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Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML The US companies do what they do best: innovate business mode

by ralfn 6y ago

Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML The US companies do what they do best: innovate business models and find ways to vendor lock in and own the market. But who's been doing all the research keeping moore's law alive? Lithography? For a country as small as the Netherlands, you can wonder if we could afford from a geopolitical point of view to be producing all the world's chips (answer: no, it would force other place to invest highly in competition out of strategic interest). Hence the strategy of being long term profitable and to just sell the machines to everyone at the same price. It does make it baffling why Intel is unable to produce 5nn chips with the same ASML machines TSC is using. It must be management failing Boeing style. As for the rest of Europe. Im sure they can politically do this. But where will the money end up? It will end up in the pockets of friends and families of politicians that will be in "the management". So don't expect anything from this. The future most sold chip will still be Apple Silicon or Samsung Exynos in TSC's foundry or Samsung foundry on a machine by ASML using IP from ARM and NVidia

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML AFAIK, ASMLs fancy EUV tech comes from a Bay Area company they acquired a while ago and not from the Netherlands.
- dragonelite 6y ago
  Yeah i'm always wonder just because the company is located in the EU, does it mean its actually a EU company? Given US institutional investors who probably have big voting power own majority stake in those tech companies.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    I think ASML's connection to NL is solid, you could say it's a Dutch company. The R&D, world headquarters are in NL and board of directors includes many Dutch people, including the CEO.
- pa7x1 6y ago
  Do you have a reference? AFAIK it's 2 other German companies that are key in the production of EUV photolitography machines; Zeiss for the lenses and Trumpf for the lasers. I see reference for a company bought by ASML in California, HMI. They were bought in 2016 but the development of EUV technology predates it by many years so I find it unlikely that it had an important role in it.
  - ju-st 6y ago
    Cymer was apprently the first to produce a EUV light source but their lasers were not commercial viable. Trumpf lasers are used in the commercial EUV machines. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-does-the-laser-technology-in-euv-lithography-work https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-d...
- yaantc 6y ago
  If you refer to Cymer, they're doing the light source. A critical part of the system certainly, but not the whole. Then mirrors are done by Carl Zeiss in Germany. The blank photomask come mostly from 2 Japanses companies. On such complex systems there's room for many critical providers. Still, the integrated product comes from ASML.
  - bazooka_penguin 6y ago
    Cymer is the linchpin of ASML's leadership. Other litho machine developers like Canon and Nikon almost dropped out of the industry because they couldn't develop functional EUV light sources. ASML got around that by buying Cymer. And ASML has multiple other R&D labs and offices in the US handling critical technologies like software and robotics
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
      A quick Google search suggests ASML bought Cymer for the patent portfolio, while the tech didn't quite pan out. It seems like Trumpf is the current supplier of the EUV source.
      - tarlinian 6y ago
        This is most definitely not true. Trumpf makes CO2 lasers which are used by Cymer to produce EUV radiation via excitation of liquid tin droplets.
  - xadhominemx 6y ago
    The light source is by a very wide margin the most difficult and critical component of an EUV tool. The US still dominates wafer fab equipment - Cymer plus Applied Materials, Lam, and KLA. The only major non-US supplier is Tokyo Electron who is also quite strong. ASM International is a good but niche European supplier.
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
      ASML doesn't seem like a niche supplier considering it generates more revenue than all but one of the major suppliers you list. Applied Materials - 17bn ASML - 11bn Tokyo Electron - 10.8 bn Lam - 9.5 bn KLA Corp - 4 bn Cymer (2012, before acqusition) - 600m
yvdriess 6y ago
> It does make it baffling why Intel is unable to produce 5nn chips with the same ASML machines TSC is using. It must be management failing Boeing style. ASML machines do not produce chips, they're just ones doing the etching. There is a ton around what you do with it, and how all the rest of the chip is produced. They don't come with pre-programmed transistor gate templates. Each fab company has its own libraries of extremely specialized designs, doing different optimizations and tradeoffs. As mentioned plenty of times before, the consensus seems to be that Intel tried to pile up too many new improvements, which backfired. TSMC took a more incremental and safe approach. You have to appreciate that a defect that impacts high-volume yield today could have its roots in a design that was put on the roadmap years before. > As for the rest of Europe. Im sure they can politically do this. But where will the money end up? If H2020 is anything to go by, the majority of that money will be salaries of people working on big research projects. At worst the project outcome is useless. I don't see how any of the way these projects are structured benefit the pocket lining of managers.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  > the consensus seems to be that Intel tried to pile up too many new improvements, which backfired. TSMC took a more incremental and safe approach Can you point to some industry literature that explains this? If this is true, it is a lot more surprising that Intel is talking about going fabless. You build a lot of expertise by rolling the dice on new techniques that don't pan out on the first iteration. People wouldn't be so pessimistic about Boeing if they had just been overly aggressive in a new airframe design, rather than failing to safely mount new engines on an old design.
