The Tech Cold War's 'Most Complicated Machine' That's Out of China's Reach (nytimes.com) 141
A $150 million chip-making tool from a Dutch company has become a lever in the U.S.-Chinese struggle. It also shows how entrenched the global supply chain is. New York Times: President Biden and many lawmakers in Washington are worried these days about computer chips and China's ambitions with the foundational technology. But a massive machine sold by a Dutch company has emerged as a key lever for policymakers -- and illustrates how any country's hopes of building a completely self-sufficient supply chain in semiconductor technology are unrealistic. The machine is made by ASML Holding, based in Veldhoven. Its system uses a different kind of light to define ultrasmall circuitry on chips, packing more performance into the small slices of silicon. The tool, which took decades to develop and was introduced for high-volume manufacturing in 2017, costs more than $150 million. Shipping it to customers requires 40 shipping containers, 20 trucks and three Boeing 747s.
The complex machine is widely acknowledged as necessary for making the most advanced chips, an ability with geopolitical implications. The Trump administration successfully lobbied the Dutch government to block shipments of such a machine to China in 2019, and the Biden administration has shown no signs of reversing that stance. Manufacturers can't produce leading-edge chips without the system, and "it is only made by the Dutch firm ASML," said Will Hunt, a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, which has concluded that it would take China at least a decade to build its own similar equipment. "From China's perspective, that is a frustrating thing."
The complex machine is widely acknowledged as necessary for making the most advanced chips, an ability with geopolitical implications. The Trump administration successfully lobbied the Dutch government to block shipments of such a machine to China in 2019, and the Biden administration has shown no signs of reversing that stance. Manufacturers can't produce leading-edge chips without the system, and "it is only made by the Dutch firm ASML," said Will Hunt, a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, which has concluded that it would take China at least a decade to build its own similar equipment. "From China's perspective, that is a frustrating thing."
Why Worry? (Score:2, Flamebait)
That's how China acquires a tremendous amount of the Technology that they use.
A spy here; a spy there; and all is good for the CCP!
No Worries!
Re:Why Worry? (Score:4, Funny)
Just Steal It!
Naah, it's much easier to go down this flowchart.
1) China buys the company.
2) If the Dutch gov't blocks the sale, China buys Holland.
3) If [who? how?] blocks the sale, China does to Holland what they're doing to HongKong.
Re: Why Worry? (Score:2)
Yikes! Makes me wonder how many of these machines are in Taiwan etc. Is that not where a huge amount of our chips come from?
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The machines are only accessible for ASML's own engineers.
Also, knowing what's inside does not tell you much about how to manufacture the parts.
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Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:5, Insightful)
People are being very naive if they think that the Chinese can't build such a machine themselves. China doesn't just build cheap knock offs of consumer products, you know?
Re:Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, US manufacturing is growing rather than shrinking. [macrotrends.net] It's just becoming more automated, so fewer workers are needed to make a larger amount of output.
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Take a step back and try to dig up stats that back any of this up. You might be surprised by what you find. The US exports more to China per-capita than China exports to the US. That doesn't really support the narrative that the Chinese government values skilled labor more than the US government.
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Japanese economic stagnation has more to do with its subservient relationship to the US than anything else.
And by the economic collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s, orchestrated by an American banking consortium.
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China is capable, look at their growing military. They just dump all the cheap garbage to the rest of the world.
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They can, it will just take them time to do it. After which everyone else will have moved on to "the next big thing"
Re:Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, that is the point. It's not that the Chinese can't build them, but it puts them a few years back. Strategic advantage is never a permanent state. You build a better gun, you get maybe a couple of years before your opponents replicate it, but for those two years, you have the better gun. The real trick to strategic advantage is to maintain the advantage with further development. Think of how at the beginning of the 19th century, every navy in the world used wooden hulls, then by the 1850s every navy, after watching the US Civil War ironclads, moved swiftly to the ironclads. By the end of the 19th century every naval ship on the planet was steel hulled, along with all the other advances from steam powered to turbines, and so on and so forth. The object of the entire game was to be ahead of the curve, because your geopolitical opponents would be breathing down your neck and within a few years would have matched it.
So China being robbed of a few years before it can match the technology represents a similar Western strategic advantage. The real trick is going to be maintaining that advantage, always forcing China to play catch up, and that's going to mean the Western nations are going to have to start investing a helluva lot more money and resources in everything from finding ways to maintain their own stockpiles of critical resources like raw earths, to putting boatloads more money into basic research, and yes, to the ever-dreadful and swindle and corruption-prone government procurements. Basically we're in a new arms race, the only difference between this and the naval superiority of the 19th and early 20th centuries and the aerospace superiority of the Cold War, is that this one will be primarily digital. But sitting on your laurels just means China edges forward.
