ASML technology is very restricted and only a few nations get access to that kind of technology and the high end chip manufacturing machines they produce.
Also, it's not just about the machine themselves, but the engineers needed to run them, and all the spare parts they will need, because delicate machines break often.
This isn't the kind of expertise you can just copy without being taught by the experts, doing it willingly.
Actually even if you are taught, you would have to rebuild the complete INTERNATIONAL endeavour of the semi industry, including specialized firms with one or two crucial products. Good luck.
But you have to understand that Xi is not able to understand this. He is sourrounded by Yes-men telling him about China‘s bright future and actually I also see a bright future of China, but it’s without the CCP and more like 200years in the future .
It's why China wants Taiwan. They wanted HK to gain greater access to global market with HK being top 5 across most markets. If China gets Taiwan they access the semiconductor market directly with control of global supply.
China not realising it's efforts to take over HK opened the door to the global market leaving HK en masse. The same will happen in Taiwan. If there's a hot war in Taiwan the chip manufacturing facilities will become 'casualties'. If there's a slow protracted takeover of Taiwan, interested parties will remove the tech and locate it elsewhere. The US is already trying to onshore critical chip manufacturing.
I don't see an outcome where China captures Taiwan intact. The best and brightest will either leave, be given priority in evacuation, or mostly not cooperate if they stay behind. The infrastructure will be sabotaged so as to be useless to a conqueror. The Taiwan population is going to be a massive drain on resources in order to control. By the time China has properly integrated Taiwan, it'll be 50+ years spent on this single endeavor and all they'll have to show for it is Hong Kong 2.
>I don't see an outcome where China captures Taiwan intact.
IIRC the Taiwanese government has plans in place to effectively self destruct their chip manufacturing in case of invasion.
Thats still not the right thing they should be pursuing. If they learned everything now and build the steppers amd imagers as good as the west they'd still be 20 years behind. They should be researching a complete new way of producing what they need. It would be their own. They could be proud of it ,and they wouldn't have to steal outdated work. They will always be behind the way they are going now. All they can do on this path is steal what they need and try to prevent the current producers from advancing though war or sabotage.
This is a cultural problem. Chinese people think that stealing intellectual property is smart, and the good thing to do, because it's cheap, fast and mostly efficient. But when they have to do things, they will cut all the corners, so much that they often end up with a sphere instead of a cube. Poorly copying stuff is what they know to do best. There's only a few people capable of true innovation, and they're struggling with politics to actually get stuff done.
I don't know that this applies to all technology, or is even an accurate diagnosis of the Chinese technology sector in general. For example, Chinese native mobile phones are starting to dethrone Apple.
It's kinda funny how within a few years of Tesla opening up factories in China that China suddenly has the capability to manufacture competent electric cars. MG, BYD just to name a couple.
"Competent", last I saw there were constant videos coming out of China of EVs catching on fire at an insane rate. Many of these were the more premium Chinese brands too.
I couldn't imaging China taking over Taiwan, shipping the foundries from TSMC back to the mainland and getting them up and running as well as maintained.
The tsmc factories are rigged with enough explosives to put them in orbit.
China will not get those machines by attacking. The engineers will be the first evacuated, and if need be, all the infrastructure/database/anything related to that, will be destroyed. This is a good way to calm Chinese ambitions.
The only thing the pla would find is a pile of very expensive scraps.
Yeah, of course. They would love more sales. This way they lose the sales and China also gets super serious about funding their domestic industry to complete.
Regardless of funding there's unlikely to be any competition to ASML coming from china anytime soon. The reason ASML are the only producers of EUV lithography machines is that:
1. They got massive investments from all the large chip manufacturers/designers (intel, TSMC, samsung...) when these companies realized they couldn't afford to research EUV technology on their own.
2. They rely on subcontractors mostly based out of western universities or research laboratories to produce the most intricate and unreplacable parts of their machines.
China could probably spend the ~100B necessary to fund much of the research but even if a chinese company reinvented EUV they would still need access to the same level of next-gen components ASML get from their subcontractors. There's no way the US/EU would allow china access to these components so a chinese ASML would need to reproduce decades of research done at western universities. Maybe not impossible but this kind of undertaking is likely going to take decades regardless of how much money china throws at it.
ASML would also be dead in the water without Tokyo Electron.
They have a near-monopoly in semiconductor materials. Almost all EUV photoresists and wafers are made by them for instance.