  - _jal 6y ago
    > People wouldn't be so pessimistic about Boeing if they had just been overly aggressive in a new airframe design Well... yes. That's called judgement, and execs at firms like Boeing get paid positively stupid sums of money to provide the good kind. Which they didn't. "What's the big deal? If I had left the vat of acid unattended in a locked room, everything would have been fine."
  - 6y ago
arnaudsm 6y ago
> It will end up in the pockets of friends and families of politicians that will be in "the management". 100% agree. Considering the incredible education system and engineers we have, the 2 only things restraining Europe from reaching Silicon Valley level are corrupt politicians and risk-adverse VCs.
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- andruby 6y ago
  In my opinion you've hit the major reasons. I would also include that culture, and especially founder culture is different too, and that hampers these "massive scope" ventures. A somewhat more fractured local market (languages, laws, markets, habits) also plays against it.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  Also: - labor laws (very hard to fire people in many European countries) - lots of disjointed small-to-medium markets (with different laws and languages) make expansion on continental scale much harder than in the US
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >- labor laws (very hard to fire people in many European countries) That's just not true now and hasn't been the case anymore since like the 2009 financial crisis. In most of Europe it's trivial to fire an underperforming non-unionized employee as the countries have adapted more business friendly laws to remain competitive after the financial crisis. Sure, there may still be some grey beards somewhere with old bulletproof contracts but for anyone entering the tech workforce now, getting fired is a rubber stamp basically especially since tech workers are not unionized and sometimes benefit from less protection than even some blue-collar professions which are unionized. For example, in Austria you can fire anyone for no reason at all as long as you give them their notice period(usually 1 to 3 months) without them being entitled to any other financial compensation from their employer. Moreover, non-competes are legal here without any form of compensation and you can even fire employees while they're on sick leave. All this legally! The whole you can't get fired in Europe maybe only applies to Scandinavia or France but it's mostly a meme nowadays. Actually, contrary to popular belief, tech workers in California might enjoy better protection than tech workers in some European countries. Let that sink in for a bit.
bazooka_penguin 6y ago
ASML is heavily reliant on the IP of Cymer an American company they bought in the last decade. And a great deal of their R&D is in the US, including things like software, measurement systems and sensors, robotics and automation, and so forth. What the US does best is quietly prop up international companies like ASML (and ARM, whose texas R&D center has been the leader for years) that wouldn't be able to hack it on their own without American talent.
- WanderPanda 6y ago
  I don‘t like the vibe of your comment, but you are probably right...
- Daho0n 6y ago
  Go back to /r/murica please.
- BostonEnginerd 6y ago
  In addition to Cymer, ASML a big R&D and manufacturing footprint in Wilton Connecticut. Semiconductor manufacturing is really a global effort -- most device makers have fabs full of equipment mostly from US, European and Japanese suppliers. Korean equipment suppliers are also becoming more prevalent. Chinese suppliers are starting to try to gain some market share as well.
rajesh-s 6y ago
I thought ASML manufacturing was in Connecticut, USA? I heard this from Ian Cutress on his channel https://youtu.be/JyocuFlQmTc https://youtu.be/JyocuFlQmTc
pkaye 6y ago
> For a country as small as the Netherlands, you can wonder if we could afford from a geopolitical point of view to be producing all the world's chips (answer: no, it would force other place to invest highly in competition out of strategic interest). I used to work for a semiconductor equipment manufacturer a long while back so am familiar with that industry. ASML works on just lithography but there are dozens of other processes needed to manufacture semiconductors. The biggest of those in market share are the US companies Applied Materials and Lam Research. They make a quite a few of those machines. So ASML is an important part but not the only part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_leaders_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_...
absolutelyrad 6y ago
> Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML FYI, a LOT of the critical components in ASML come from the US. There's no one country that can make the latest tech end-to-end relying on it's self. China seems to be trying, but it'll be inefficient.
anonuser123456 6y ago
>It does make it baffling why Intel is unable to produce 5nn chips with the same ASML machines TSC is using. It must be management failing Boeing style. My understanding is that Intel believed EUV would be very late. As such, it committed to Intel 10nm (TSMC 7nm) without EUV, which turned out to be too complex. At the same time, TSMC banked on EUV early. This gave them a headstart over Intel once Intel started down the EUV path. The tables could have been reversed. EUV could have been very late, and 10nm non-EUV might have worked better. Hard to know these things when you are making plans 3-5 years ahead.

