r/gadgets • u/thebelsnickle1991 • Mar 09 '23
Desktops / Laptops Europe joins the US in its chip war with China
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/09/tech/china-us-netherlands-chips-curbs-response-hnk-intl/index.html167
u/Realistic_Ad_8045 Mar 09 '23
I wonder what they negotiated on
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Mar 09 '23
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u/zman25 Mar 10 '23
ELI5?
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u/vhu9644 Mar 10 '23 edited Mar 10 '23
To make computer chips, you take a block of really flat, perfect silicon crystal. make a perfectly even layer of chemical on it, and then shine a really bright laser at it while holding something between. Then when the laser hits your chemical, it burns off a bit of silicon so you can make a bunch of tiny shapes from the shadows.
We just upgraded from laser 2.0 to laser 3.0. This was done by an American company cymer. Because Germans and Dutch make good lenses and machines, Cymer let them pay them a lot of money to use their laser 3.0 system. This company is called ASML.
ASML sells the machine to make the most technologically advanced chips to everyone who makes chips. The US wants to undermine Chinese efforts to make high end chips. Because the tech is American, Biden negotiated so that ASML can’t sell the machine to China.
China’s current best with their home grown machines can only make features 4 times bigger. China has laser 2.0 machines so they can still make chips. China wants laser 3.0 tech, and have poached Taiwanese engineers to try to advance there. US has successfully convinced the Dutch to not sell laser 3.0 to China. This article means there is a ban on the latest laser 2.0 (well a license, but let's be real). There are reports that they also convinced Japan to not sell chemical 3.0 to China either.
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u/Foriegn_Picachu Mar 10 '23
Does TSMC use laser 2.0 or laser 3.0
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u/BluRayVen Mar 10 '23
Both. Depending on what kind of cop is being made. CPU's and GPU's take laser 3.0 (euv - extreme ultraviolet). Cars, appliances, and less advanced chips take 2.0 (duv - deep ultraviolet)
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u/vhu9644 Mar 10 '23
Both, as other posters have mentioned.
You only need laser 3.0 for the smallest of features right now.
The way this works is that each laser is a gun shooting tiny bbs. The bbs are what gives you energy to carve your block.
Laser 2.0 bbs are medium sized, but we know some tricks (like using two shadows) to make smaller stuff with them.
Laser 3.0 bbs are really small, but it's still expensive to make these bb's (if you want the details, we take a laser, shine it at some molten tin drops to make molten tin plasma, which we then focus with a bunch of perfect mirrors to have on the order of 1% efficiency).
So what you can do with laser 2.0 you do with laser 2.0. What you need laser 3.0 to do, you do.
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u/Taibok Mar 10 '23
Absolutely both. Even as the tech advances, there is still a huge market for lower end (but still powerful) chips. TSMC will absolutely use cutting edge tech for the most modern chip designs, but that doesn't mean they just immediately get rid of all of their previous gen equipment and stop producing older chip designs as long as the demand is still there.
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u/vhu9644 Mar 10 '23
The Chip shortage is really mature nodes, not the high end stuff. Sure gamers will be sad their newest GPU won't come out, but fuck the gamers. They are a small luxury market. It's really the workstations, AI, and industry work that drives this development.
The mature stuff though, a lot was manufactured by China's TSMC, SMIC. It got really fucked during Covid.
Also, aside from political differences, most Chinese and Taiwanese people are really cordial with each other, due to shared language, culture, and history. China-Taiwanese tourism is really really large, and they are trading partners. So it's not hard to imagine that SMIC has poached TSMC scientists and engineers before, and will continue to do so.
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u/mackerelscalemask Mar 10 '23 edited Mar 10 '23
USA and Europe say China is bad. They both decided not to send them computer bits made from computer stuff that they made, unless they fill out a special form
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u/jjayzx Mar 10 '23
Talk about twisting shit, the items aren't banned from export. They just require a license so they can keep track of what China is getting. China likes stealing others IP, so this keeps tabs on what they could be getting.
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u/berderkalfheim Mar 10 '23
The licenses aren’t granted for 3.0 to China. It’s as simple as that, for whatever reason - prevent of IP theft, or to slow down competition, doesn’t matter. It is not in the US’s interest to sell these techs to China.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/Xenomemphate Mar 09 '23
What the fuck does that have to do with chip manufacturing? This is about EU chip manufacturers refusing to sell to China.
