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As a single source supplier for the global semiconductor supply chain this is concerning. Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-Chin

by n-e-w 5y ago

As a single source supplier for the global semiconductor supply chain this is concerning. Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chmod775 5y ago
Hurting ASML serves neither side - and that's true for most third parties who want nothing to do with that stupidity. But since it is stupidity and given the track record of the countries involved, I wouldn't completely rule out that someone might pull a stunt like this.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  China has been pouring high order of millions into domestic lithography. Eventually the market will shift. We're still a bit far away. Edit: funny that people here think that this is statement is somehow something that could be considered a contentious topic. semiengineering has a startup section with investments for people that are more interested in facts than emotions: https://semiengineering.com/startup-corner/ https://semiengineering.com/startup-corner/
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    Well EUV alone cost many billions of dollars to develop. It's also not clear that China is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      They don’t have to lead though, just fast follow. Many companies were hit by digital trade secret theft that was sent to China, so they are more than capable of bypassing the billions of R&D by getting access to the designs and going from there with government backing.
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        Many companies sent their blueprints to China and asked them to find a cheaper way to build it, and so they did. The exclusivity guarantees must have been lost in translation.
        fvv 5y ago
        Many ? Like who ? A secret stolen that way with company permission to stole and not just to a temporary permission to use the blueprint IMHO never happened and if happened has been a micro tiny fraction of stolen secrets ie by acquisitions, price dumping , expats coming back after having worked years in key jobs and then going in china to do a job where they can use what they learned without the restrictions of westerns laws
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        I didn't mean clandestinely, I meant that western companies choose to have their product produced in China, and are surprised when the product is sold without their label attached to it. I guess it is the media pirate in me quibbling over the definition of "stole", yes, as far as intellectual property goes, the Chinese have 'stolen' the goods, but I can only speculate that the vast majority of the time they did not have to sneak into an office in the middle of the night, instead the IP was handed to them with a "please don't make copies outside of this commission, or I'll tell the US government you stole." Without enforcement, there's no such thing as private property. Western companies should have kept their secrets secret.
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        That's true. And things will shift somewhat in that China will be less dependent on other countries for silicon for their economic and military security (most of which don't require cutting edge process). It's not going to happen by spending "millions" though, that will happen by continuing to aggressively follow.
    - manicdee 5y ago
      China is very good at copying others’ homework though, thus the plethora of BEVs coming to the world market soon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chinese semi industry highly focussed on silicon carbide for automotive power electronics, with EUV being a skunkworks project taking place in Europe.
    - Sevaris 5y ago
      It takes time to catch up. There's no reason they won't be able to though given enough time and money though.
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        There are reasons they might not, and that is that the rest of the world also has time and money. China is not infinite. Catching up is definitely a lot easier and yes it does take time, but it's not a given. They've been trying to catch up with jet engines for almost as long as the west or Russia have been working on them, certainly would have out-spent the Russians by a wide margin on the effort. So far unable to match western or even Russian designs. Although maybe in just the past few months they might have finally got something which is at least good enough, just spending a lot of money for a long time doesn't guarantee results.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        The Chinese have been seriously trying to catch up in turbofan engines only since 1986. They are now far enough ahead as to be very comparable to the Russians. They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in military technology. The Chinese, on the other hand, acrually aren't incesting as much money on these technologies as one would think. The only company (SOE) that has any stake in jet engines is Shenyang, and despite also making whole aircraft, drones and so on, they have 15 000 employees for the whole operation. Comparatively, Pratt and Whitney, which does only engines and nothing else, and is one of four companies capable of making modern turbofan engines, has more than twice the employees as Shenyang, which designs and manufactures multiple different aircraft. Boeing has ten times as many employees as Shenyang. As far as outinvesting the Russians, we can compare again the number of employees. The most advanced Russian engines are produced by UEC Saturn, which only makes engines, and by itself has 21 000 employees. That's again more than Shenyang, which doesn't only make engines. So no, it's patently false that the Chinese are deploying more resources with less results.
        5y ago
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US" That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        > That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. I'm not. > Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo. Also no.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        In that case, Chinese innovation and efficiency in manufacturing alone rivals most other kinds in the world - it's truly a marvel for a country to be able to pay it's factory worker a higher wage than the average wage of several EU countries while actually doing the manufacturing at an integer fraction of the cost. That takes a massive amount of innovation that no country in the world is able to match. The value of this invention is arguably larger than the sum total of all innovation of the USA since the year 2000 in the amount of wealth it has generated.
        throwawaylinux 5y ago