It all sucks, is going to cost trillions, and it's unfortunate that the West and China have gone from somewhat cooperative competition to a kind of economic belligerence, but Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Re:Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:4, Informative)
Really, that is the point. It's not that the Chinese can't build them, but it puts them a few years back
No one can build them is the point. That is why China and the rest of the world have to buy from ASML. It has a monopoly on EUV lithography at 14nm and smaller. Even if China tries to copy the machine, sourcing the parts is a major obstacle as many of the parts are so specialized and leading edge that ASML does not make them and relies on other companies for that expertise.
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The days when any technology can be singled sourced are long gone. Even in the age of ironclads, at least the steel itself had to be sourced, so you already supply chains, and by the time you get to coal-powered turbines, we're now talking about incredibly complex machinery that required all kinds of specialized manufacturing. Bring in wireless and other communications and navigational equipment, and I'll wager any battleship had dozens of different specialized suppliers.
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No one can build them *now* - which is fine because most users are happy buying them, even at a delay, from the manufacturer rather than building them themselves. The investment in R&D to build themselves just doesn't play out for most of ASMLs customers, hence why ASML are the only manufacturer right now.
So the situation is going to change - China is going to gain the capability, it might take them a while, but they will gain the capability.
All this crap is doing is showing to China that they can't re
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No one can build them *now* - which is fine because most users are happy buying them, even at a delay, from the manufacturer rather than building them themselves. The investment in R&D to build themselves just doesn't play out for most of ASMLs customers, hence why ASML are the only manufacturer right now.
Please tell which company can build them in the future considering after 2-3 decades of work only ASML can build them
So the situation is going to change - China is going to gain the capability, it might take them a while, but they will gain the capability.
How do you expect China to develop capacity that the US, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam do no have and they have been making chips for half a decade. This is cutting edge and insanely complex technology.
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The thing you are missing is that normally a competitor is another company, with a limited budget and resource and acting out of desire to compete. In this case, the competitor is China, with near unlimited budget, near unlimited resource and acting out of necessity because theres no alternative.
Give it 10-15 years and China will be competent in quite a few industries, out of necessity.
Re:Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Feasible Chinese clone in 3,2,1 ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee that is so reassuring.
Its not like:
The CCP hasn't got almost unlimited monetary resources.
No business *wants* single suppliers and single customers if they can avoid it.
So pretty much some Chinese state sponsored organization can probably just outbid ASML
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And don't forget the "one single engineer that intimately knows the key systems" syndrome. Even if ASML wanted to rebuild today, they would not only need their existing suppliers, and they need to make sure engineers do not retire either.
Know-how is an important thing, and chip manufacturing is extremely specialized. I have a friend working for a supplier that essentially builds a single lithography machine. If he or a peer were to retire, it would take global chains back by a few years. Don't believe me? S
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The point, as I understand it, is to make it as expensive and difficult as possible for them to keep up with the US. It is a stalling tactic. By the time they catch up, the rest of the world will have moved onto the next thing. If it could entirely hamstring them, great. But even if it cannot, it will slow them down.
END COMMUNICATION
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So? (Score:4)
There's a very common solution for that: espionage.
And the Chinese are very good at it, mainly because we're an open society.
I can almost guarantee the Chinese already have the majority of data on this machine, and are working on it to fill the gaps.
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Saying espionage will work is like saying we have a crashed UFO so we all will be flying UFOs tomorrow.
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Even getting the designs is insufficient. You have to build up the technical expertise to implement them. China has the capacity, to be sure, but this sort of espionage has always been around. That you have a finished product and China, potentially, has the designs, means China is till behind.
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Which is why TFSummary says it would take them 10 years to build the equivalent machine, instead of the 20 years it originally took to develop.
The plans aren't the only stumbling block. The parts aren't generally available, and are themselves very hard to make.
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I never said the US didn't do that themselves? My point was that the idea that blocking commercial sales is going to stop development of the tech in China is ludicrous.
Of course, comparing 'tech theft' in an 18th century context (and when there was little to no legal framework of Intellectual Property beyond that of proprietary "guild secrets") to industrial espionage in 2021 is fairly asinine comparison of apples to oranges as well.
If you have to compete by trade restrictions... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you have already lost. All you do is slow down your own demise.
