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ASML is impressive for sure, but having the litho doesn't mean you can make good chips. As a mediocre analogy, you don't expect to be able to write good novels

ASML is impressive for sure, but having the litho doesn't mean you can make good chips. As a mediocre analogy, you don't expect to be able to write good novels because you got your hands on a printer. I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. I don't yet see any other chip company (eg NXP etc) suddenly be the next Intel or AMD yet (let alone the next Apple).

ginko 6y ago
>I think much of the relevant chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. The larger ARM Cortex cores are still designed to a large degree in Southern France.
- iagovar 6y ago
  Yeah but that's ARM IP though. There's a window of opportunity with RISC V, but something tells me that the fact it's open source rubs against some people.
  - ginko 6y ago
    >Yeah but that's ARM IP though. How does this matter? Do you think ARM won't license their IP to European chip makers?
    - rusk 6y ago
      Are ARM still Japanese? I think there’s a pretty solid trade agreement between the EU and Japan ...
      - alexhutcheson 6y ago
        https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for-40-billion-creating-worlds-premier-computing-company-for-the-age-of-ai/ https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for...
        rusk 6y ago
        Has the UK even got a trade deal with the US yet?
        jlokier 6y ago
        No it hasn't, and the type of deal it is going to get looks likely to be different under Biden than under Trump. I think your point is relevant regarding ARM-Nvidia, as semiconductor technology has tended to be the subject of trade barriers, and is seen as a strategic national asset.
        rusk 6y ago
        Yeah that’s what I was kind of getting at ... great British success story, bought by SoftBank Japan coincidentally straight after Brexit. Would have been a good asset to have in trade negotiations. The sale to US based Nvidia 3 months ago is an interesting twist that would have gone against the EU had Trump won again.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      ARM will be owned by NVIDIA soon anyway so it's all swings and roundabouts.
hmottestad 6y ago
Both AMD and Apple Are fabless, so maybe The EU can partner with them like how Apple has partnered with TSMC.
Nokinside 6y ago
ARM IP, even full architectural license, is relatively small percentage of the cost of a semiconductor. Know-how for fables microarchitecture designs is widely distributed. Most fabless work goes to specialized asics. It's the inability for SMIC to obtain EUV lithography equipment for their sub-7nm process technologies from ASML that prevents China from getting into high-end semiconductors, not the domestic microarchitecture know-how.
- geogra4 6y ago
  Does that change with the China eu trade deal?
  - himlion 6y ago
    I don't think the US will allow that. They probably have enough leverage.
    - DSingularity 6y ago
      I think they squandered that recently. We will see with Biden but the Trump administration basically encouraged Brexit and repeatedly adopted anti- EU positions in key geopolitical issues (Syria, NATO, Iran, Israel, and Ukraine). These things come with a cost and the EU will try to rectify this. Enhancing Chinas CPU tech by a few generations might be worth it if it can advance EU interests and ensure future good-faith from a supposed ally.
      - CountSessine 6y ago
        Enhancing China’s CPU tech even a single generation is in the EU’s interest in exactly 0 alternate universes, along with this one. As long as the US has the world’s only reserve currency and as long as the EU economy - especially the productive bit in the North - is built on exporting to the all-powerful US consumer, the EU has very little leverage in its affairs with the US.
        6y ago
m4rtink 6y ago
On the other hand, without the printing press your reach as a novel autor was severely limited - to the point there were no novel authors basically.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  Nice! Great point and it might just apply here as well!
baybal2 6y ago
> I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. Does that even marginally matter? Even after Brexit, both EU, and UK will remain open economies, unless you believe a conspiracy theory that Boris is a closet communist.
nirv 6y ago
RISC-V Foundation just moved[1] from the USA to Switzerland in late 2019 due to geopolitical concerns. Also, the European Union is heavily betting on the RISC-V for its future hyperscale HPC systems[2][3][4]. I would believe that next-gen European CPU budget declaration is part of this dynamic. And I really hope it will work out. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-insight-idUSKBN1XZ16L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-... [2] https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/project/epi/ https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/project/epi/ [3] https://www.mdpi.com/2297-8747/25/3/46/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/2297-8747/25/3/46/pdf (PDF) [4] https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/06/10/europes-homegrown-hpc-compute-begins-to-take-shape/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/06/10/europes-homegrown-hp...
- alexhutcheson 6y ago
  The foundation just coordinates the standards process and sets rules for using the trademark. It has a tiny budget and few staff. All substantive R&D is done by its members, which are companies of various size with headquarters in various countries: https://riscv.org/members/ https://riscv.org/members/ Changing where the foundation is incorporated doesn’t change where this R&D happens. Also Switzerland isn’t in the EU.
- GregarianChild 6y ago
  The RISC-V foundation moved to Switzerland primarily to help the big Chinese processor companies to work on RISC-V. Regarding the EU heavily betting on RISC-V, what gives you confidence that this will work? The history of EU funded projects to catch up with the US in AI, in cloud computing (like GAIA-X), in quantum computing, in the space race? HPC is not a mass-market, how should this niche be economically viable to amortise the huge cost of processor development? HPC in the US (and other countries) is often connected to military spending (although this is not always openly expressed). Processor development is extremely expensive, to the extent that Intel is now struggling to finance catching up with TSMC's fab process. Where is the EU's micro-architecture design capacity? ARM is about to be swallowed by Nvidia, and a lot of Arm's micro-architecture development is done in the US already. Now compare the micro-architecture design capacity with that in China (the world's biggest processor market). I really hope it will work out. I do too. Given 40 years of failure to catch up with the US, and now China, I am sceptical! I expect this to end up like previous EU attempts at catching up: the monies available will be much smaller than originally announced (by at least an order of magnitude), spent over much longer a time-frame, but more importantly, mostly flow to existing EU-based companies that are good ad lobbying, e.g. Siemens, and French conglomerates. Another prediction: China will soon dominate RISC-V, since they are now forced, by US sanctions, to move away from Arm. I cannot see big Chinese processor companies moving to local ISAs such as Loongson. Alibaba announced a RISC-V processor at ICSA this year [2]. The big US players (Intel, AMD, Nvidia) have much less of a need to move to RISC-V. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson [2] https://conferences.computer.org/isca/pdfs/ISCA2020-4QlDegUf3fKiwUXfV0KdCm/466100a052/466100a052.pdf https://conferences.computer.org/isca/pdfs/ISCA2020-4QlDegUf...
CalChris 6y ago
The company has offices and design centres in Copenhagen in Denmark; Oulu in Finland; Sophia Antipolis in France; Grasbrunn in Germany; Budapest in Hungary; Galway in Ireland; Trondheim in Norway; Katowice in Poland; Sentjernej in Slovenia; Lund in Sweden.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Your analogy works if ASML makes the only printer that can print the letter 'S'. Without it, you can't print and sell the books, regardless of who the author is.
gchadwick 6y ago
> I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning Worth noting the Sophia Antipolis arm design centre in France continues to exist. It works on some of the big A-class cores (The A75 for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A75 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A75). Though whether arm would get involved in this endeavour is another question. They have a significant physical IP portfolio: https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-physical https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-physical and associated skillsets (I think at least some of this is UK based, not entirely sure how much) so would be a good partner to have and I suspect arm would like to see arm cores coming out as test designs rather than RISC-V cores. Of course in the wake of brexit potentially not a partnership the EU wants politically! UK government would spin it as UK company plays key part in major EU initiative with significant funding awarded. EU would spin it as EU brings in major global semiconductor company to new semiconductor initiative.