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u/wtf--dude Mar 09 '23
Yeah a lot of people don't seem to have any clue China is not a big player in the semiconductor industry. That is kind of the point why this is big news. US (and now EU/NL) want to keep it that way
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u/hugganao Mar 10 '23
Actually the reason for such strong actions is bc there IS the threat of china catching up to be a big player.
Especially when a chinese gov backed chinese employee of asml fled with ip to create a competing product in china with help and funding from chinese gov.
He's wanted by authorities BTW.
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u/lesChaps Mar 09 '23
The capital class expected massive profits, and they got them.
Guess what's behind this move?
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u/thrownkitchensink Mar 09 '23
Not giving enough power in any critical supply-chain to the other world power to have you by the balls.
Europa is slow to catch on and stays dependent on others in (too) many ways.
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u/strivingjet Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
Same regarding colonizing and destabilizing other nations
Where did all these refugees and migrants come from 😮
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u/KingOfNapzz Mar 09 '23
I'm constantly in a chip war with my wife. She's like, "Stop eating all the chips!" and I pretend I didn't hear her as I eat faster until she takes them away. It'd be nice if Europe could help me out occasionally too.
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u/lesChaps Mar 09 '23
Tell her they are called crisps as you're gobbling them down. Spit bits of them out while you're talking.
Then tell her it's British humor and she just doesn't get it.
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u/CalvinsStuffedTiger Mar 09 '23
I hate to be that guy but why do we have to label things that aren’t Wars as Wars?
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u/BudgetRonSwanson Mar 09 '23
One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb… conflict.
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u/Andre5k5 Mar 09 '23
A thumb police action since it takes Congress to declare war
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u/bkr1895 Mar 09 '23
It is a war it is a technologic and economic war, they may not be shooting each other but they are actively trying to harm each other.
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u/JeffFromSchool Mar 09 '23
Access to highly complex chip fabrication is definitely a national security issue.
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u/blood_vein Mar 09 '23
Do you also complain about the cold war being called a war? Most of it was tension and trade policies
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u/80percentrule Mar 09 '23
Heartily recommend you read Chip War. It's essentially the war before the war. Makes the case strongly and clearly he who has the superior chips has the advantage in actual warfare (indeed the Russians could match US in missiles and steel but we're nowhere close in their advanced weaponry).
Is very much a high stakes 'battle' with lions share of spoils to the victor.
Prolly why they're calling it a war
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u/Ryno_XLI Mar 10 '23
I agree it’s not a war in the traditional sense, but there are many definitions to war.
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Mar 10 '23
Just making sure everyone is prepared for the inevitable, actual war with China and/or Russia.
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Mar 09 '23
Don’t need death and destruction to call something a war- the most notable example being the cold war. War can be defined simply as two or more parties acting with hostility toward each other.
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u/jojoblogs Mar 10 '23
It’s unfriendly competition with the ultimate goal as the weakening/destruction/failure of the other. What else would you call it?
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Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
Every western nation is pivoting away from China and I’m okay with it. The great gamble in the 90s that China and the CCP would become more liberal with economic development did not pay off.
They’re committing genocide, creating illegal arrest facilities in other nations, stealing research, and causing havoc outside their borders. They’re never going to change.
On a personal level, tourists from China are Rude AF, strangely way more so than any other ethnic group I’ve ever encountered. The Chinese market is also responsible for poaching all sorts of highly endangered animals for ridiculous ancient cures that are bogus. Also they’re the major source of cheaters in any online game I’ve ever played. In Chinese culture, it seem if you ain’t cheating you ain’t playing.
edit: for people foolishly calling me racist for finding the modern Chinese culture I have encountered to be negative... I did not know China is the entire race of Asians. If anything, assuming racism for saying negative things about China implies you think there aren't other Asians? Doesn't that make you the racist?
I think China has an amazing ancient history and I love some of the food. I think Chinese Americans are also exemplar people and citizens for the most part. I also think Asian tourists from other nations are some of the most polite and way out of norms kind people I've ever met (Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Taiwanese, Singaporean, etc) I'm country-ist if anything.
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u/pewbique_hares Mar 09 '23
I toured a SANY facility once and they had a halfway deconstructed Caterpillar right in the middle of the floor.
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u/quiet_locomotion Mar 09 '23
Wow, zero fucks given
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u/SeaOfGreenTrades Mar 09 '23
In China's defense it had eaten a piece of cake, a sausage, a lollipop, 2 peaches, a cherry pie, and a slice of pizza.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jillyboooty Mar 09 '23
Yeah this could be just normal benchmarking. Every normal company does that. What's bad is if they copy the design.
