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> The chip machines Taiwan uses come from Europe, for example

The US, not Europe.

ASML's EUV and High NA EUV production is all done in California via US DoE joint ventures (specifically Cymer LLC [0]). Additionally, their metrology IP is Taiwanese [1] as part of ASML's acquisition of HMI back in 2016 with Taiwanese approval [2].

ASML is the capital partner because in the early 2000s, the US government wanted to prevent a duopoly forming between Nikon and Canon for photolithography as part of an antitrust battle.

And the next generation of lithography tooling coming into Taiwan is being funded and developed by Japan [3] due to MUFG, Mitsui, Mizuho, and SoftBank becoming the primary capital partners for Taiwan's electronics industry [4]. This is also why TSMC is expanding in Japan and Taiwanese players are transferring IP to Rapidus.

Additonally, all the packaging, testing, and design work - especially leading edge nodes - is done in Asia, the US, and even Israel but not Europe.

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Personally, I think Europe is too far behind at this point for the EUV and High NA EUV boom - Taiwan, the US, Japan, South Korea, China, and others deployed significant amounts of capital and subsidizes in the late 2010s and early 2020s and worked to build IP partnerships for front-end work with players like TSMC (US, Japan), UMC (China until 2019), PSMC (Japan, India), and Samsung (US).

The EU had a shot but Intel rolled back their Germany expansion plan in order to double down on 18A in Arizona, and TSMC decided to double down on Japan. Additonally, all the backend work is done in Taiwan, South Korea, China, ASEAN (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam), Japan, the US, and even India now because Micron, Samsung, Amkor, and others transferred their IP there, and design is primarily concentrated in Taiwan, the US, China, Israel, and India and with Malaysia and Vietnam likely to become much more prominent in the next few years due to Arm and Marvell respectively.

What the EU can instead do is concentrate on power electronics (already a strong suite) and compound semiconductors (already a strong suite) and target a leapfrog technology like 2D semiconductor design and fabrication which is still in it's infancy and also has applications for quantum computing. The EU already has the capacity for "legacy" (but still critical) semiconductors but is too late to the game for sub-14nm fabrication.

And based on the kind of fundamental research and funding I've been seeing in the EU, this is the strategy that appears to be increasingly adopted within the EU - but this is something the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, the UK, Singapore, Canada, and even Vietnam and India are doing as well, and both French and German initiatives risk being misaligned due to mutual industrial competition. The fact that French players in the space would rather collaborate with Singaporean [5], Korean [6], American [7], Israeli [8], and Canadian [9] partners to develop IP instead of with other partners within Europe, it shows issues around misalignment.

On a separate note, as I mentioned before on HN, the French seem to be on the right track - other European states other than the UK less so. French players are much more ruthless and "American" in attitude.

[0] - https://www.cymer.com/

[1] - https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/hmi

[2] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/asml-obtain...

[3] - https://www.nikkei.com/nkd/company/us/SNPS/news/?DisplayType...

[4] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/japan-l...

[5] - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/three-new-partnerships-signe...

[6] - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/pasqal-expands-into-korea/

[7] - https://gov-pritzker-newsroom.prezly.com/governor-pritzker-a...

[8] - https://www.quantum-machines.co/blog/pushing-the-boundaries-...

[9] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/25/quebec-...

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Where can I see the DOE having a stake in Cymer?
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Department of ENERGY not the DoD.

The EUV IP which Cymer owns was originally part of EUV LLC, which was an LLNL [0], Sandia [1], and Intel [2] initiative as part of a CRADA. Cymer eventually began working on EUV as well building on EUV LLC and SEMATECH's work, and was eventually purchased by ASML after the Dept of Commerce and DoE backed their acquisition in 2013 [4], but included Cymer in additional CRADAs [3], ongoing projects [5], and maintain Cymer as a separate operating unit [6] within ASML.

It is these CRADAs that allow the DoE to exert its muscle on IP ownership and knowhow, as they are essentially a license of IP and personnel on US DoE terms [7] while also allowing for private partners to commercialize.

[0] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-it...

[1] - https://newsreleases.sandia.gov/partners-unveil-first-extrem...

[2] - https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/speeches/EUV91197.HT...

[3] - https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1413999

[4] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2013/asml-comple...

[5] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/52226/llnl-selected-lead-next-g...

[6] - https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021...

[7] - https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-documents/400-seri...

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I don't see a stake by the DOE?
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The laser source, not the rest of the machine.
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The US used this agreement to bar ASML from selling the machines to China in 2018.

The machine is a clump of metal without the light source.

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The metrology is coming from Taiwan and California (HMI) as well. The Veldhoven campus "only" does final assembly (which should not be underestimated either - it's complex and high precision work).

But it's the light source and the metrology that is the blocker.

Edit: can't reply

> And mirrors from Carl Zeiss

Absolutely! But note how Zeiss/Trumpf is not ASML. If the US DoE changes the terms of the Cymer partnership and pressures Taiwan (who have just purchased $8B in US military equipment and whom the EU logistically speaking cannot protect) to revert the HMI acquisition, ASML is over.

Additonally, a lot of the muscle around Zeiss/Trumpf's mirrors is also at the Zeiss office in the Tri-Valley because of their partnership with LLNL.

And both China [0] and Japan [1] are in the process of building an Ex-ASML supply chain for EUV, NA EUV, and DUV, and will likely reach that point by the late 2020s to early 2030s.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...

[1] - https://www.nikkei.com/nkd/company/us/SNPS/news/?DisplayType...

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And mirrors from Carl Zeiss. Heavy lifting on "only".
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> The chip machines Taiwan uses come from Europe, for example.

Yeah, the EUV photolithography machine, but not much else. American companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials are the leaders in thin film deposition and etch, KLA Tencor is the leader in metrology, and Synopsys and Cadance are the leaders in EDA (though there's also Germany's Mentor Graphics).

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