by ralfn 6y ago

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML AFAIK, ASMLs fancy EUV tech comes from a Bay Area company they acquired a while ago and not from the Netherlands.

dragonelite 6y ago
Yeah i'm always wonder just because the company is located in the EU, does it mean its actually a EU company? Given US institutional investors who probably have big voting power own majority stake in those tech companies.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  I think ASML's connection to NL is solid, you could say it's a Dutch company. The R&D, world headquarters are in NL and board of directors includes many Dutch people, including the CEO.
pa7x1 6y ago
Do you have a reference? AFAIK it's 2 other German companies that are key in the production of EUV photolitography machines; Zeiss for the lenses and Trumpf for the lasers. I see reference for a company bought by ASML in California, HMI. They were bought in 2016 but the development of EUV technology predates it by many years so I find it unlikely that it had an important role in it.
- ju-st 6y ago
  Cymer was apprently the first to produce a EUV light source but their lasers were not commercial viable. Trumpf lasers are used in the commercial EUV machines. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-does-the-laser-technology-in-euv-lithography-work https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-d...
yaantc 6y ago
If you refer to Cymer, they're doing the light source. A critical part of the system certainly, but not the whole. Then mirrors are done by Carl Zeiss in Germany. The blank photomask come mostly from 2 Japanses companies. On such complex systems there's room for many critical providers. Still, the integrated product comes from ASML.
- bazooka_penguin 6y ago
  Cymer is the linchpin of ASML's leadership. Other litho machine developers like Canon and Nikon almost dropped out of the industry because they couldn't develop functional EUV light sources. ASML got around that by buying Cymer. And ASML has multiple other R&D labs and offices in the US handling critical technologies like software and robotics
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    A quick Google search suggests ASML bought Cymer for the patent portfolio, while the tech didn't quite pan out. It seems like Trumpf is the current supplier of the EUV source.
    - tarlinian 6y ago
      This is most definitely not true. Trumpf makes CO2 lasers which are used by Cymer to produce EUV radiation via excitation of liquid tin droplets.
- xadhominemx 6y ago
  The light source is by a very wide margin the most difficult and critical component of an EUV tool. The US still dominates wafer fab equipment - Cymer plus Applied Materials, Lam, and KLA. The only major non-US supplier is Tokyo Electron who is also quite strong. ASM International is a good but niche European supplier.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    ASML doesn't seem like a niche supplier considering it generates more revenue than all but one of the major suppliers you list. Applied Materials - 17bn ASML - 11bn Tokyo Electron - 10.8 bn Lam - 9.5 bn KLA Corp - 4 bn Cymer (2012, before acqusition) - 600m

yvdriess 6y ago

> It does make it baffling why Intel is unable to produce 5nn chips with the same ASML machines TSC is using. It must be management failing Boeing style. ASML machines do not produce chips, they're just ones doing the etching. There is a ton around what you do with it, and how all the rest of the chip is produced. They don't come with pre-programmed transistor gate templates. Each fab company has its own libraries of extremely specialized designs, doing different optimizations and tradeoffs. As mentioned plenty of times before, the consensus seems to be that Intel tried to pile up too many new improvements, which backfired. TSMC took a more incremental and safe approach. You have to appreciate that a defect that impacts high-volume yield today could have its roots in a design that was put on the roadmap years before. > As for the rest of Europe. Im sure they can politically do this. But where will the money end up? If H2020 is anything to go by, the majority of that money will be salaries of people working on big research projects. At worst the project outcome is useless. I don't see how any of the way these projects are structured benefit the pocket lining of managers.

