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ASML tech leveraged investments made over the decades by US national labs and consortiums like EUV-LLC as well as by companies like Cymer (DUV) which they acqui

ASML tech leveraged investments made over the decades by US national labs and consortiums like EUV-LLC as well as by companies like Cymer (DUV) which they acquired. IIRC, Part of the reason the US can forbid ASML selling EUV machines to China is they are covered by some patents held by US DOE/NIST. For sure, ASML did the “final mile” in perfecting EUV and making it work in a production environment vs the prototypes in the labs 20 years ago, but I don’t think the funding that the US government and consortium members dumped on decades of research should be swept under the rug.

MichaelZuo 5y ago
The parent does have a point, a common argument for pharmaceuticals is that governments and universities fund, or participate in funding, everything except the ‘last mile’ of drug development, i.e. human clinical trials. So a naive reader may assume they were primarily responsible but in fact it is the ‘last mile’ that consumes the vast majority of resources. Although the breakdown may not be clear in the case of EUV, it is possible that the vast majority of effort was getting across that ‘last mile’ of development, and thus a primarily non-US effort.
- hardolaf 5y ago
  Okay, but that's just ignoring that ASML's largest design center is in NY just a few tens of miles from NYC and White Plains. Why is it there? Global Foundries (former IBM and AMD) is nearby and that was where the research was happening. Their second largest design center is in Norway, so not even in the EU. But sure, they're a Dutch company that does most of its design work outside of the Netherlands. In terms of research, well the USA is still leading in total number of dollars, researchers, labs, and light sources dedicated to semiconductor research. Heck, we have three of the world's most advanced accelerators (Fermi Lab, Argonne National Labs, and SLAC) that are critical to semiconductor device research and were where most of the EUV breakthroughs were made. In terms of total effort for EUV, yeah most probably wasn't in the USA. But if I had to hazard a guess, probably 50-60% of the research and development of EUV was done in the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. So essentially countries firmly within our sphere of influence with the rest occurring in Europe (not the EU, the continent), the People's Republic of China, India, etc. And as we're moving forward, TSMC's stated reason for putting their most advanced fabs in the USA going forward is because they want faster and easier access to where the research is occurring at the bleeding edge of the research without the problem of the time gap that delays and impedes communication due to sleep schedules.

MichaelZuo 5y ago

The parent does have a point, a common argument for pharmaceuticals is that governments and universities fund, or participate in funding, everything except the ‘last mile’ of drug development, i.e. human clinical trials. So a naive reader may assume they were primarily responsible but in fact it is the ‘last mile’ that consumes the vast majority of resources. Although the breakdown may not be clear in the case of EUV, it is possible that the vast majority of effort was getting across that ‘last mile’ of development, and thus a primarily non-US effort.

hardolaf 5y ago
Okay, but that's just ignoring that ASML's largest design center is in NY just a few tens of miles from NYC and White Plains. Why is it there? Global Foundries (former IBM and AMD) is nearby and that was where the research was happening. Their second largest design center is in Norway, so not even in the EU. But sure, they're a Dutch company that does most of its design work outside of the Netherlands. In terms of research, well the USA is still leading in total number of dollars, researchers, labs, and light sources dedicated to semiconductor research. Heck, we have three of the world's most advanced accelerators (Fermi Lab, Argonne National Labs, and SLAC) that are critical to semiconductor device research and were where most of the EUV breakthroughs were made. In terms of total effort for EUV, yeah most probably wasn't in the USA. But if I had to hazard a guess, probably 50-60% of the research and development of EUV was done in the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. So essentially countries firmly within our sphere of influence with the rest occurring in Europe (not the EU, the continent), the People's Republic of China, India, etc. And as we're moving forward, TSMC's stated reason for putting their most advanced fabs in the USA going forward is because they want faster and easier access to where the research is occurring at the bleeding edge of the research without the problem of the time gap that delays and impedes communication due to sleep schedules.