        Sure. I didn't say China has done nothing impressive (although it's emissions intensity of manufacturing and other environmental and labor rights records are horrible, which takes a some of the shine off its manufacturing for me, but that blame is equally on western governments and corporations who conspired to circumvent the environmental and labor standards demanded by their populations by farming them out to totalitarian dictatorships but that's a different story). But it's bite does not match its bark when it comes to developing and inventing new ideas and technology.
    - kragen 5y ago
      This smear could not be further from the truth. China has singlehandedly (to the extent that a billion people can be considered a "single hand") dropped the cost of solar energy from five times as expensive as fossil fuels to half as expensive as fossil fuels in only ten years, an innovation that will probably stop global warming and usher in an unprecedented age of energy abundance starting about eight years from now. And it's not just solar; Chinese-designed nuclear reactors are also starting to be exported around the world. JLCPCB has automated custom circuit-board assembly to the point where you can get prototypes in your hands for US$10, two orders of magnitude cheaper than previously. When covid hit China, before PCR tests and antibody tests, they haled people caught with fever into walk-in fever clinics where they got chest-only CT scans, and by July they had developed a vaccine and were vaccinating people who had to travel abroad, five months before any vaccines were approved in most other countries, including the US, Germany, the UK, and Russia. And obviously every electronic device you own is mostly made in China unless it's an antique. Can you imagine an Englishman in World War II saying, "It's also not clear that the US is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the pounds and shillings, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the UK. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight."?
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        China has done a lot to reduce cost and increase efficiency of solar cells, not alone though. And I didn't say they make no innovations, clearly they do.
      - chx 5y ago
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        (not the OP) Do you want to point to anything that is only half true? I similarly choose to defend China against lazy characterizations that they can only steal what westerners design for them, and it's not because I want the communist party to succeed, I don't. Why are you so sure what you've read about China reflects the situation better? I have visited factories in Shenzhen and Shanghai, I am impressed by what they have accomplished, and I believe the people in this thread do themselves a disservice by having such a tainted picture of their fellow human beings.
  - orlp 5y ago
    > pouring high order of millions All I can think of is dr. Evil saying "one MILLION dollars".
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    China will not have a domestically sourced EUV scanner with commercially viable throughput within 20 years, if not longer. They are lacking precursor technologies to the precursor technologies, supply chains, talent, etc for both light source and optics, and unlike the rear of the semiconductor industry, those ecosystems are today found within the US and Europe, not Asia.
    - scarab92 5y ago
      Things move pretty fast in China, so even though they are slow to innovate they can quickly copy designs where enough detailed information exists in public. EUV took decades and billions of dollars in trial and error before the current techniques were figured out. Due to the West's tendency to publish successful techniques, China won't have to repeat these steps.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        YMMV, depending on the technology. As an example where this hasn't worked so well, COMAC's aircraft production has not been doing too hot.
      - snicker7 5y ago
        Things moved fast in China (rather Shrnzhen) due to a period of ultra-liberal economics that Xi is now dismantling.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        Xi has been cracking down a lot on "soft tech". Hardware tech has never been anywhere close to liberal even in Shenzhen, where all levels of government always had massive levels of investment and involvement in the industry.
        sitkack 5y ago
        Could you define soft tech in this context?
  - himinlomax 5y ago
    ASML has taken over all the business formerly held by such companies as Nikon, who are now in no position to compete. They would certainly be much better placed to do so again than some random Chinese company with no track record in the area. Disruptive innovations do happen, but that's not what the Chinese are doing here.
- nabla9 5y ago
  China has no access to advanced ASML EUV lithography. Hurting ASML would help domestic Chinese manufacturers relative to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the US and elsewhere. (sabotage has so many other risks that it's not a good idea)
- manquer 5y ago
  Assuming rationality or optimal play is not good way to think of real world actions. You only need three things for something like this to happen. 1. One side thinks[1] that it will hurt the other side more than it does to itself. 2. Politically it can handle/sell the cost of such an action. 3. There is a leader who is ready to execute it as his agenda. [1] Only have to think so, it doesn't have to even be true.
colechristensen 5y ago
>Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war? If it is, at best only temporarily. The US is perfectly capable of setting up its own complete supply chain if there were the political motivation and do so in a relatively short time frame. China is perfectly aware of this so it will never become a serious issue, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot and cutting themselves off from our (sometimes unwilling) technology transfer.
- oneplane 5y ago
  The US is capable of many things, in theory. In practise, not a lot of new capabilities have materialised so far. Not even a single new Foxconn plant or a domestic contender (if any). That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    There's a difference between what happens for economic reasons and what would happen for an actual security / supply chain threat.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      > That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.
      - colechristensen 5y ago
        Ok, in WWII a big part of Allied victory was the US mobilizing a vertically integrated industrial base to build war materiel. You can look at the history of the Defense Production Act (1950) to see it in action several times building up local industries with lots of cheap money.
        5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
baq 5y ago
Creating EUV machines took twice as long as getting people on the moon… not sure if it was as expensive, but setting up EUV lithography capacity for mass production certainly sounds like the Apollo program of the semiconductor industry.