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There's more to it than just that, there's a question of whether you want to tolerate how the competition is able to outperform you.
If that competitive advantage includes authoritarian behavior and labor camps, then it's not a merely economic difference, or more material resources, more land, or more people.
Open competition to find efficiencies is good, but not if being competitive requires us to compromise principles that we think are important.
Re:If you have to compete by trade restrictions... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have to compete by trade restrictions then you have already lost.
That's not true, not true at all. Megacorps regularly use trade restrictions to stifle their competitors, to great success which is why they keep doing it. Intel is an excellent example of this because they have been busted for anti-competitive practices sooo many times. They pay out penalties worth billions and yet they keep doing the same thing. Why? They make waaaay more money using anti-competitive practices.
Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc all have fantastic histories of anti-competitive behavior, pulling every trick in the book to kneecap or eliminate/buy their rivals and they've never really been held accountable. Everything has been a slap on the wrist and they show no signs of changing their behavior.
Your idealism does not comport to reality because cheating the system really does work in the real world.
All you do is slow down your own demise.
Again, not true. Intel dominated for decades because they lied and cheated all the way. They are only feeling the hurt now because they got too greedy.
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Oh, yes, it is true. It indicates rather strongly you cannot compete on merit and that means your product is defective or out-dated.
Of course, anybody doing this _knows_ how bad it actually loos to people with a clue, so they always invent cover stories, engage in misdirection and generally try to obfuscate things. You seem to have fallen for that propaganda.
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So where's this mystery "demise" then? Or is that just a bunch of "I hope you suffer from a rash because you're not letting me get my way" thing? If the Chinese want it then they're going to have to do what the original developers did instead of taking shortcuts.
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If the Chinese want it then they're going to have to do what the original developers did instead of taking shortcuts.
So you mean the Chinese will have to get good enough at this so they can then offer their own equipment on the world market? Yeah, that is a good strategy....
Also, since when has buying equipment been a "shortcut"? Do you make your own hammers or do you take the "shortcut" of buying one om a hardware store? Seriously.
Not quiet. (Score:2)
Mr. Hunt and other policy experts argued that since China was already using those machines, blocking additional sales would hurt ASML without much strategic benefit. So does the company.
They already have these machines, they just want to buy more.
“I hope common sense will prevail,” Mr. van den Brink said.
Fat chance that humans will ever stoop so low as to rely on common sense. ;)
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You act as if they are incapable of realiably duplicating technology.
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You act as if it is easy to duplicate a highly specialized $150M machine containing thousands of highly specialized parts. Why do you think ASML is the only company to make these machines? ASML relies on hundreds of suppliers for parts; and ASML acknowledges they do not have the expertise to make all of these parts. Some of these suppliers are the only companies to make these parts and they are making as much as they can for ASML. Given that sourcing the parts is a major obstacle, ASML also has expertise of
Re: Not quiet. (Score:2)
Iran is still maintaining and flying those F-14s .. so that was a bad example.
So they're frustrated? (Score:2)
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Don't forget Taiwan and Tibet.
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All I see here (Score:2)
is the US using its influence to hinder other countries from achieving things and moving forward, instead of trying to stay ahead of the tech curve.
Or said another way, when you can't, beat the other school kids at into not doing better than you.
Pathetic...
I see something different (Score:2)
I see the US keeping a nation from using it's influence from dictating terms, and forcing them to negotiate. The US currently has a $300B+ trade deficit with China, and there are some things the US gets from China it cannot realistically get anywhere else. This is why the US probably needs China more than China needs the US. Preventing China from getting the EUV machine helps level that playing field a little, and helps to keep everyone playing fair. No nation would play fairly in a trade war if not forced
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Yawn ... (Score:2)
... it would take China at least a decade to build its own similar equipment. "From China's perspective, that is a frustrating thing."
Right up until the Chinese cyber intelligence service hacks the ASML network and steals the complete data package and all the research data needed for copying this thing because, like the data package for the F-35, it is kept on a network that for some completely idiotic reason can be accessed by hackers operating from the common internet.
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Right up until the Chinese cyber intelligence service hacks the ASML network
I don't think the Dutch have Internet. The country is so small, sneakernet suffices.
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The plans aren't the hard part to get. The parts are. And those are sufficiently cutting-edge that they are not generally available nor easy to replicate.
That's why TFSummary says it will take China 10 years to make their own, in comparison to the 20 years it took to develop the first time.
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The plans aren't the hard part to get. The parts are. And those are sufficiently cutting-edge that they are not generally available nor easy to replicate.