rmrfstar 6y ago
> the consensus seems to be that Intel tried to pile up too many new improvements, which backfired. TSMC took a more incremental and safe approach Can you point to some industry literature that explains this? If this is true, it is a lot more surprising that Intel is talking about going fabless. You build a lot of expertise by rolling the dice on new techniques that don't pan out on the first iteration. People wouldn't be so pessimistic about Boeing if they had just been overly aggressive in a new airframe design, rather than failing to safely mount new engines on an old design.
- _jal 6y ago
  > People wouldn't be so pessimistic about Boeing if they had just been overly aggressive in a new airframe design Well... yes. That's called judgement, and execs at firms like Boeing get paid positively stupid sums of money to provide the good kind. Which they didn't. "What's the big deal? If I had left the vat of acid unattended in a locked room, everything would have been fine."
- 6y ago

arnaudsm 6y ago

> It will end up in the pockets of friends and families of politicians that will be in "the management". 100% agree. Considering the incredible education system and engineers we have, the 2 only things restraining Europe from reaching Silicon Valley level are corrupt politicians and risk-adverse VCs.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
andruby 6y ago
In my opinion you've hit the major reasons. I would also include that culture, and especially founder culture is different too, and that hampers these "massive scope" ventures. A somewhat more fractured local market (languages, laws, markets, habits) also plays against it.
burntoutfire 6y ago
Also: - labor laws (very hard to fire people in many European countries) - lots of disjointed small-to-medium markets (with different laws and languages) make expansion on continental scale much harder than in the US
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >- labor laws (very hard to fire people in many European countries) That's just not true now and hasn't been the case anymore since like the 2009 financial crisis. In most of Europe it's trivial to fire an underperforming non-unionized employee as the countries have adapted more business friendly laws to remain competitive after the financial crisis. Sure, there may still be some grey beards somewhere with old bulletproof contracts but for anyone entering the tech workforce now, getting fired is a rubber stamp basically especially since tech workers are not unionized and sometimes benefit from less protection than even some blue-collar professions which are unionized. For example, in Austria you can fire anyone for no reason at all as long as you give them their notice period(usually 1 to 3 months) without them being entitled to any other financial compensation from their employer. Moreover, non-competes are legal here without any form of compensation and you can even fire employees while they're on sick leave. All this legally! The whole you can't get fired in Europe maybe only applies to Scandinavia or France but it's mostly a meme nowadays. Actually, contrary to popular belief, tech workers in California might enjoy better protection than tech workers in some European countries. Let that sink in for a bit.

bazooka_penguin 6y ago

ASML is heavily reliant on the IP of Cymer an American company they bought in the last decade. And a great deal of their R&D is in the US, including things like software, measurement systems and sensors, robotics and automation, and so forth. What the US does best is quietly prop up international companies like ASML (and ARM, whose texas R&D center has been the leader for years) that wouldn't be able to hack it on their own without American talent.

WanderPanda 6y ago
I don‘t like the vibe of your comment, but you are probably right...
Daho0n 6y ago
Go back to /r/murica please.
BostonEnginerd 6y ago
In addition to Cymer, ASML a big R&D and manufacturing footprint in Wilton Connecticut. Semiconductor manufacturing is really a global effort -- most device makers have fabs full of equipment mostly from US, European and Japanese suppliers. Korean equipment suppliers are also becoming more prevalent. Chinese suppliers are starting to try to gain some market share as well.

rajesh-s 6y ago

I thought ASML manufacturing was in Connecticut, USA? I heard this from Ian Cutress on his channel https://youtu.be/JyocuFlQmTc https://youtu.be/JyocuFlQmTc

pkaye 6y ago

> For a country as small as the Netherlands, you can wonder if we could afford from a geopolitical point of view to be producing all the world's chips (answer: no, it would force other place to invest highly in competition out of strategic interest). I used to work for a semiconductor equipment manufacturer a long while back so am familiar with that industry. ASML works on just lithography but there are dozens of other processes needed to manufacture semiconductors. The biggest of those in market share are the US companies Applied Materials and Lam Research. They make a quite a few of those machines. So ASML is an important part but not the only part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_leaders_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_...

absolutelyrad 6y ago

> Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML FYI, a LOT of the critical components in ASML come from the US. There's no one country that can make the latest tech end-to-end relying on it's self. China seems to be trying, but it'll be inefficient.

anonuser123456 6y ago

>It does make it baffling why Intel is unable to produce 5nn chips with the same ASML machines TSC is using. It must be management failing Boeing style. My understanding is that Intel believed EUV would be very late. As such, it committed to Intel 10nm (TSMC 7nm) without EUV, which turned out to be too complex. At the same time, TSMC banked on EUV early. This gave them a headstart over Intel once Intel started down the EUV path. The tables could have been reversed. EUV could have been very late, and 10nm non-EUV might have worked better. Hard to know these things when you are making plans 3-5 years ahead.