at least until Taiwan and China took over the high and low end respectively.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 18 2024, @02:43PM
Coincidentally in that dominant era they had about 50% of chip production worldwide.
They had special government financing and permission to dump chips to take over markets. Other governments were pissed off but not much could be done.
They got "trapped" in the conversion in the 90s away from vertical integration. Before 1990 or so, pretty much every company designed AND made their own chips and the industry split around then. The companies that split, survived. The companies that did not split (Pretty much Japan and Intel) either did not survive or had some kind of special monopoly thing like Intel. General economic decline in Japan also dried up the government funding that had supercharged industry. The old days where the designers and the fabs worked at the same corporation are pretty much over now.
Japan kind of stagnated for 30 years. Not just in chips, either.