What's new
What's new

ASML selling latest chipmachine to China US does not agree

Joined
Jan 15, 2005
Location
The Netherlands
Perhaps not known publicly in the US but here its a big issue
ASML has agreed with China to sell them some of their latest chipmachines
China is a big customer already
ASML needs a exportpermitt from Dutch govenrnment for that
Now however the US government (Trump) says that they do not want the Dutch give such a permitt
Reasson being these machines are strategic equipment
Its not that they by buying such a machine they can copy one
The machine will be heavily protected for unauthorized opening, making the machine useless by doing so
Also technologie is so advanced you have to create a whole new generation of fabricaters which takes years and years
Their lenzes are made by Zeiss for example And if you have a lenze from Zeiss it does not mean you can copy one
All this puts dutch government in a impossible position
If they give a permit they face US santions
If they do not sell they face Chinese sanctions
Over here there are people saying that this is a attemt to protect US industrie, Intel in particular

How do you guys feel about this


Peter
 
could be to protect the industry, china most likely has singled out chip making as of great importance and is focusing efforts to go after it.
The USA blocked them buying a USA chip company a while back if i remember correctly.
I suppose the question is what's china going to do if it has it and what are the potential consequences to the USA industry, usa being a good customer for years should have some weight i would think.You most likely grew the business in a co dependant relationship with intel for many years as they grew so did you.
Would you sell out your good customer for a few dollars? throw them under the bus?

china is running over people already in the south china sea, emissions are of no concern to them and seem to want to dominate, the China embassy is complaining on how long it takes for PHD students to get visa here at the moment so they are quick off the mark, but complaining about south china sea falls on deaf ears.
We should not be so ready to help them on their quest

I should add having some form of tamper proof machine will not stop them opening it up, may delay it but you could almost bet it would be a certainty of being opened of having some endeavour of reverse engineering done on it.
 
I should add having some form of tamper proof machine will not stop them opening it up, may delay it but you could almost bet it would be a certainty of being opened of having some endeavour of reverse engineering done on it.

This (as the youngsters say). There is no lock man can make that man cannot pick.
 
At least the extortion is out of the closet this time. Usually they do it in secret so the US can say "tinfoil hat ! tinfoil hat ! normal business forces, we had nothing to do with it !"

Yup, sorta like the "If you want to sell in our market, you must turn over all the trade secrets and processes" extortion that China puts on external companies. Also, you must "partner" with a Chinese company. Oh, and more than half of the partnership must be owned by China, which frequently means owned by the PLA (Chinese military).
The People's Liberation Army, Inc.

Those poor, oppressed Chinese! May their gentle souls overturn and destroy the White Devils post-haste!
 
Some years ago, I was in a factory in Bologna of an Italian company that makes Tea Bagging machines, Pill making machines, and Cigarette packaging machines- all far simpler than a chip making machine.
They told a story of how one of the largest chinese tea making companies ordered ONE of their machines.
And then, six months later, asked for the Italians to fly over a mechanic, because the machine wasnt working right.

The mechanic found the machine had been dissassembled, and reassembled incorrectly, with many precise parts adjusted wrong.
He fixed it.

A few months later, the Chinese started buying many of the machines from the Italians, having conceded defeat in their attempts to reverse engineer it.
In the end, the Chinese allowed the Italians to set up a 100% Italian owned subsidiary in China. That was only in the last few years, and it is still doing well.
The Chinese also allowed IMA, the Italian company, to open 100% Italian owned companies making pharmaceutical and packaging machinery. The local chinese copies are far inferior.

Now, obviously, if the chinese government decided chip making was a national priority, they could throw money and engineers at making their own machines, especially if they decided money was no object.
But just because a lock can be picked, doesnt mean it can be picked profitably.
And, in many categories, knowing how to copy a machine doesnt mean you can actually manufacture them-
Apple, for instance, has multi year contracts to buy the entire global production of certain components in Iphones, meaning even if you could copy them, you couldnt get the parts.
I wouldnt be surprised if the Zeiss lenses are similar.

I suppose China could set up new industries to make state of the art, top global quality, parts, but in reality, its usually cheaper and easier to just buy the damn machines- hence, Haas sells a hundred machines a month to chinese companies (probably more now, thats a years old figure).
 
Given China's history of copying technology and that they are buying several units it's almost a certain bet they will attempt to disassemble at least one machine and reverse engineer as much as possible.

Even with an unopened machine much can be learned by closely observing the service tech during a visit.

I view "heavily protected for unauthorized opening" as something that MAY stop them but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Just because it would make the machine inoperable does not mean they could not learn much of value from it.

IMO there is nothing devised by man that can't be defeated given enough time and effort and having the things to be studied "at home" rather than in another country. One thing that could be learned is how the safeguards against opening work so that a second or even a third machine could be opened safely, perhaps by cutting and drilling as is done in some bomb disposal work.

