News JVTech Knockout for China: Netherlands follows US lead in devastating Chinese chip industry
To manufacture the latest generation chips, you need machines and the country that manufactures them controls the entire market. This is exactly what is happening with the Netherlands which is massively handicapping China.
When one company controls the global ultra-thin chip market
It seems logical, but to manufacture chips, you must already manufacture the machines. Innovation also goes as much into the design of manufacturing instruments as the development of the final chip. In the field there is a leader who controls the world market for the latest technological innovations in chip manufacturing. This is the Dutch ASML.
Unknown to the general public, the company supplies the largest semiconductor companies in the world such as Intel, GF or TSMC. Because yes, none of them designs their own manufacturing machine.
The extreme ultraviolet photolithography process is a technology that may have been used previously by Nikon and Canon, but the two companies pulled out of development, due to the investment being too massive for scale-up, leaving only ASML . He therefore became the undisputed natural leader.
China can’t evolve its chips
The giants are thus dependent on the goodwill of ASML to sell them the machines. At the height of the semiconductor crisis, we even ended up not having enough machines to build the chips, resulting in the shortage that we experienced.
This is where you get to the heart of the problem for China. A Western alliance has been created with the United States in the lead. The Netherlands are thus part of this alliance and refused to sell machines to Chinese manufacturers for fear of seeing their machine dismantled and copied with their patent, which would no longer have any value. The Biden administration thus extended these restrictions last October to all industrial sectors in China.
Although ASML has never sold the latest generation machines to China, its slightly less advanced version will also be limited from next summer. The goal is to slow down the technological advance of China. The official pretext is the use of very fine chips for the armament sector. The reality is that it is the whole evolution of the Chinese technology industry that this penalizes.
The reality is also to be put into perspective, because ASML sells their machines to companies like Samsung or SK Hynix that they manufacture in China. As a result, the customers are certainly not Chinese, but the machines are already on the national territory.
The United States and technological interference in the world
Yes, the US needs to control everything and the technology sector is part of it. Even if they are not the ones who manufacture the machines, they put pressure on the Netherlands via this alliance not to supply China and it works.
This interference of the United States begins to annoy strongly and the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning is thus desperate for the situation in the columns of
Reuters
without giving a name:
We hope that the Dutch side will adhere to an objective and fair position (…) will act to safeguard its own interests and will not follow the abuse of export control measures by some countries
China is thus developing its own technologies with, in particular, its new BR104 graphics card or Moore Threads MTT S80, which currently has such low compatibility that it is not an imminent danger. Linus Tech Tips has had the opportunity to test it, the results are inconclusive. On the other hand, with a computing power of 128 TFlops, the performance is there. All that’s missing is optimization. Its 3D5000 processor is also there with up to 32 cores at 2.2 GHz
In other words, China is gaining its independence and it would not be surprising if in a few years all this history of machines for manufacturing very thin chips would be just ancient history. Independence is what China seeks at all costs and the investments are massive. This is the only country in the world that can out of nothing develop a whole sovereign industry. And it is indeed the project that is underway. And even if some analysts speak of a “death sentence” of China by the West, it is difficult to see a future where China will be dependent on the rest of the world.