ginko 6y ago

>I think much of the relevant chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. The larger ARM Cortex cores are still designed to a large degree in Southern France.

iagovar 6y ago
Yeah but that's ARM IP though. There's a window of opportunity with RISC V, but something tells me that the fact it's open source rubs against some people.
- ginko 6y ago
  >Yeah but that's ARM IP though. How does this matter? Do you think ARM won't license their IP to European chip makers?
  - rusk 6y ago
    Are ARM still Japanese? I think there’s a pretty solid trade agreement between the EU and Japan ...
    - alexhutcheson 6y ago
      https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for-40-billion-creating-worlds-premier-computing-company-for-the-age-of-ai/ https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for...
      - rusk 6y ago
        Has the UK even got a trade deal with the US yet?
        jlokier 6y ago
        No it hasn't, and the type of deal it is going to get looks likely to be different under Biden than under Trump. I think your point is relevant regarding ARM-Nvidia, as semiconductor technology has tended to be the subject of trade barriers, and is seen as a strategic national asset.
        rusk 6y ago
        Yeah that’s what I was kind of getting at ... great British success story, bought by SoftBank Japan coincidentally straight after Brexit. Would have been a good asset to have in trade negotiations. The sale to US based Nvidia 3 months ago is an interesting twist that would have gone against the EU had Trump won again.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    ARM will be owned by NVIDIA soon anyway so it's all swings and roundabouts.

hmottestad 6y ago

Both AMD and Apple Are fabless, so maybe The EU can partner with them like how Apple has partnered with TSMC.

Nokinside 6y ago

ARM IP, even full architectural license, is relatively small percentage of the cost of a semiconductor. Know-how for fables microarchitecture designs is widely distributed. Most fabless work goes to specialized asics. It's the inability for SMIC to obtain EUV lithography equipment for their sub-7nm process technologies from ASML that prevents China from getting into high-end semiconductors, not the domestic microarchitecture know-how.

