[HN Gopher] Japanese companies fight for share of EUV chip techn...
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Japanese companies fight for share of EUV chip technology sector
Author : totalZero
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-01-24 20:31 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com)
| hinkley wrote:
| As much as the US sits around hand wringing about manufacturing
| being outsourced, does anyone have a good perspective on how this
| has played out in Japan? From our perspective, they're one
| 'generation' of outsourcing from us, two if you count Taiwan, and
| we've had at least South Korea and Mainland China since then.
|
| I got a little taste of their recession in the 1990's, but not
| much information since then. Are they as worried now as we were
| when Toyota ate everybody's lunch?
| totalZero wrote:
| I have been thinking about this a lot recently, and I think
| Canon and Nikon, both of whom produce Deep UV machinery (ie,
| equipment that uses a laser wavelength about an order of
| magnitude wider than EUV's 13.5nm), have an opportunity due to
| demand for legacy foundry processes. They are a tiny part of
| the photolithography equipment sub-sector, but the present
| moment is marked by overwhelming demand for semiconductors for
| automotive applications, and those chips aren't running on
| leading-edge nodes like TSMC 5nm or Intel 10nm (there's no
| reason for them to). If I were the CEO of a global automaker,
| I'd be buying legacy (22nm and older) foundry equipment in
| order to make chips in-house because the eventual product mix
| transition (ICE vs EV) means I'm going to need more custom
| semiconductors than ever before.
|
| The semiconductor industry is so complex that it depends upon
| companies in many nations, including Japan. No one nation owns
| the semiconductor lifecycle, but each part of the process is
| dominated (but not entirely owned) by one nation. Japan
| dominates wafer production. One company in the Netherlands
| dominates photolithography equipment. The United States
| dominates processor design. China dominates device assembly.
| Korea dominates NAND. Taiwan dominates foundry. Companies in
| all of these places are laying out a bunch of CapEx so clearly
| there's an anticipation of a rising tide that lifts all boats,
| rather than a rejiggering of market share that hurts one
| economy (forgetting China for a second) while helping another.
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Applied Materials is a key player in semicom fabrication and
| it's American. There are also a handful of Japanese companies
| that hold virtual monopolies over key resources like
| fluorinated polyimide film, photoresists, and hydrogen fluoride
| and it became a big international issue when Japan revoked
| korea's free trade access to those materials.
|
| It seems like there's been a deliberate push, like propaganda,
| to play up ASML's importance over everyone else in the past
| year or so. I've been seeing ASML brought up everywhere and
| often seemingly for no reason.
| totalZero wrote:
| Agreed that ASML isn't the only important company, but they
| are clearly very important.
|
| EUV is the core technology for the leading-edge nodes of
| Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. ASML is the only company in the
| world that makes those machines. They sold 6 of them this
| past quarter and delivered 9, despite limitations on their
| ability to do business with Chinese foundries. They're
| approximately four-fifths of the lithography market in
| general, and basically five-fifths of the EUV market. So
| while their machines are not the only component of a
| foundry's toolkit, it's quite clear that ASML is a critically
| important business.
| Scheherazade wrote:
| Although your question has merit for this case specifically as
| ASML is a Dutch company there is very little hand wringing
| about outsourcing. For the forseeable future the Dutch are
| going to toe Washington's line. In fact in some ways it's
| desirable to throw middle powers a bone every now and then as
| it gives Washington an additional geopolitical bargaining chip
| that can be more easily called.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| ASML's EUV light sources are made in San Diego (ex Cymer) and
| many of their EUV twin scan machines are made in Wilton, CT.
| So oddly it seems they outsource to the US.
| detaro wrote:
| afaik they bought Cymer specifically for the light sources,
| so it makes some sense.
| doomlaser wrote:
| > ASML Holding of the Netherlands dominates the market for the
| equipment. Major semiconductor makers began full use of it in
| 2019 and _ASML is the sole company capable of mass-producing it._
|
| They supply the whole industry, from Samsung to TSMC to Intel.
| clcuc wrote:
| That article is from 2020. Link to article in Japanese:
|
| [0]: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO61125800T00C20A7TJ2000
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