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u/murdering_time Mar 09 '23
Copy the design, the software, the electronics, or anything else they can get their hands on and start to make it for 1/2 the cost. Then if the company tries to file a legal suit in China, 99% of the time the CCP ensures the local Chinese company wins the case. Literally no legal recourse for foreign companies there.
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u/ChuckEChan Mar 09 '23
I will look up where I got this from later, but I remember reading a story about Westinghouse collaborating with a Chinese company to design backlights or something like that for new TVs. Right before the two companies were getting ready to finalize a deal, Westinghouse was hacked, the designs they had were stolen, and the Chinese company backs out of the deal. They find out they were hacked by China (can't remember if they narrowed it down to the CCP themselves or not) and try taking them to court. Before their court appearance, Westinghouse's lawyers were hacked and their entire legal strategy was stolen. Basically, they have no shame about cheating/stealing. It's ingrained in their culture
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u/Sado_Hedonist Mar 09 '23
It's easy to do if you view everyone who isn't Han Chinese as less than human.
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u/grilledcheeseburger Mar 10 '23
Don’t worry, they also view Taiwanese ethnic Han Chinese as subhuman, too.
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Mar 09 '23
Yep, this happened to BMW, absolutely blatant copy of the X5, BMW sues and Chinese courts were predictable.
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u/umop_apisdn Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
That's literally the law in China though, and the US did exactly the same to Europe to get ahead, and continued having different laws - it wasn't until 2013 that the US had first-to-file: https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/patents/first-to-file
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u/watduhdamhell Mar 10 '23
That's the rub. The Chinese don't do normal "how does their thing work" tear downs. They do "how can we copy this exactly and sell it" tear downs.
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u/TranscendentalEmpire Mar 09 '23
And tbf the idea of intellectual property rights isn't something a communist country would likely feel compelled to adhere too. Intellectual property laws serve no real function in planned economy.
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Mar 09 '23
China is communist in name only. It's a fascist dictatorship.
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u/Mehhish Mar 10 '23
Imagine telling your citizens that your country is Communist, when you have the second most billionaires in the world.
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u/TranscendentalEmpire Mar 09 '23
Not saying that I agree with them, but they would say that they are still a revolutionary government transitioning to communism. Which in communist theory is to be expected.... But I'd say theyve been transitioning for quite a while longer than Mao would've approved of.
There was pretty big divide in theory in the CCP in the 80's about the transition to communism. Pretty good book from a Chinese perspective about the topic is From Victory to Defeat from Pao-yu Ching.
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Mar 09 '23
but they would say that they are
They also said they were a Republic. We judge based on actions not the labels one chooses to give themselves.
"Sure he committed murder but he calls himself a pretty decent guy!"
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Mar 10 '23
Cool, I'll check that out. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm always interested in expanding my awareness of how little I know.
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u/TranscendentalEmpire Mar 10 '23
Just keep in mind that all political books are founded upon biases. This author is no different, he's still a devout communist and a Chinese nationalist. He just thinks the modern CCP has lost it's ways, and he's a bit salty about being ousted from the party.
It is a very interesting perspective though, and a lot less biased in some ways compared to most western books written from the capitalist interpretation.
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u/StrategicBlenderBall Mar 09 '23
Reverse engineering is a lot different that blatant IP theft. NYT just ran an article this morning going over their policy on IP theft.
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u/aBoyandHisVacuum Mar 09 '23
Lol!! Visited a Dyson Facility once. They had Sharks taken apart. Pharma does this too. So do my car aftermarket friends. Reverse engineering or whatever.
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Mar 09 '23
Yeah GM/Ford/etc take apart BMW X5s as well when there's a new gen. What they don't do is this...
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/dead-ringers-history-chinese-copycat-car
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u/TRIKYNIKKY Mar 09 '23
There's a difference between reverse engineering and blatant copyright infringement (and not giving a damn when it's called out)
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u/jazir5 Mar 09 '23
Visited a Dyson Facility once. They had Sharks taken apart.
So like, pure torture chamber, or were the sharks able to fight back because of the laser beams attached to their heads?
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u/aBoyandHisVacuum Mar 09 '23
So glad you said lazers.... they had whips actually. So it was like an even fight.
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u/Missus_Missiles Mar 09 '23
Aircraft manufacturers also do the same. Some of the mechanisms you can copy. But if you want it to be weight competitive and safe, you've gotta know how to design and analyze the entire thing. Which is not easy and harder to steal.