That's why TFSummary says it will take China 10 years to make their own, in comparison to the 20 years it took to develop the first time.
You can try to convince me that having the plans and every scrap of research data on this machine won't cut 3-5 years off those 10 years, or better yet, that having a back door that allows them to monitor in real time the ongoing development work on the successor for this technology won't do the Chinese a damn bit of good, but I'm afraid you efforts on that font are wasted. Security on critical pieces of technology like this thing, the F-35 and many other has sucked in the past, it still sucks and there see
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Is ASML publicly held? (Score:2)
I can see a ton of cash getting dumped into ASML if it's publicly held, all the CCP needs is 51%
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Brought to you by the “fuck your feelings” crowd.
Re:"uses a different kind of light" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"uses a different kind of light" (Score:4, Interesting)
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It was a three way battle between EUV, direct E beam, and (I shit you not) rubber stamping. Rubber stamping lost out on durability. E Beam lithography lost due to assumed low speed. It took until a few years ago to get EUV up to the speed required to enter production.
It's possible that IBM's desire for E beam would have paid off with advances at least as well as EUV. Perhaps it'll make a comeback.
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:5, Interesting)
Prior to the sanction counter-sanction exchange in 2014 Russia was the largest net importer of foodstuff. It was importing grain, fruit, etc. It is now the second largest exporter of grain and it has planted 27 million fruit trees in 7 years. In 3-5 years it will compete with Eu on the international markets. ...
Prior to 2018 it was an importer of carbon-carbon composites. Trump (on behalf of an openly anti-competitive request by Boeing) forbade the imports in order to sabotage their next generation civilian aircraft programme (the MS-21). Net result - in 3 years we have to add more sanctions, but this time to combat their EXPORTS of composites - they have become a net exporter. And as the cherry on the cake - they have industrial scale manufacturing for their drones and Su-57 - something they did not have.
Prior to 2014 it was an importer of catalysts for the chemical and petrochemical industry. It became an exporter last year.
Prior to
The list is very long and Sputnik did not come out of thin air. We have to thank our sanctions for that - they forced the issues in their whole supply chain and they have managed to turn them into "what does not kill us - makes us stronger". I often joke that Senator Cruz should be awarded the order of St Vladimir the Great personally by Putin. After all he did everything that there was to be done in order to bring back Russia from being a "petrol station" to being a major player. There are a few other Russian facilitators in Washington, but he, frankly, is the greatest.
Going back to China - we are trying the same sh*t which we have used on Russia and which has come about and has bitten us up the backside. The difference, however is that:
1. China GDP dwarfs the Russian one and what took Russia 7 years to bring back online after 2014 will take them 2-3 years tops.
2. China can always ask uncle Vlad for an advice on how to make use of USA political stupidity. In fact it does not need to ask. They have excellent intelligence services and they have been taking notes while the Russians were figuring out the exact policies to counter sanctions.
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:4, Insightful)
Beat me to it. It's a stupid short-term gain and massive long-term loss. Initially China won't have access to ASML gear. Eventually, and I don't think it'll take them ten years, they'll produce their own gear by hook or by crook, and then we're screwed because they can make the stuff better, faster, and cheaper than we can.
The sensible approach would be to allow ASML to export their gear but under somewhat controlled conditions. That way China isn't incentivised to develop their own gear, but also doesn't have unrestricted use of the ASML gear. However that approach requires long-term thinking, which US politicians are terrible at, it's just a quick fix now and uh, yeah, what do I do for reelection? Asian politicians on the other hand are the world masters at long-term thinking.
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I guess it is too late for that. China has been shown that the US are not a reliable trading partner. So they will continue their efforts to create an independent semiconductor industry. I suspect they won't overtake ASML equipment within a decade, that seems too optimistic. But as a gut feeling, I can see them reach fully independent manufacturing capability for 7nm or so, bringing them to where TSMC is now.
That won't be good enough to dominate the world market, but enough for keeping their own industry ru
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:5, Insightful)
Making an EUV stepper is hard.
Planting trees? Mostly unskilled labor. Making carbon composites? Technically simple but very energy expensive, but Russia has oil.
It took well over 20 years and many billions of dollars to develop the technology. I suggest you take a deeper look at just how difficult every single subsystem was to develop. Even the light source and optical path is beyond most countries technical grasp.
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Making an EUV stepper is hard.
China has been having more engineers in training than the US has in total for the last 5 years. Chinese universities are not up to the level of Standford or MIT, but quantity is quantity.