by n-e-w 5y ago

As a single source supplier for the global semiconductor supply chain this is concerning. Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chmod775 5y ago

Hurting ASML serves neither side - and that's true for most third parties who want nothing to do with that stupidity. But since it is stupidity and given the track record of the countries involved, I wouldn't completely rule out that someone might pull a stunt like this.

rjzzleep 5y ago
China has been pouring high order of millions into domestic lithography. Eventually the market will shift. We're still a bit far away. Edit: funny that people here think that this is statement is somehow something that could be considered a contentious topic. semiengineering has a startup section with investments for people that are more interested in facts than emotions: https://semiengineering.com/startup-corner/ https://semiengineering.com/startup-corner/
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  Well EUV alone cost many billions of dollars to develop. It's also not clear that China is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    They don’t have to lead though, just fast follow. Many companies were hit by digital trade secret theft that was sent to China, so they are more than capable of bypassing the billions of R&D by getting access to the designs and going from there with government backing.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Many companies sent their blueprints to China and asked them to find a cheaper way to build it, and so they did. The exclusivity guarantees must have been lost in translation.
      - fvv 5y ago
        Many ? Like who ? A secret stolen that way with company permission to stole and not just to a temporary permission to use the blueprint IMHO never happened and if happened has been a micro tiny fraction of stolen secrets ie by acquisitions, price dumping , expats coming back after having worked years in key jobs and then going in china to do a job where they can use what they learned without the restrictions of westerns laws
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        I didn't mean clandestinely, I meant that western companies choose to have their product produced in China, and are surprised when the product is sold without their label attached to it. I guess it is the media pirate in me quibbling over the definition of "stole", yes, as far as intellectual property goes, the Chinese have 'stolen' the goods, but I can only speculate that the vast majority of the time they did not have to sneak into an office in the middle of the night, instead the IP was handed to them with a "please don't make copies outside of this commission, or I'll tell the US government you stole." Without enforcement, there's no such thing as private property. Western companies should have kept their secrets secret.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      That's true. And things will shift somewhat in that China will be less dependent on other countries for silicon for their economic and military security (most of which don't require cutting edge process). It's not going to happen by spending "millions" though, that will happen by continuing to aggressively follow.
  - manicdee 5y ago
    China is very good at copying others’ homework though, thus the plethora of BEVs coming to the world market soon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chinese semi industry highly focussed on silicon carbide for automotive power electronics, with EUV being a skunkworks project taking place in Europe.
  - Sevaris 5y ago
    It takes time to catch up. There's no reason they won't be able to though given enough time and money though.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      There are reasons they might not, and that is that the rest of the world also has time and money. China is not infinite. Catching up is definitely a lot easier and yes it does take time, but it's not a given. They've been trying to catch up with jet engines for almost as long as the west or Russia have been working on them, certainly would have out-spent the Russians by a wide margin on the effort. So far unable to match western or even Russian designs. Although maybe in just the past few months they might have finally got something which is at least good enough, just spending a lot of money for a long time doesn't guarantee results.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        The Chinese have been seriously trying to catch up in turbofan engines only since 1986. They are now far enough ahead as to be very comparable to the Russians. They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in military technology. The Chinese, on the other hand, acrually aren't incesting as much money on these technologies as one would think. The only company (SOE) that has any stake in jet engines is Shenyang, and despite also making whole aircraft, drones and so on, they have 15 000 employees for the whole operation. Comparatively, Pratt and Whitney, which does only engines and nothing else, and is one of four companies capable of making modern turbofan engines, has more than twice the employees as Shenyang, which designs and manufactures multiple different aircraft. Boeing has ten times as many employees as Shenyang. As far as outinvesting the Russians, we can compare again the number of employees. The most advanced Russian engines are produced by UEC Saturn, which only makes engines, and by itself has 21 000 employees. That's again more than Shenyang, which doesn't only make engines. So no, it's patently false that the Chinese are deploying more resources with less results.
        5y ago
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US" That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      > That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. I'm not. > Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo. Also no.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        In that case, Chinese innovation and efficiency in manufacturing alone rivals most other kinds in the world - it's truly a marvel for a country to be able to pay it's factory worker a higher wage than the average wage of several EU countries while actually doing the manufacturing at an integer fraction of the cost. That takes a massive amount of innovation that no country in the world is able to match. The value of this invention is arguably larger than the sum total of all innovation of the USA since the year 2000 in the amount of wealth it has generated.
        throwawaylinux 5y ago