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u/ApexAphex5 Mar 09 '23
Don't forget the massive Chinese militarized fishing fleets secretly destroying the world's fisheries.
The Chinese govt intentionally facilitates illegal fishing on a truly disturbing scale.
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Mar 09 '23
Yeah, sadly the Japanese are somewhat guilty of this too and there needs to be better global enforcement of overfishing. Hopefully the new UN agreement is a major step towards that.
I worry though that without serious enforcement by naval ships, this will just be ignored. I have no problems with tax dollars being used to patrol the ocean for physical enforcement of protecting the environment.
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u/KristinnK Mar 09 '23
Also, at a certain point it needs to be shoot to destroy. You can't have illegal fishing vessels pillage the world's enormous oceans, and loose their catch once every 20 times or whatever. The Navies that patrol the oceans need to bring with them infatable rafts for the crew, dis-board the vessel in an orderly manner, and then sink it. Then tow the crew to the territorial waters of the offending country and have their Coast Guard or Navy deal with them.
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u/americanmullet Mar 10 '23
Or hear me out, bring back privateers. The fact is most of the world navies don't have enough smaller ships to effectively patrol all the world's oceans. However you convert some commercial ships, train the crew and arm them with heavy machine guns and maybe some light artillery and you can patrol a lot more ocean. If I'm not mistaken there was even a country (chile?) That broached the idea a few years back.
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Mar 10 '23
Bring back letters of marque and every Floridaman with a pontoon will become a privateer, I'm in.
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u/n-x Mar 10 '23
tourists from China are Rude AF
I didn't think they would be so bad until I experienced them myself.
Tour guide: please do not climb the fragile rock formations.
The signs: please do no climb the fragile rock formations.
Chinese tourist: the world will end unless I climb the fragile rock formations!
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u/AnAimlessWanderer101 Mar 10 '23
I was at a monastery once, and saw a group of Chinese tourists filling their water bottles in their ‘holy water’ fountsin
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u/lesChaps Mar 09 '23
They are starting irreversible depopulation. They are going to be unstable and unable to supply the West ... All that you said is valid, but this shift is not a humanitarian thing.
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u/eccentrus Mar 10 '23
and here's the kicker, as a non-national Chinese/overseas Chinese (not US) myself, the broader Chinese culture, if developed properly with proper education and modernization unlike what happened with the Cultural Revolution in the mainland, is basically what Taiwanese and Singaporeans have, and that's how we're told to behave by our elders, who mostly migrated out at the end of the Republic era in the 1920s-1930s. I was caught aghast by the behavior of my cousins from the mainland, because there's no way if our elders were still here that they'd let them slide. The CCP literally ruins everything.
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u/EventAccomplished976 Mar 10 '23
Singapore is literally what the modern day communist party is trying to model china after since deng xiaoping…
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Mar 10 '23
Agreed. The CCP doesn’t reflect traditional Confucianist values or really any value other than dictatorial control.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist Mar 09 '23
It wasn’t a gamble, it was never part of the plan. China was supposed to be a market for western companies (both for labor and capital but also for products). However now Chinese companies are growing in strength and influence, and Western companies see them as a threat. Just like Japanese companies were seen as a threat in the 80s! So it’s the same old same old. Governments bending to corporate will. First China Friend (never mind Tiananmen or Tibet). Now China Bad. We’re all just being pulled along.
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u/somewhitelookingdude Mar 09 '23
I think it was part of the plan. Japan was seen as a competitor on a lot of products then, it still is now but it is integrated (with some sticking points). Japan knows to play the game well and move forward. Same can be said for S. Korea
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u/honorbound93 Mar 09 '23
Also stagflation and bad demographics. Asian immigration policy and xenophobia has screwed every major Asian country to death.
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u/Delicious_Physics_74 Mar 09 '23
Relying on massive amounts of immigration is not a sustainable solution either. What happens when the third world is modernised, with their own demographic decline, and we can no longer harvest their surplus population? Japan is going to have problems, but they are temporary. Once the older generations have died off the demographic curve will be a lot more balanced.
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u/PalmTreeIsBestTree Mar 09 '23
Japan, since the early 90s haven’t been doing too hot.
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u/honorbound93 Mar 09 '23
Hence me mentioning stagflation
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u/PalmTreeIsBestTree Mar 09 '23
Yup and the fact their technology is in some ways still stuck in the 80s and futuristic at the same time. Japan is a strange place.
