Right now, the raw material will come from China because that's where the resources are developed. But once a fab is in place, it makes sense to push more to develop local resources, or at least among more diverse allies.
It doesn't make sense to do that now, because you'd just be shipping local resources to a foreign fab, so that's still a bottleneck. But I think having a local fab is the tipping-point.
Which raw material specifically?
Norway is the fifth largest exporter of Quartz. Turkey is third. I think there's enough Quartz in Europe for silicon.
For silicon wafer manufacturing there's Okmetic Oy in Finland and Siltronic AG in Germany.
It's a move back down the supply chain. Fine, they haven't completely verticalized the entire supply chain. It's still a strategic move.
Re:Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab
by omginternets on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @12:58PM
(#31657166)
China is getting a fair bit of the precursors from Africa. European countries are in a fairly good position to do business with African countries.
In the very least I think it's easier to stockpile resources than chips.
Re:Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab
by baja_blast on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @12:31PM
(#31656783)
copper, silicon, gold, aluminum are sourced from many countries so they wouldn't need any raw materials from any particular country. Also the machines used to make the Fabs are sourced right next door in the Netherlands
Sure they can fabricate the chips, but a lot of the raw material needed will come from places like China.