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Mostly true, but you could come pretty close with ASML, ASM, TEL,ebara, hitachi and a couple others (particularly the Korean companies) I don't think it is qui
by brennanpeterson 6y ago
Mostly true, but you could come pretty close with ASML, ASM, TEL,ebara, hitachi and a couple others (particularly the Korean companies)
I don't think it is quite so widely understood that there are close seconds in every market.
It is pretty easy to imagine ASML giving up on Intel, cutting HMI, and all the chipmakers going outside of Lam, Applied, and KLA for their next tools. The industry would be a bit disrupted but outside the US...fine. and it would destroy the US industry.
This will also tend to pressure the Chinese to keep pushing their own supplier industry, rather than just integrators.
- sabas123 6y agoCould you give a layman overview of how ASML is dependent on these companies and what the geo-political/econmic shifts would be?
- brennanpeterson 6y agoThat is a big topic. Basically, though, a process flow is deposition, track, litho, etch, clean, deposition, cmp, metro, inspect (lots of steps vary, but these are the basics) You need each of these to work. Deposition: Lam, Applied, TELand then Wonik, ASM, and others Track: TEL Litho: ASML Etch: Lam, Applied, TEL CMP: Ebara, Applied Metro: Onto, KLA, Hitachi Inspect: KLa, Applied There are more, and I missed a bit, but basically, you need to tick off each of these layers, and quite often with the best at each. ASML cannot make wafers for anyone without someone doing all the other parts. And really, that is true for all these companies. There is a best of breed and selection bias that makes each system imperfectly interchangeable. But you can also see that ASML is the sole true monopoly. So if they are out, nothing works. There are plausible workarounds otherwise.not always easy or cost effective, but plausible in most cases. ASML needs the rest of the infrastructure to sell tools. And likewise, everyone needs ASML to deliver, or there is no new node....
- jotm 6y agoYeah, it looks like more of a way to make China break whatever dependence on the US it had and become an even bigger competitor :/