geogra4 6y ago
Does that change with the China eu trade deal?
- himlion 6y ago
  I don't think the US will allow that. They probably have enough leverage.
  - DSingularity 6y ago
    I think they squandered that recently. We will see with Biden but the Trump administration basically encouraged Brexit and repeatedly adopted anti- EU positions in key geopolitical issues (Syria, NATO, Iran, Israel, and Ukraine). These things come with a cost and the EU will try to rectify this. Enhancing Chinas CPU tech by a few generations might be worth it if it can advance EU interests and ensure future good-faith from a supposed ally.
    - CountSessine 6y ago
      Enhancing China’s CPU tech even a single generation is in the EU’s interest in exactly 0 alternate universes, along with this one. As long as the US has the world’s only reserve currency and as long as the EU economy - especially the productive bit in the North - is built on exporting to the all-powerful US consumer, the EU has very little leverage in its affairs with the US.
      - 6y ago

m4rtink 6y ago

On the other hand, without the printing press your reach as a novel autor was severely limited - to the point there were no novel authors basically.

skrebbel 6y ago
Nice! Great point and it might just apply here as well!

baybal2 6y ago

> I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning. Does that even marginally matter? Even after Brexit, both EU, and UK will remain open economies, unless you believe a conspiracy theory that Boris is a closet communist.

nirv 6y ago

RISC-V Foundation just moved[1] from the USA to Switzerland in late 2019 due to geopolitical concerns. Also, the European Union is heavily betting on the RISC-V for its future hyperscale HPC systems[2][3][4]. I would believe that next-gen European CPU budget declaration is part of this dynamic. And I really hope it will work out. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-insight-idUSKBN1XZ16L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-... [2] https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/project/epi/ https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/project/epi/ [3] https://www.mdpi.com/2297-8747/25/3/46/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/2297-8747/25/3/46/pdf (PDF) [4] https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/06/10/europes-homegrown-hpc-compute-begins-to-take-shape/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/06/10/europes-homegrown-hp...

alexhutcheson 6y ago
The foundation just coordinates the standards process and sets rules for using the trademark. It has a tiny budget and few staff. All substantive R&D is done by its members, which are companies of various size with headquarters in various countries: https://riscv.org/members/ https://riscv.org/members/ Changing where the foundation is incorporated doesn’t change where this R&D happens. Also Switzerland isn’t in the EU.
GregarianChild 6y ago
The RISC-V foundation moved to Switzerland primarily to help the big Chinese processor companies to work on RISC-V. Regarding the EU heavily betting on RISC-V, what gives you confidence that this will work? The history of EU funded projects to catch up with the US in AI, in cloud computing (like GAIA-X), in quantum computing, in the space race? HPC is not a mass-market, how should this niche be economically viable to amortise the huge cost of processor development? HPC in the US (and other countries) is often connected to military spending (although this is not always openly expressed). Processor development is extremely expensive, to the extent that Intel is now struggling to finance catching up with TSMC's fab process. Where is the EU's micro-architecture design capacity? ARM is about to be swallowed by Nvidia, and a lot of Arm's micro-architecture development is done in the US already. Now compare the micro-architecture design capacity with that in China (the world's biggest processor market). I really hope it will work out. I do too. Given 40 years of failure to catch up with the US, and now China, I am sceptical! I expect this to end up like previous EU attempts at catching up: the monies available will be much smaller than originally announced (by at least an order of magnitude), spent over much longer a time-frame, but more importantly, mostly flow to existing EU-based companies that are good ad lobbying, e.g. Siemens, and French conglomerates. Another prediction: China will soon dominate RISC-V, since they are now forced, by US sanctions, to move away from Arm. I cannot see big Chinese processor companies moving to local ISAs such as Loongson. Alibaba announced a RISC-V processor at ICSA this year [2]. The big US players (Intel, AMD, Nvidia) have much less of a need to move to RISC-V. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson [2] https://conferences.computer.org/isca/pdfs/ISCA2020-4QlDegUf3fKiwUXfV0KdCm/466100a052/466100a052.pdf https://conferences.computer.org/isca/pdfs/ISCA2020-4QlDegUf...

CalChris 6y ago

The company has offices and design centres in Copenhagen in Denmark; Oulu in Finland; Sophia Antipolis in France; Grasbrunn in Germany; Budapest in Hungary; Galway in Ireland; Trondheim in Norway; Katowice in Poland; Sentjernej in Slovenia; Lund in Sweden.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

Your analogy works if ASML makes the only printer that can print the letter 'S'. Without it, you can't print and sell the books, regardless of who the author is.

gchadwick 6y ago

> I think much of the relevant general-purpose chip design knowledge we had (ARM) left the EU this morning Worth noting the Sophia Antipolis arm design centre in France continues to exist. It works on some of the big A-class cores (The A75 for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A75 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A75). Though whether arm would get involved in this endeavour is another question. They have a significant physical IP portfolio: https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-physical https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-physical and associated skillsets (I think at least some of this is UK based, not entirely sure how much) so would be a good partner to have and I suspect arm would like to see arm cores coming out as test designs rather than RISC-V cores. Of course in the wake of brexit potentially not a partnership the EU wants politically! UK government would spin it as UK company plays key part in major EU initiative with significant funding awarded. EU would spin it as EU brings in major global semiconductor company to new semiconductor initiative.