For those like me who haven‘t heard of ASML before. There was a recent NPR Planet Money episode (26 minutes) about the company. I found it quite interesting:
When Canon first started developing these machines, I wonder if they knew that one of the biggest markets in the world, China, would be completely cut off from them.
I can see these machines succeeding if China is allowed to buy them. But with just a handful of semi fabs remaining and the most cutting edge chips in much higher demand, what is the market for these machines?
The question isn't if Canon can sell to China now. The question is when Canon decided to invest R&D into this machine, did they have any idea that China would be cut off from this product?
I assume that Canon definitely wanted to sell to China.
But now the market is severely limited. TSMC uses ASML. Intel uses ASML. Both aim to manufacture the most cutting edge chips. That's where the money is. In addition, both TSMC and Intel own a fairly decent amount of shares in ASML.
>The question is when Canon decided to invest R&D into this machine,
They have been doing this R&D since the 90s. I doubt they think much into it whether China have access but more whether it could compete with traditional tools.
If there's one thing you want if you're highly dependent on a single vendor or supplier, it's a competitor to keep them in check. Expect the big players to buy a bunch of these, even if they do own shares in ASML.
For-profit corporate interest trump whatever historical geopolitical disagreements countries may have.
That's why government always step in with regulations, because corporations only care about selling to the highest bidder for profit no matter how that would affect national interests.
And today China is the most profitable county you can sell to if you're in the lithography business. Banning sales of equipment to China is something all lithography companies hate.
Absolutely. The point I was making though, is that regulations could very well come from an initive of the Japanese government.
Of course the reality is that both the US and Japan are involved in chip restrictions, as both have to gain by restricting China's access to advanced technology.
The US has had to apply heavy pressure to both the Dutch and the Japanese to get them to restrict exports to China. They wouldn't have done it if not for the US demanding them.
Japan is a sovereign country. They are closely allied to the US now but that doesn’t mean it will always be the case nor that they have to silently agree to every stupid mandate the US tries to impose.
So is China. That didn't stop the US from retaliating economically when they do things the US didn't like. Just because countries are sovereign doesn't mean the US can't force them into compliance, allies or no allies.
Why do you think the US spends more on military than all the other powers combined? So they call all be sovereign from the US? Or for the US to have enforcement over world geopolitics and influence over the other powers to keep being the world reserve currency?
This good be a big leap forward using the chips act and access to more players good usher in a golden age of development. The cottage industry of chip production. Cheaper access to tools is what drives innovation from my point of view.
The ASML machines are modular and each generation gets new upgrades that pushes Moore’s law further. For example, with the previous generation, the Chinese SMCI modified the machines to be competitive with the newer chips from EUV machines. So there is a lot of expectation on the new EUV machines still. Also in terms of productivity.
With the stamping approach there might be less upgradability possible. But it might also still unlock new markets.
I think that’s a sign that ASML hasn’t had much competition at that scale. And that the new tech requires buyers willing to take a risk and invest in learning the new process.
Actually, Canon used to be the one of the main players, whereas ASML was the new kid on the block. It with new technologies and high reliability that made ASML win.
hostile de-globalisation eroding single supplier dominance through the SC supply chain. Good opportunity for more players to take smaller slices of a growing pie
I wonder about the TCO of nanoprint. The ASML TwinScan is only a part of the CapeX and part of the cost in OpeX of a Fab. You will need to take into account how many wafers it can do per month including down time and maintenance. Yield. Cost of Design and EDA. Whether tools are portable. BOM and running cost or basically electricity usage. EUV TwinScan is extremely power hungry.
And then you need to take into account of its other design constraint. Does it work equally well with analog. Obviously there would be less ready made design blueprint available etc. And if it was that much cheaper you would have seen it being used in commodity like DRAM and NAND. It is not which suggest there are missing / downside information we dont know.
I'm not exactly sure where we are misunderstanding each other. I just wanted to point out that volume is a goal generally of commodity goods. I see opportunities in niche markets that don't rely on volume for profitability.
Specific NAND and DRAM are only needed because general purpose computing production currently relies on large volumes of RAM and techniques developed a market to meet the need.
A niche market could solve computing problems that avoid NAND and DRAM by solving computing problems with another method.
The PC market as it stands right now has developed through commodity solutions but that isn't the only way to skin a cat.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/13/1212604208/asml-euv-extreme-u...