ASML will open Beijing facility despite US sanctions on China Chipmaking tool biz ASML plans to open a new facility in China this year amid rising trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. The supplier of advanced lithography equipment disclosed in its latest Annual Report that it aims to inaugurate a Beijing-based Reuse & Repair Center in 2025, recognizing the importance of China …
The orange bully will have no problem sanctioning ASML. Strictly speaking it would be unwise for any sane person to try, because the Netherlands have a $30bn odd trade deficit with the US, but fat boy will work on the basis that if he leans on the Germans they'll have a word with the Dutch. And he'll probably be right.
The Europeans could in theory place sanctions on ASML exporting to the US and that would be interesting, but I can't see that happening any time ever. Or, they could announce that they're lifting the existing restrictions on ASML exports to China. Again, can't see that happening either.
Unfortunately, as with all bullies, he'll keep throwing his ample weight around until somebody does stand up to him.
Yeah, with the Orange Kompromat in Chief disaligning the US away from European romance, in favor of its stilted mother Russia dominatrix mistress, one can only expect the jilted loverblock to exact its scorned wrath and fury, the likes of which hell hath never seen before, by indeed intensifying its torrid love affair with kryptonitic US arch-nemesis China.
Yes, China is the new BBC to the EU, its tech is bigger, longer, faster, freer (by comparison), deeper seeking, and more agile with its hands than can be had with the butchered Barbiecore and cowboy cosplay favored by its dildo ex and flacid new toy-handler. China will, by contrast, effortlessly execute the whole gamut of exciting new acrobatic wonders, in the exclusive canopy boudoir environments, of the most intimate of EU diplomacies ...
So long ketamine-jester shipwreck and Orange saddlebags, Papa EU's got a brand new bag! huh! hah! get down! heh! I jump back, I wanna kiss myself! huh! good Lord!
(obviously a work of fiction ... any similarities with reality is purely coincidental ... or not?)
ASML seem to have sidestepped export restrictions on new kit by refurbing old equipment. A bit like webuyanyphotolithographyequipment.com.
Will it fly? With the Orange Toddler in the Whitehouse, who knows where tariffs, sanctions, or anything else will be headed - it is only Monday.
If Huawei does actually manage to not only design and manufacture a viable EUV solution, but mass produce chips with it in 2026, expect Trump to go from orange to a whiter shade of pale in the blink of an eye.
Rumours since 2020 have consistently pointed to Huawei moving in this direction, through strategic investments, partnerships with universities and startups. The only doubt was a timeline.
Even last year there were rumours of a new site coming online and some described the place as one huge EUV solution. That rumour wasn't given much credibility but....
But surely that was the plan all along?
If you cut off an emerging economy from buying your existing products they are going to innovate and produce cheaper and eventually better alternatives.
America is just paying-it-forward in the same way that its early industry was boosted by restrictions from the British Empire
At some point they will be left holding expensive IP on chips that the world no longer needs. As a suitably useful alternative will be available that doesn't require royalty payments to be made and the complete supply chain will exist entirely outside of American control.
Maybe…. but I wonder if you are clear what you actually mean by US-controlled IP….or if it’s more of that “ARM / x86 ISA royalty” nonsense.
To prototype any new CPU design, you need FPGAs, lots of them. And for complex CPUs you need really high-end ones. You just can’t do this fully in simulation, it’s orders of magnitude too slow. There are only two viable FPGA vendors, and both of them are US-owned.
All the vital chip-design EDA software vendors, like Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Keysight, Altium are all US-based. Whether its synthesis, place-route, power analysis, clock trees, power domains, computational lithography, DFM / DFT / reliability. It’s all US software. And it’s all *annual licenses, seat-based*, none of it is “bought and owned”. The open-source stuff is just toys for university students.
There are certainly stages in the chip-design / manufacture that are *not* US-bottlenecked. But enough of them *are* that EU cannot make a chip without US agreement without at least 20+ years R&D.
Similarly with the various sets of expertise out in APAC: not just the silicon fabs, but test, advanced packaging etc.
What EU excel in, is the most complex silicon fab tools, a fantastic high-margin business, selling in units of only dozens of machines worldwide, but each one selling for tens or hundreds of millions. They lead the world in that. Not just ASML, but various Austrian, Swiss and a couple German companies.
Look, it’s an incredibly complex global supply chain. Every region has its specialism. This tariffs/protectionism stuff is literally suicidal for all concerned. The EU trying to make sovereign chips, with the other regions actively sanctioning, is laughable. But so would be if the USA tried. And so would be Taiwan, or China, or South Korea. It just *doesn’t work that way*.
"mass manufacturing targeted for 2026. It is said to use a technique called laser-induced discharge plasma (LDP), claimed to be simpler and less costly than ASML's laser-produced plasma (LPP) technology."
Perhaps ASML is positioning itself for a future technology sharing arrangement with Huawei when the EU doesn't give a rat's about US policy and conveniently forgets the Uighurs.
If as seems very likely that the US disappears up its own arse, Europe and the rest of world with have to deal with the realpolitik of the expanding role of China in the absence of a credible US.
Who knows in the absence of effective US coercion a beneficial détente might be reached between the PRC and the rest of the world.
Although my guess is that China has so many pressing domestic problems that its global engagement will also falter and turn inwards thus with each of the two super[sic]powers' heads firmly wedged up their respective bums the task of limiting the consequent fallout and maintaining some sort of global order will fall on smaller nations and groupings of nations.
Unfortunately interesting times.
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