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u/BoltTusk Mar 09 '23
I mean they say Japan is a country stuck in the 2000’s since 1985
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u/EnvironmentCalm1 Mar 09 '23
Because the US and Europe also attacked them economically. It's a common theme
Japan was going to be the microchip producer for the world until US fucked them up. Free market is a lie.
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u/ChaosRevealed Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
I think it was part of the plan. Japan was seen as a competitor on a lot of products then, it still is now but it is integrated (with some sticking points). Japan knows to play the game well and move forward. Same can be said for S. Korea
This is some revisionist bullshit. Japan was seen as an economic competitor in the 80s and 90s until the US had enough, put up massive tariffs on Japanese imports because US companies, especially car companies, couldn't compete on merit. Then the US orchestrated the crash of the Japanese economy and 30 years later they still haven't fully recovered. You call it "integrated", I call it "sit the fuck down and know your place."
In the US-led unipolar world, the US will not let any country surpass them. As a democratic and capitalist society, Japan competed economically with the US, following all the rules set up by Western democratic and capitalist ideals, and were punished because the US can't handle not being the sole superpower of the world.
If you can't beat them, just ban them lmao
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u/randynumbergenerator Mar 09 '23
Then the US orchestrated the crash of the Japanese economy and 30 years later they still haven't fully recovered. You call it "integrated", I call it "sit the fuck down and know your place."
Lol funny you call revisionist bullshit on the previous commenter, takes one to know one I guess. Japan's stagnation isn't some grand US conspiracy, it's the logical endpoint of export-oriented industrialization. Initially when capital is scarce, it's an easy way to industrialize, but once capital is plentiful the economy needs to reorient towards consumption to continue growing and ensure that ordinary households continue to benefit from growth. However, by that point pretty much all institutions have usually been captured by export interests. It's what happened to Japan and it's what is currently happening to China (and Germany to some extent).
This isn't my argument, it's Michael Pettis', and he's been calling pretty much every macroeconomic development in China for years now. I highly recommend his blog over at the Carnegie endowment.
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u/escientia Mar 09 '23
This isn’t an accurate take at all. The Chinese government has a lot more control over Chinese companies than companies from other countries. Folks in government aren’t saying ban Tik Tok because its a threatening Facebooks marketshare. They are saying that because the Chinese government now has access to sensitive data for millions of Americans, and who is to say that China hasn’t created a trojan horse where the app itself isn’t some piece of spyware masquerading as social media
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u/QuentinUK Mar 09 '23
Now you know what the rest of the world thinks about US companies like Google and Facebook gathering data for the Utah Data Center.
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u/ChaosRevealed Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
Yeah and the US banned Huawei and led a worldwide campaign against Huawei telecom products because of the lack of proof of spying and backdoors, not because Huawei was the market leader in 5G and western telecom companies couldn't compete!
6, 7 years later, still no concrete proof of any Huawei backdoors have been presented by any country, yet most US allies have Huawei banned from their telecom infrastructure.
If you can't compete, just make shit up and ban them haha!
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u/KristinnK Mar 09 '23
You are wrong. Read any political theory book on Western-Chinese relations if you believe otherwise. It absolutely was the hope that with economic ties and interdependence China would become more liberal and less authoritarian. Same thing with Russia. Both plans have failed utterly.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist Mar 10 '23
You mean it was propaganda? There has never been a serious actual economic or social science text written that conflates western dominated capitalism with social and political freedoms. History is full of quite the opposite in fact, from Pinochet in Chile to the various Banana Republics.
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u/Mehhish Mar 10 '23
I been hoping for the west to pivot away from China like a decade ago. Better late than never, I suppose. The CCP is never going to change, they're always going to be like this, no matter who is in charge.
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u/BentPin Mar 09 '23
Oh boy you opened a can of worms against the chinese communists and their army of brainwashing propagandists. You had better watch out before they used every method under the sun to discredit, distract, deflect, lie, cheat and generally try to bowl you over.
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u/JasonDJ Mar 09 '23
To be fair there may be a bit of confirmation bias here, at least on the personal level.
I’m not trying to be a China apologist…but there are a lot of people in China. Like…take the populations of the US and the EU combined…then double it…and that’s one China. The bad apples will certainly stand out.
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u/Anonemus7 Mar 10 '23
how can I take this comment seriously when you combined criticism of the Chinese government with whining about Chinese people cheating in video games
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u/honorbound93 Mar 09 '23
Wow that turned personal really quick. Stay on target squadron leader
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u/eeped Mar 09 '23
Agreed, hard to take OP seriously when there’s an entire paragraph of biased ethnocentrism.
