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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

The most strategic move ASML can make is change its licensing structure such that Apple will have to pay 30% of their revenue for using their Fab platform.

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Probably a bad advise. ASML can’t make or export products without American licenses:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/new-us-rule-foreign-chip-...

This.

Absolutely majority of IP in this field belongs to intel, IBM, KLA and Lam research. Everyone else is a licensee. This is one of the reasons us and allies are desperate to keep bailing out intel, or get it acquired by another american company.

The linked article clearly states the export ban is the result of the US convincing other countries, such as ASML's host country the Netherlands, to join their export controls.

I'm not sure why European countries signed this deal, given that the US still started trade wars a few months later. Maybe they had more faith in the American electorate than they should've had.

There is no need to convince. It's probably diplomatic language/misunderstanding by the journalist.

U.S export controls have a foreign direct product rule. If your product directly depends on US IP/tech then US export controls apply to you too. ASML's EUV machines depend on a lot of U.S ip and tech. These range from patents from the EUV consortium days, all the way to today where a lot of the components are designed or patented by the US (intel, ibm, applied materials, lam, KLA, [1]). Thus, export controls apply whether netherlands likes it or not.

In EUV litho, the strategic I.P - and what IP is a strategic chokepoint is subjective, so IMHO - is 50% EU, 40% U.S and 10% Japan. More than enough for FDPR.

See ECCN 3B090 (2022) for lots of extra restrictions placed beyond this, specifically targeting semicon manufacturing exports to PRC, such as the presumption of denial clause.

[1] and cymer. Altho they were acquired by asml their IP remains san diego based aiui.

Do Intel, IBM etc. and their shareholders not want to extract more money from Apple (through ASML)?

I wonder what it would cost Apple to recreate ASML.

Ask China, they've been trying for a decade.

Give them enough time and they will. EUV will hit limits anyway in a decade.

For china it's DUV+packaging for now, NIL/DSA mid-term, and MoS₂/2D chips long term. But wafer scale, defect free 2D logic is 20–30 yrs out, so no EUV shortcut anytime soon

Thanks to a combination of espionage and homegrown Chinese technology advancements, they went from "decades behind" to "years behind" quite rapidly on several critical parts of the chip manufacturing process.

China isn't quite there yet, but they will catch up. The question then becomes whether China can surpass the west or if they're stuck in lock-step behind us.

Yeah but China wasn't (and won't be) given the tech. The fastest path for Apple would be to get POTUS a gold iPad in exchange for the US removing exclusivity terms for the EUV tech they gave ASML.

And SMIC is a decade or less behind without any of that.

It's very difficult. It took ASML 20 years, and Apple has none of the core competences to make this happen, like optical lithography, EUV optics, plasma physics, vacuum, laser, sources...and then they would have to catch-up to the other tech. For example, today's top end ASML stages accelerate with >10g while still having nm position accuracy.

I can't find the article, but there was an estimate to catch up to ASML would cost between $100 - $200 Billion. You'd also be competing with ASML for a very small talent pool the whole time. See the $100 million payouts for AI researchers, for instance.

This is something the Chinese government is actively trying to do, it's not theory. I'm interested to see what the results are, because they are absolutely not competing for the same talent pool as ASML, they're attempting to create an entirely Chinese supply chain and talent pool.

I don't know enough about chips to say whether any of these numbers make sense.

China is decades behind the West in EUV technology. The attempt to create an independent supply chain is also a forced choice since all the EUV supply chain and knowledge pool are heavily protected by the West and are so complex and big that China cannot sidestep it even with a lot of resources.

Those numbers are realistic. EUV is the most complex machine ever built by humans

There's no way to catch up really - if they keep innovating like they are it's not possible to bridge that gap.

Also, it's probably a patent minefield.

Having directly worked on fab process engineering typically if its patented it’s going to get copied.

I think even then patents can be prohibitive or else https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45181828 does not mean anything.

Years of time and an organizational distraction more importantly than money IMO. Then the same for TSMC if the goal was autonomy.

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