So my question is does the Dutch government want to risk losing possible future sales to cloned copies in order to gain sales today? Also, state of the art chip making machinery absolutely does have very important military value.

Not a simple decision by any means.
 
It is not the first machine that is sold to China
They sell chipmachines for years and years already
ASML is very well aware that many including some American compagnies are after their secrets

Perhaps they have attempted to copy one But sofar they were not succesfull in making any chipmachine
AFAIU these chipmachines are efectivly operated from ASML headquarter



Peter
 
It is not the first machine that is sold to China
They sell chipmachines for years and years already
ASML is very well aware that many including some American compagnies are after their secrets

Perhaps they have attempted to copy one But sofar they were not succesfull in making any chipmachine
AFAIU these chipmachines are efectivly operated from ASML headquarter



Peter

What about this angle ?
China is flush with cash, they BUY whole the company ?

Now what ?
 
If the Chinese buy ASML they are under a magnifying glass to the government and journalist
A corrupt official will not do I presume
Also the government needs to give their fiat for such a takeover
I can imagen they refuse

Peter
 
The ASML is a good example of the sad parody us military/industrial bullying is doing.

It´s a 500M$ machine, btw.
Already built for the client, and asml had an export license to china, until the current us government killed it with heavy pressure for about a year, over multiple visits from big us politicians.

Asml has sold many machines to china, it is just that this is the best and newest one, dual-path and higher speed/resolution iirc.

What happens:
Well china has made high-end chipmaking a crucial tech they want to learn and develop.
When intel and amd were blocked from selling chips and chip-making tech to china, they developed their own.
2 years ago us trade blocks, 4B$ later..
china now has their own chip design, and their fabs mostly running on near-cutting edge tech.

China is about 80% ready to compete with the best us chip designs, and is likely to surpass them within about 2 years.
After another 4B$ is spent, that they regard as an excellent highly profitable R&D spend.
Rightly in my view.

So the US blocking sales of advanced chip designs and fab equipment, has caused china to set up as a competitor.
But the china competitor does not have the debt load of intel or amd, since it is not bleeding money in dividends or excessive stock options.
So their cogs is vastly lower, by topline, and allows much higher R&D and more/better engineers working on next gen tech.

The asml debacle means holland loses a top notch customer paying heavy cash.
And china develops their own x-ray litography tech, and complex lense tech.

Sure, it takes them 3 years, and 1B$, but china has the money and the will.
They will of course hire engineers from germany zeiss and asml, to help do so, at 2M$ salary each.
So then holland loses the top spot, and china can build their internal lithography machine knock-offs at 3M$ vs 500M$ per machine.

I think it a major monumental error to encourage china, or force it, in investing heavily in these things, chiptech and hw.
Just like the ram, mb, hdd wars led to us pc makers to go bk.
And microprocessor makers went fabless.
Or the PV wars 8 years ago. China won.
All PV is basically developed in china and made in china, probably for a Very Long Time.
All lost for short-term profits vs long term success.
And criminally incompetent CEOs.
 
this article says the Chinese are at least ten years behind in terms of being able to make chips competively.
How China plans to lead the computer chip industry - BBC News

the thing is, its one thing to take a machine apart- but its another to actually build one that works as well AT THE SAME PRICE.

as I mentioned above, the Chinese buy at least 100 Haas machines a month. And have been for years.
It would be much easier to copy one of those- but the fact is, Haas makes them cheaper and better. The chinese can currently make cheaper VMCs than Haas, but even Chinese companies prefer to buy Haas, because they are higher quality and more reliable.

They have Rolls Royces there, they "could" make their own- but, instead, they are the single largest market for hand made in England Rollses.

I have no doubt the Chinese will, eventually, make chip making machines.
But they wont do it by copying, part for part, one of these dutch machines, and they wont do it in 6 days, like they are building the Corona virus hospital.
 
Another interesting article- Trump administration pressed Dutch hard to cancel China chip-equipment sale: sources - Reuters

this one says the dutch company is worth $110 Billion.
China has spent about $2 trillion on foreign companies since 2005- but $110 billion is still a very big chunk, even for them. And who says the dutch would sell?

Also, the Chinese, in total, only spent around $40 billion in all of 2019 on foreign companies- they are actually selling foreign companies these days.
Subscribe to read | Financial Times
 
i suppose if you look at apple who moved assembly to china and say looking just at the phone. There are now Chinese phones available how much did they learn from apple. I bet apple is pulling apart all the phones and trying to determine where the parts are made / sourced from and is the layout similar.
Apple as you say maybe contained suppliers to produce only for them. This has not worked.
How many phone engineers go onto doing other things rather than working for foxcon producing for apple.
Any blame can only be focused on apple for helping train the people, it will take a while to get that back.

Tesla has setup manufacturing there and has a plant operating going one step further how long do you think Tesla has before there lead is eroded by their own staff over there. Surely musk would have an idea of how long he's got.
 
Your point is good and valid.