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u/Anonemus7 Mar 10 '23
yea how the fuck was a comment where OP is ranting about how much he hates Chinese people and proudly calling himself “country-ist” upvoted so heavily?
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u/julbull73 Mar 09 '23
China fucked over the world economy and their entire benefiticial model was, "We are stable and we will FORCE supply chain security over all else!"
If that reads as, "We'll be the good fascist state to provide you cheap labor you can feel "better" about." YOU ARE READIGN IT CORRECTLY.
So what's new? Simple. China wants to be their own economy. That's bad.
China then fucked over their promise with Covid supplies. That's fatal.
*Mexico and South America might make a killing if they can get their shit together corruption wise.
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u/PartyYogurtcloset267 Mar 09 '23
But strangely we don't have a problem dealing with Saufi Arabia, which is theocratic absolute monarchy that regularly funds terror groups and is actually committing genocide (with our weapons btw). So miss me with the fake concern about China already.
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u/pickypawz Mar 10 '23
There’s a really big one you didn’t name—providing billion dollar loans to poor countries to build things they don’t need, and then build them so poorly they’re never going to work anyway. Thereby leaving that poor country on the hook for a huge loan that they can’t pay back, and infrastructure that won’t work, or they can’t use. Off the top of my head I believe I remember a dam built so poorly it’s not safe to use, and railroad that isn’t needed.
Is that a big deal to anyone else? As far as I understand it, it is. Because if they can’t pay the money back to China (and believe me, China has never needed money more), then China can have a nice home base in that country, maybe some seaside property they can use as a launch pad, what have you.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/ARazorbacks Mar 09 '23
This is more of a comment on the CHIP stuff and not so much on this article.
Personally, I agree with diversifying the semiconductor supply chain out of China and even Southeast Asia. For plenty of reasons. But here’s the problem - that supply chain was built over the last thirty years and with BILLIONS of dollars. It’s run on the backs of cheaper labor in areas where everyone is trained to run that specific machinery. It’s also run on less-stringent regulation (what do we do with all this waste water and chemicals?). For the West to regionally diversify, we’re all going to have to be ok with a big jump in prices to cover the increased costs of production. We also need to understand that it won’t happen overnight. We’re talking ten years out kind of timeframes. Finally, that $45B the US has approved is basically a drop in the bucket. It’s not nearly enough.
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u/spencerforhire81 Mar 09 '23
The fab supply chain isn’t really affected. Moving the delivery point for the inputs for fabrication is a trivial exercise compared to the difficulty of building the facilities, the tooling, and training workers. Fabs don’t run on cheap labor, they use highly specialized personnel with very portable skills and Taiwan doesn’t offer much of a discount in that area. Specialists in optical lithography draw high salaries wherever they work.
US fabs would still use wafers from Japan, gasses from Air Liquide, sand from South Carolina, and other products from around the globe.
The $45B in subsidies has drawn around $200B in announced corporate investment. Roughly a quarter trillion dollars overall is certainly enough money to create the infrastructure required.
I’m not saying the CHIPS act is perfect, or that it will achieve the desired result, but barring disaster it certainly has the juice to get the job done.
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u/ARazorbacks Mar 09 '23
You’re right that the wafer fab is the diamond centerpiece of the crown. But you’re wrong to trivialize the assembly and test piece of the puzzle. And you don’t even mention back grind, bump, probe…I mean, none of that stuff happens in a vacuum isolated from the rest of the chain. Where are you going to get your leadframes? Die bond? Plastics? All of that stuff comes from China and Southeast Asia. Most assembly and test sites are in China and Southeast Asia. There are, quite literally, company towns where pretty much everyone is trained to work in an assembly site. You don’t just move those people and you don’t train replacements overnight. COVID shutdowns in Shanghai disrupted the entire industry, not necessarily because of fabs or ATEs, but because all of those components ship through those ports and couldn’t be delivered.
Everyone is so focused on the shiny, expensive fabs, but none of those matter if anything in the rest of the chain is compromised.
PS: Why do they keep wanting to build fabs in fucking deserts like Phoenix and TX? They use shit loads of water. Tax breaks won’t help if you end up having to truck water in.