Eventually China will have its own pipeline for advanced chip production.
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:4, Informative)
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Several key components for the ASML system come from German companies though: the CO2 laser source is provided by TRUMPF Laser and the mirror optics (you can't use lenses since EUV gets absorbed by pretty much everything) is manufactured by Zeiss Semiconductors.
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None of these countries are doing it; it must not be just having "skilled engineers"
It's the question of utility. It's cheaper to buy machines from ASML rather than spend billions making your own. China does not _have_ this option.
And you can be sure that TSMC (Taiwan) and Intel (USA) are working on the next generation of lithography right now, it's not like ASML will be the only vendor forever.
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It's the question of utility. It's cheaper to buy machines from ASML rather than spend billions making your own. China does not _have_ this option.,
Are you sure about that? ASML builds, installs, and maintains these machines for the chip fabs. That cannot be cheap; and chip fabs have no real choice if they want leading edge.
And you can be sure that TSMC (Taiwan) and Intel (USA) are working on the next generation of lithography right now, it's not like ASML will be the only vendor forever.
And why would you be sure about that? In the entire world, only 1 company does this; you think maybe there is a reason for that?
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Are you sure about that? ASML builds, installs, and maintains these machines for the chip fabs. That cannot be cheap; and chip fabs have no real choice if they want leading edge.
Well, it's not like TSMC lacks clients or has a thin profit margin. And even large companies can have only so many projects going at once.
And why would you be sure about that? In the entire world, only 1 company does this; you think maybe there is a reason for that?
IBM has recently presented 1nm experimental chips. So of course companies are working on next gen chips. And ASML hasn't always been the leader.
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There was no economic incentive to invest into EUV.
What are you smoking? Everyone knew that small and smaller feature sizes meant more exotic technology.
ASML took a long shot many years ago and now have a large lead ahead of other manufacturers -
Of the many companies, ASML is the only that stuck with EUV.
breast in mind that there are very few chipfabs in the world, who use EUV, so, no incentive for-say-Kodak to develop one.
Again what are you smoking? By very "few" you mean, TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and even Global Foundries which accounts for most of the big players at the leading edge. No, a chip fab at 45nm is not using EUV; that misses the whole point of leading edge.
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There was already one supplier willing to take the risk. It wasn't long ago that Intel was nailed with a $12 billion failed fab project. While I'm sure that Intel foot the blame for most of it, they more than likely did sue their vendors where possible to recover some of the losses or to convince their shareholders that it wasn't entirely their fault.
This is a $150 million machine. If you don't get it right, it doesn't cost you $150 billion, it costs you law suits from ev
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Well, no. If quantity were all that mattered, then China and India would lead the world in technology, and they just don't.
That "level" thing really does matter.
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Well, no. If quantity were all that mattered, then China and India would lead the world in technology, and they just don't.
Just 20 years ago, China was a country that could barely produce ballpoint pens because they had no experience in precision manufacturing. Now they are launching probes to Mars. Yes, it takes time, but China has shown that they can improve.
As for "leading the world", look at China's rise in scientific papers. It's slowly happening.
Re: China already has the lithography machines. (Score:2)
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:5, Interesting)
R&D is hard - manufacturing is just an engineering problem when you can steal the plans for the device, and if you have to steal the plans for the precursor tools to build those. - At least when you have a large pool of talented people ( China certainly has ) you can command to work on the problem, practically unbounded monetary resources, a full array of natural resources, and a heck of a lot of international market access/influence sanctions or no sanctions.
Simple reality is keeping any existing commercialized technology out of China's hands is only possible as long as the CCP is willing to play along with the situation in the name of not disrupting immediate trade arrangements they see as strategically more valuable for the moment. Once they decide they have maximized the value to them from the current situation or the risk of not having EUV steppers is to great, China will have its EUV stepper or very shortly will anyway. Its not like they haven't got human intelligence assets everywhere that matters, and nobody will dare do anything about it because 'racism'
That any thinking person seriously believes otherwise amazes me. The ONLY way to contain Chain at this point is to establish a strict "you're with us or you're against us" policy. Where trade with China and its partners is nearly fully embargoed. Visa's are not granted to Chinese nationals - period. We need to bifurcate the world economy like the Warsaw/NATO era but US/Sino and we need to do it yesterday before China gains any more influence.
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Actually, we need to grant green cards to any Chinese citizen with a STEM degree, so that as much as possible of their brainpower ends up working for us not them.