The article is propaganda, to belittle the chinese.
It does mention the 29B$ fund they set up, to create chipmaking capacity.

I don´t doubt the chinese buy 100 HAAS machines a month.
I was the general manager, sales, for HAAS, in Spain, 2011-2013, nr 1 in the world 2013 iirc, owned by Hitec Mexico, nr 1 in the world, 50M$ in sales in 2012, +/-, 240 engineers on staff in mexico, and we had 20 people when we started.
I suspect I know a lot about HAAS in general, and in detail.

But the chinese make about 3000 VMC machines a month for their own market/use.

I´ve been dealing with the chinese about 28 years, as manager +/-.

I did not suggest they will do lithography high end in 6 days.
I suggested, that they will spend 1-3B$, and in 3 years they will produce excellent high end lithography machines.
More or less.
Confidence is high, my prediction stands, barring political (aka money) upheaval.

The chinese are already at 80% of their goal, in 2 years.
Right now. Refs online.

I´m not a "china fan", "elon musk" fan, russian or french fan. US fan.
All have done great engineering feats, and are doing them better and faster.
The US ignited the modern industrial world, kudos.
And led for 60 years.
And leads today in IT/innovation/financing.

this article says the Chinese are at least ten years behind in terms of being able to make chips competively.
How China plans to lead the computer chip industry - BBC News

the thing is, its one thing to take a machine apart- but its another to actually build one that works as well AT THE SAME PRICE.

as I mentioned above, the Chinese buy at least 100 Haas machines a month. And have been for years.
It would be much easier to copy one of those- but the fact is, Haas makes them cheaper and better. The chinese can currently make cheaper VMCs than Haas, but even Chinese companies prefer to buy Haas, because they are higher quality and more reliable.

They have Rolls Royces there, they "could" make their own- but, instead, they are the single largest market for hand made in England Rollses.

I have no doubt the Chinese will, eventually, make chip making machines.
But they wont do it by copying, part for part, one of these dutch machines, and they wont do it in 6 days, like they are building the Corona virus hospital.
 
Yup, sorta like the "If you want to sell in our market, you must turn over all the trade secrets and processes" extortion that China puts on external companies. Also, you must "partner" with a Chinese company. Oh, and more than half of the partnership must be owned by China, which frequently means owned by the PLA (Chinese military).
It's in the rule book, right up front for everyone to see.

It wasn't Chinese companies who invaded the US. It was asshole US ceo's who were happy as clams to shit on all their employees and rushed over when China waved a nickel in the air. Now you have to sell your parking meters to Abu Dhabi to make ends meet while China puts in thirteen new subways.

Also, that does not apply to most stuff. Most intelligent foreign companies are woofies - wofe, wholly-owned foreign enterprise. In fact, I am betting that a lot of the poor deceived US companies that have been shit on did joint ventures because they read it was a good way in a magazine at their dentist office. Talk about stupid. The behavior I have seen by foreign companies is retarded. Your ceo's have their heads up their asses. What they are good at is sucking all the cash out of companies for themselves.

Those poor, oppressed Chinese! May their gentle souls overturn and destroy the White Devils post-haste!
Don't like it much when other people play the business game better than you, eh ? Ever read any US history ? "Do as I say, not as I do" ?

@ Riess : people don't buy Haas because it is better. They buy because Haas will finance. Second reason is for the service, which is pretty good. Not criticizing Haas, their lathes probably are better than most (not all), but in vmc's no, lots of domestic machines are as good or better. They do okay, they are not as stupid as many foreign companies.

@Street, the first people who copied Apple "technology" was Microsoft. The courts decided that look and feel is not technology or protectable, rightly so. But the Apple "technology" actually came from Xerox. So, who is the "thief" ?

p.s. If the original Macintosh had not been such a beautiful-looking but underperforming piece of shit, thanks to Steve Jobs, Apple probably would have beat the pants off Mickeysoft. Performance talks.
 
Would be a good time for the USA to build their own machines as well, between china aiming to do so and them the business in your country will dry up and the billion dollar company you have will be no more. As you will have no one to sell to.

On edit its more complicated than that i looked them up intel owns 15% of them and bought a american lithography company already....maybe a bad move way back when to sell that.



Still interesting how it will play out, how the chess pieces move.

I believe if i remember correctly a apple ceo sold some rights to Microsoft i think it was the use of icons don't fully know all the details back then, i had a look at the wiki there was a court case about the GUI no mentions of icon sale though maybe detail is wrong .Probably ideas where borrowed / ripped off and applied elsewhere so don't discount that happening. Yet have not followed them so intensely as to know al the ins and outs i suppose only Jobs and Woz would have known and maybe not made it public knowledge anyway.

I remember the original Macinstosh they had one at school when i was younger it was the super computer compared to those tandy TRS80's we had or maybe i am just remembering things differently as i get older......it sure had pride of place in the school.
 








 
Back
Top