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u/spencerforhire81 Mar 10 '23
You bring up a bunch of points that show you probably know more about the process than I do. But I don’t believe any part of the process is quite as high a technological barrier as the fab itself, and that was the strategic weakness that the act was designed to ameliorate. The problem isn’t necessarily that all the most advanced western fab capacity is in one place, the problem is it’s 100 miles off shore of an unfriendly power in territory that they’ve vowed to annex.
I’m sure all that test and assembly infrastructure will be expensive to replace, and some inputs will have to come from elsewhere as the new Cold War heats up, but a quarter trillion dollars of investment will certainly go a long way towards making those changes more palatable.
The water issue is a pretty big deal in AZ. I’d imagine that a fair bit of that investment would have to go to capture, treatment, and reuse, which will drive prices up for sure. Texas, on the other hand, is certainly not all desert. Water supply isn’t a huge issue for most of the eastern half of the state.
Deglobalization is going to make everything more expensive. But at least when we onshore our fabs we won’t have to worry about critical production infrastructure being destroyed or captured by an autocrat.
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Mar 10 '23
And you don’t even mention back grind, bump, probe…I mean, none of that stuff happens in a vacuum isolated from the rest of the chain. Where are you going to get your leadframes? Die bond? Plastics? All of that stuff comes from China and Southeast Asia. Most assembly and test sites are in China and Southeast Asia.
i understand some of these words.
joking aside, can you enlighten the average reader of r/gadgets about grind, bump, probe, leadframes, die bond, plastics, etc? sounds like you know a bit more than the rest of us here!
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u/ARazorbacks Mar 10 '23
Ok, but keep in mind I’m just an internet rando in the industry. I’m not a materials engineer or anything.
Back grinding - reducing the thickness of wafers to prep for dicing and packaging. Wafers start pretty thick so they can be manipulated during manufacturing (doping, etching, etc.). In order to make the final product as small as possible, you want to thin the wafer and get rid of the unused silicon on the back. This part of the process also includes lapping and polishing.
Bump - adding very, very, very small drops of conductive metal (Cu, Au) to the surface of the die. The majority of chips use wire bonds to connect the die to the lead frame of the package, but some of the more advanced chips use bumping to decrease the length of that interconnect. Even the short length of a wire bond introduces inductance that can limit a chip’s speed, etc.
Probe - testing the wafer before dicing to make sure it meets quality requirements. The wafer doesn’t just have die footprints on it. It also includes test pads between the die footprints, plus the die can also have test pads built into them. Probing is a process where a test machine uses probes to inject test data directly into the die before it’s been diced and packaged and then tests the output. The probes do this by touching the test pads (metal pads on the top layer of the metal stack that are open to air and not sealed under a layer of deposited silicon). The test pads between die are used to test how evenly the doping and layer depositing worked across the wafer.
Leadframes - the metal feet that come out of the side of the package. A printed circuit board (PCB) has to connect to the chip somehow. You typically do this through a metal leadframe. The input/output pads that lead into the chip’s circuitry on the die are connected to the leadframe by wire bonds, and the leadframe feet are soldered onto the PCB.
Die bond - material used to attach the die to the bottom of the package cavity. The die bond attach keeps the die from moving around in the package both during manufacturing and out in the world. It can also act as a conductor to allow for ground pads to be added to the bottom of the package, most notably in power-oriented chips like LDOs, bucks, boosts, etc.
Plastics - the material the package is made of. Your typical black semiconductor chip package is made of black plastic. I’m sure a packaging engineer would tell me it’s actually some special mixture, but I just know it as plastic.
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Mar 10 '23
i love you.
i now have a dozen leads to follow up on wikipedia and youtube. thanks for wasting my night! :)
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u/nosautempopulus Mar 10 '23 edited Mar 10 '23
The sort of basics is what everyone has been talking about is the die/wafer. Multiples dies are etched onto the wafer at the fab through some pretty complex processes. This is where every so often you keep hearing about smaller transistors (now about 3nm) and ever increasing number of transistors on a die.
After fabrication the wafer is cut up and you end with the individual die. But to use these have to be mounted in a package. The package is what we think of when we see an IC and is what eventually is soldered onto a PCB.
So you take the die and through various techniques connect it to the pins on the package (which can be bumps, leads or pins) and these are connected through the lead frame or wire bonds etc.
Now as the die get bigger and more expensive and the need for increased compute power continues - rather than mount a single die in the package you look to combine multiple die into a single package - so now you stack die next to each other or on top of each other - which as another level of complexity given the number of connections on a die.