        Sure. I didn't say China has done nothing impressive (although it's emissions intensity of manufacturing and other environmental and labor rights records are horrible, which takes a some of the shine off its manufacturing for me, but that blame is equally on western governments and corporations who conspired to circumvent the environmental and labor standards demanded by their populations by farming them out to totalitarian dictatorships but that's a different story). But it's bite does not match its bark when it comes to developing and inventing new ideas and technology.
  - kragen 5y ago
    This smear could not be further from the truth. China has singlehandedly (to the extent that a billion people can be considered a "single hand") dropped the cost of solar energy from five times as expensive as fossil fuels to half as expensive as fossil fuels in only ten years, an innovation that will probably stop global warming and usher in an unprecedented age of energy abundance starting about eight years from now. And it's not just solar; Chinese-designed nuclear reactors are also starting to be exported around the world. JLCPCB has automated custom circuit-board assembly to the point where you can get prototypes in your hands for US$10, two orders of magnitude cheaper than previously. When covid hit China, before PCR tests and antibody tests, they haled people caught with fever into walk-in fever clinics where they got chest-only CT scans, and by July they had developed a vaccine and were vaccinating people who had to travel abroad, five months before any vaccines were approved in most other countries, including the US, Germany, the UK, and Russia. And obviously every electronic device you own is mostly made in China unless it's an antique. Can you imagine an Englishman in World War II saying, "It's also not clear that the US is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the pounds and shillings, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the UK. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight."?
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      China has done a lot to reduce cost and increase efficiency of solar cells, not alone though. And I didn't say they make no innovations, clearly they do.
    - chx 5y ago
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        (not the OP) Do you want to point to anything that is only half true? I similarly choose to defend China against lazy characterizations that they can only steal what westerners design for them, and it's not because I want the communist party to succeed, I don't. Why are you so sure what you've read about China reflects the situation better? I have visited factories in Shenzhen and Shanghai, I am impressed by what they have accomplished, and I believe the people in this thread do themselves a disservice by having such a tainted picture of their fellow human beings.
- orlp 5y ago
  > pouring high order of millions All I can think of is dr. Evil saying "one MILLION dollars".
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  China will not have a domestically sourced EUV scanner with commercially viable throughput within 20 years, if not longer. They are lacking precursor technologies to the precursor technologies, supply chains, talent, etc for both light source and optics, and unlike the rear of the semiconductor industry, those ecosystems are today found within the US and Europe, not Asia.
  - scarab92 5y ago
    Things move pretty fast in China, so even though they are slow to innovate they can quickly copy designs where enough detailed information exists in public. EUV took decades and billions of dollars in trial and error before the current techniques were figured out. Due to the West's tendency to publish successful techniques, China won't have to repeat these steps.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      YMMV, depending on the technology. As an example where this hasn't worked so well, COMAC's aircraft production has not been doing too hot.
    - snicker7 5y ago
      Things moved fast in China (rather Shrnzhen) due to a period of ultra-liberal economics that Xi is now dismantling.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Xi has been cracking down a lot on "soft tech". Hardware tech has never been anywhere close to liberal even in Shenzhen, where all levels of government always had massive levels of investment and involvement in the industry.
        sitkack 5y ago
        Could you define soft tech in this context?
- himinlomax 5y ago
  ASML has taken over all the business formerly held by such companies as Nikon, who are now in no position to compete. They would certainly be much better placed to do so again than some random Chinese company with no track record in the area. Disruptive innovations do happen, but that's not what the Chinese are doing here.
nabla9 5y ago
China has no access to advanced ASML EUV lithography. Hurting ASML would help domestic Chinese manufacturers relative to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the US and elsewhere. (sabotage has so many other risks that it's not a good idea)
manquer 5y ago
Assuming rationality or optimal play is not good way to think of real world actions. You only need three things for something like this to happen. 1. One side thinks[1] that it will hurt the other side more than it does to itself. 2. Politically it can handle/sell the cost of such an action. 3. There is a leader who is ready to execute it as his agenda. [1] Only have to think so, it doesn't have to even be true.

colechristensen 5y ago

>Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war? If it is, at best only temporarily. The US is perfectly capable of setting up its own complete supply chain if there were the political motivation and do so in a relatively short time frame. China is perfectly aware of this so it will never become a serious issue, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot and cutting themselves off from our (sometimes unwilling) technology transfer.

oneplane 5y ago
The US is capable of many things, in theory. In practise, not a lot of new capabilities have materialised so far. Not even a single new Foxconn plant or a domestic contender (if any). That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  There's a difference between what happens for economic reasons and what would happen for an actual security / supply chain threat.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    > That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Ok, in WWII a big part of Allied victory was the US mobilizing a vertically integrated industrial base to build war materiel. You can look at the history of the Defense Production Act (1950) to see it in action several times building up local industries with lots of cheap money.
      - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

baq 5y ago

Creating EUV machines took twice as long as getting people on the moon… not sure if it was as expensive, but setting up EUV lithography capacity for mass production certainly sounds like the Apollo program of the semiconductor industry.