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Comment by rurban | Hacker News Reader

Untrue. TSMC is just building a state of the art chip factory in Dresden, and they are certainly using ASML.

That fab unfortunately seems to be quite far from state of the art at 12 nm feature size. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Semiconductor_Manufac...

Uh, so they are lying to us constantly. First the said the new BOSCH fab in Dresden is for AI, with 28nm - ha!

Bosch never said that though, the "AI" stuff was about the production methods used in the fab (along with a couple other buzzwords), it was never claimed that the fab produces chips "for AI". Instead these are fairly simple controllers for the automotive industry.

Can you share any official communication where somebody claimed this fab was for AI?

It was pretty clear that this fab - much like the other Bosch facilities - is going to be for automotive and industry ICs, not for high end node sizes in CPUs or GPUs.

I think I've read "power management chips for AI" somewhere. Probably technically correct, but also a somewhat gratuitous reference to the current thing for silly PR reasons.

Not gratuitous, Infineon's stock price rose because of the AI datacenter demand.

I don't think this is merely a gratuitous reference given the fact that AI demand is probably - among EVs - a key driver for the sales of power related ICs.

Every local Dresden newspaper article and Bosch press release said so.

You probably mixed it up with the Infineon Smart Power Fab.

The Infineon Smart Power Fab was opened some months ago and builds power ICs for the energy market. Probably something like ACDC and DCAC converter ICs. This is also needed in AI data centers. https://www.infineon.com/de/regional/dresden/smart-power-fab

European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC), the TSMC fab in Dresden is still under construction and will produce logic chips in 28nm or 16nm. Bosch, Infineon, and NXP each have 10% share in this fab. I assume that it will mostly produce products which will be sold by these 3 companies, probably just the next generations from what they already sell. This fab was 50% subsidized by the German government.

GlobalFoundries also has a big 20nm Fab in Dresden.

The most advanced logic fab in the EU is the Intel fab in Ireland.

It is somewhat disappointing that Global Foundries basically stopped participating in the leading edge process node race around the time of the split with AMD. The world is in a rather precarious place with virtually all eggs in the TSMC basket.

[ Intel has yet to prove that it can sustain itself as a foundry for third parties, and until they do, I have a hard time believing the massive culture shift required across the whole company can be achieved without splitting the company up into separate parts. Samsung has fallen behind, but at least they have diversity across a variety of markets including HBM. Neither have leading edge fabs in Europe, so everything continues falls back on TSMC. ]

The fab itself can still be "state of the art" even when the product isn't (Germany needs chips for its industry, not for gaming PCs or AI data centers).

We actually need both. Part of the industry certainly needs “PC chips”

There will be 2nm in Ireland

Are you talking about Intel? That's the 7nm class and I've never seen anything about plans for the 20A/2nm generation at that fab.

Intel has committed to bringing "Intel 3" to Leixlip https://www.idaireland.com/latest-news/press-release/intel-a... , so below 12nm or 7nm but still above 20A/2nm IIUC. It does also seem that Intel has already ordered ASML EUV machines for Leixlip, which arrived by 2023 https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate/eu-chipmak... .

Current state of the art in feature sizes is 20 nm metal pitch / 45 nm gate pitch.

We both know that feature sizes became marketing names over a decade ago. The "12 nm" for that fab are of course the marketing name. In any case, it's a seriously old process at this point.

Directionally correct, but rather: the process moniker became disconnected from the feature size.

I think it's still /somewhat/ close to feature size - I think the fin pitch of the "N3" tsmc process was about 5nm, which gives a "minimum feature size" of ~2.5nm to ensure the "gap" between them.

I think one of the big differences is that the "Gate Contact Area" simply isn't the smallest "feature" anymore - but the ITRS that defined those names called it "feature size", not "gate size" from the beginning intentionally.

You probably could make a transitor with a gate size of a similar order to the "feature size", it'll just perform awfully to be completely useless.

> Untrue

So you seem to know more about ASML's business than the ASML executive quoted in this article.

To be fair:

1. They provided evidence (construction of a fab in Dresden).

2. Executives lie all of the time.

Aside: after all of the denunciations of AI companies claims of danger, I expected comments here to be denouncing this as a “ASML shill article trying to get the government to buy more of their product”. Not that I believe, but the contrast is striking.

since when are executives statements meant to produce more investment into them trustable?

even more so it is reasonable to assume their (executive) statement was a simplification ignoring small for the overall statement irrelevant exceptions

like ignoring there being a factory build which is small and only meant for older nodes producing embedded chips and is for the car industry only

because honestly while the factory does matter for Bosh, it doesn't really make much difference for the larger picture of chip production in the EU

> lithography giant calls on EU to help create demand

Will lie for billions of taxpayers money.

I think there's potentially confusion around timing; the order for this facility would probably have been a year or so ago, so fits with not selling anything in 2026.

Yes, so TSMC is buying the machines, and they are based in Taiwan. This is not about the physical location of the machines.

Most of their fabs are also in Taiwan.

The claim in OP is that "ASML currently sells no chipmaking machines in Europe". A single chipmaking machine purchase into a fab in Europe would be enough to prove that claim wrong. The number of fabs in Taiwan is irrelevant to this claim.

Since you know the truth, and on what date was that order put in? Why did it have to be in 2026 and not during the planning process in previous years?

No, ASML is not lying about ASML's business developments.

That would make it the only company in the world not doing that

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