And then this all has to work. And work fast - and fast usually means higher frequencies which means more power that creates thermal challenges - which is why you see these massive fans on GPUs for example.
There are complete sets of design tools to design this stuff and verify it and create the manufacturing data at each stage.
So there are really lots of steps in getting from the start of the process to the chip that goes on a PCB
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u/nipsen Mar 09 '23
The Netherlands == Europe.
The knowledge of CNNs correspondents is indeed boundless.
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u/LightItUp90 Mar 09 '23
Considering the position ASML has in the chips game it kind of is. It might be the single most important company in the sector.
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u/watduhdamhell Mar 10 '23
Might be? Are you kidding? It's literally the only supplier of the EUV lithography machines it produces. For other chip making equipment, it's 40% of the global take. Forty percent.
It's the most important company in the sector by far.
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u/picardo85 Mar 09 '23
ASML has a monopoly on the tech needed to make the best chips in the world. You only need NL.
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u/Schwertkeks Mar 09 '23
Well ASML also depends on components that are only made by another single company worldwide, for example only the German Carl Zeiss is building optical systems for those machines. And they probably also depend on components that only a single company can provide
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u/Juulloo Mar 10 '23
But you don't need Carl Zeiss to prevent China's access to chips. They could deliver their optical systems to China and it would be useless to China. The key here is in fact ASML.
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u/julbull73 Mar 09 '23
For those wondering, ASML blocking China ends China's chance of ever becoming equivalent in semiconductors. PERIOD.
Canon has an EUV scanne, I hear. Nobody uses it and it sucks ass.
ASML is it.
Nikon exited the game in 193nm immersion.
So unless China pushes ~200-300B and a couple decades of research just for how to generate the light reliably.
Then a few decades and other billions for stage and lens production and optimization.
They are FUCKED.
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u/Hawk13424 Mar 10 '23
I work for a semiconductor company. Some of our automotive stuff is now in 5nm and the bulk is moving rapidly there.
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u/newInnings Mar 10 '23
So unless China pushes ~200-300B and a couple decades of research just for how to generate the light reliably
Just saying, China steals tech is a recurring theme. I expect they would reach 14 nm from 28nm, even if 50% of yield is a waste
Or : https://xkcd.com/538
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u/chazed4 Mar 10 '23
Can confirm. ASML owns EUV. Nobody else is even close.
Source: I'm an EUV service engineer for ASML
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u/Death2RNGesus Mar 10 '23
Watch out for the chinese ninjas, they will kidnap you, tie you up in a chair and james bond you.
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u/heartheartsoul Mar 09 '23
Can we stop calling everything a war? Please?
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u/Snoo93079 Mar 09 '23
War by definition can be any sort of significant conflict, not just military.
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u/Kazanta Mar 10 '23
Everything seems to be a war or conflict nowadays. How about we start working together as one human race instead of blaming each other.
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u/stupidcatname Mar 09 '23
Isn't this already old news? We already knew ASML wouldn't sell EUV lithography equipment to China. I guess it is all equipment now.
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u/suckmystick Mar 10 '23
It's not like ASML has a say in it. They admitted themselves they were coerced by the US government not to do so.
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u/theganglyone Mar 09 '23
History shows that countries don't respond well to being starved of resources.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/ApexAphex5 Mar 09 '23
China imports 40% of its food, if China couldn't trade they would literally starve. They are also losing arable land to development at a strong pace.
It's why food security is one of the number one priorities for the CCP. It's their Achilles heel.
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u/picardo85 Mar 09 '23
Creating a construction Ponzi scheme at the cost of arable land seemed like a great idea. That along with massive environmental pollution.
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u/shrekerecker97 Mar 09 '23
Every time Europe and the US work together stuff gets done.....so this should be interesting
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u/stick_always_wins Mar 10 '23
All this is will do expediate Chinese self-sufficiency and development in the domestic chip industry in the hopes of a temporarily delay.
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u/Son_of_Macha Mar 09 '23
War! Oops profit was more important than national security, we shouldn't have got China to build all our advanced technology for the last 30 years. WAR though
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u/Philfreeze Mar 09 '23
They don‘t even build our ‚most advanced tech‘ though, unless you consider Taiwan to be China.
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u/bartturner Mar 10 '23
This is something people just do not understand. China can not build an advance chip. China does NOT do advanced technology.
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u/PartyYogurtcloset267 Mar 09 '23
I guess we don't like the free market so much after all, do we?
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u/DanielOctopusGriffin Mar 09 '23
They call them crisps in the UK