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It took ASML 30 years to get a bright enough light source to make a stepper with enough throughput to make the who
Re:China already has the lithography machines. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're completely correct. These machines are *insanely* complex and are the most impressive engineered systems I have ever seen.
- The EUV is created using a tin drop plasma, basically high temp ink jet tech puts a little drop of tin in a vacuum and one laser zaps it to flatten it out for larger surface area and another vaporizes this into an intense efficient point source of EUV.
- The EUV can't be transmitted through lenses and has to use reflective optics within the vacuum. Carefully sculpted helium blades with differential pumping capture the debris of tin so it can't travel downstream and contaminate the chips.
- For the fun part: the EUV enters the wafer area: wafers enter on magnetically levitated cartridges with absolutely incredible control allowing for multiple G acceleration while maintaining ~1 nm positional accuracy. This alone probably took over a decade to perfect and required innovations in materials.
Absolutely true (Score:3)
Extreme ultraviolet lithography is insane [battleswarmblog.com].
You can't just steal the plans. You need to steal all the techniques across dozens of disciplines that feed into the machine.
Semiconductors are hard. Cutting edge fabs are very hard. ASML's EUV stepper is insanely hard to replicate.
China would have to steal the tools to steal the tools that make that tools that go into the stepper...
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China can throw a 10000 engineers at it and have it in 4 years and the engineers cost 50K only so they can have it at 2 billion cost.
But thats not all. Recreating research once you know something is possible takes less research hours so they can probably do it in 2 years at a 1 Billion cost.
The Congo can throw 1,000,000 monkeys at it (Score:2)
But it still takes 9 months to bear a child...
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China can throw a 10000 engineers at it and have it in 4 years and the engineers cost 50K only so they can have it at 2 billion cost.
EUV has been in development for decades now and ASML started shipping EUV machines in 2013. Why doesn't China have theirs yet?
Re: China already has the lithography machines. (Score:3)
Russia is a pale broken shell of the USSR. They've been losing geopolitical influence since the 70s. They are weak economically. Weakening in industry and high tech. Weakening influence. I guess you can argue the USSR was killed and so it didn't get stronger, but Russia is getting weaker by the decade.
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but Russia is getting weaker by the decade.
By what metric?
Re: China already has the lithography machines. (Score:3)
Geopolitical influence. Do you have any idea what the Cold War was like? What promises were made to Russia after WWII that they were too weak to get anyone to follow? How Russia's Western sphere of influence is slowly crumbling into Europe?
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Soooo if we want to beat Russia.. we have to help them in order to make them weak?
Sanction Intel (Score:2)
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My point is that China is willing to pay big bucks for the machines, far more than the current market price.
What part of ASML cannot make enough machines to supply their existing customers is unclear? It does not matter how much money China is willing to pay if ASML cannot make them any faster, and there is a long wait list ahead of China.
. By banning China, you reduce demand. ASML bottom line is affected.
You do understand what a supply constraint is, right? ASML cannot make money on machines it cannot deliver.
Re: China already has the lithography machines. (Score:3)
You pulled this out of your ass, because they can already sell every machine they make without selling to China.
An other chip to put on the table. (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically this was a Trump Era policy, that Biden isn't just reversing just because Trump made it.
There are a lot of factors involved into figuring out what to do with it. While the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence has gave its recommendation, they may be other factors as well to consider.
1. Trump created a Tit for Tat fight between China, so while we stopped trading things with China, China also stopped trading things with us. So if we were to allow them to trade for this technology, we will also expect China to allow to trade or give something else back to the US, that would be valuable.
2. Even if China is already using the technology toward going against our national interest, giving them more may not be handy. With a normal war, even though your enemy knows hows to make guns, you are not going to sell you enemy guns to help fund your war effort. Just because it will just end up giving your enemy more guns to use against you. So if China has a 50% growth every year in this technology. Selling them this may give them 60% growth. Which wouldn't be helpful.
3. It is a Dutch Company. Biden seems to be focusing more on the political popular issues of the day, and less on those that most voters will not care about. While I doubt Biden wants to see the Company suffer, it is an issue that isn't big on the Radar, where they are other issues of problems that he really wants to focus on. So he may just sit on it until it become something more important.
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Re: An other chip to put on the table. (Score:2)
You're 100% right these people saying ASML will suffer are stupid.
Re: An other chip to put on the table. (Score:2)
What long term security issues?
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“I hope common sense will prevail,” Mr. van den Brink said.
I think the point would get lost if I just modded your post as funny.
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How peculiar that the US President and Congress can dictate export controls for a EU member state.
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