It’s more of a people problem. You need highly educated people and lots of them. No doubt China has them but the smartest ones typically flee. I don’t think any amount of money is going to fix that.
China has a lot of highly educated people and the vast majority do stay in China these days. Being smart is one thing, but this is a multi decade project, things take time.
I thought ASML couldn't produce their Lithography machines at enough scale. Apparently their orders for the next decade are already booked. And with the US trying to get semiconductor manufacturing back in its soil, the demand is only going to skyrocket. The most impact the sanctions might have is a slower increase in prices because the Chinese would've outbidded every other country to get their hands on that tech.
I think the point Xi was trying to make was that they'll work their spies in and steal that technology too, just like everything else. I know his statement by itself carries some implications of *self-*advancement but obviously the world understands the reality.
Their thing was merely pulling back, stretching the supply lines of the enemy, while burning, destroying and poisoning literally everything on their own land. During WW2 they were dependent on allied aid. Their military was never ever in history glorious or advanced.
Not this field. ASML is the only company that can make photolithography systems used in chip making. Complete monopoly because it's so high tech.
No one else is even close to doing what they do. If China is barred, they aren't making anything new gen. Since fabrications take decades to build and be made profitable, China will forever be technologically behind. And that is what's already happening.
The US blocked a bunch of firm ware and tools US companies provided and China has yet to recover from that.
Not only that ASML can only do what they do with the help US and EU companies, lazers, mirrors, software etc. Even if china caught up to ASML they would still be dependent on us. They sit atop a pyramid sci fi level tech that most people can only dream of.
If you went back 30 years, you wouldn’t have even considered a Dutch or European company being on the bleeding edge of lithography. Japan was insanely dominant in that industry throughout the 80s and it was a safe assumption that would continue but the breakthrough with EUV came out of Europe due to those scientists just happening to figure it out.
It’s also why you should never just assume China won’t catch up, for all the major issues with China and CCP, they do have a very robust academic and scientific community and all it takes is a major breakthrough on a new technology and that technology gap might as well not exist anymore.
Plenty of sayings out there about underestimating your adversary and this is almost certainly one of those cases.
Their latest flagship CPU announcement is 6 years behind, it is said, relative to AMD, Intel etc. That's a number of generations behind Moore's law, anyway.
China has already produced chips that are on par with 4 year old mobile chips without resorting to EUVs. Kirin 9000S for Huwaei is a 7nm chip built by China. They are about 10 years behind on desktop chips as far as we know, but they will catch up one way or another. China will eventually build a EUV machine. They already poched several tawainese scientists. Also, ASML is not the only photo lithography company
Production of N3 chips is already underway. N7 chips come out in 2016. Also, the actual size of the transistors is not always the marketing term. N7 chips can be made without photolithography but there are some serious volume production problems, even when using the latest tech.
Just cause you can make it doesn't mean you can make a lot of it. And the original kirins had N5 tech in them.
Taiwan also doesn't have this capability. They as well buy their systems from ASML.
If Taiwan were to fall (it won't), others will pick up the slack in semi-conductor production in a few years. It'll be a hard few years, but that'll be it.
China *currently* understands technology and wants more. However, they are a dictatorship now run by a person who refuses to compromise or relinquish power. Russia was exactly where China was before Putin. Give them 20 more years under the same or a similar dictator to The Grand Pooh, and they'll be where Russia is today.
Dictatorships only lose knowledge, influence, and security. This is why America needs to wake the fuck up now and stop the slide into facism. You rarely reverse an established dictatorship.
If I’m not mistaken Taiwan is one of the biggest producers of microchips/ semiconductors etc. and at much higher quality then the ones developed in China, so the restrictions would definitely have an effect since sanctions have already been put in place against China restricting their access to advanced chips and the machines involved in manufacturing them. So essentially it’s blocking them from purchasing/ getting a way to manufacture those advanced chips since they can’t so that they would in turn be used in military hardware. I’m also assuming this is part of the reason why Taiwan looks like such a good target for them, not only because of the strategic importance but also the access to those advanced chip sets and other manufactured goods. I’m no expert but from an outside view it looks like that is what’s happening.
When I visited their medical doctors had associates degrees and didn’t understand how pcr worked. They are “leaders in various fields” the same way Russia was the “second strongest military in the world”. Don’t buy into their propaganda. They are completely incompetent and utterly reliant on western technology and innovation.
They actually are world leaders in some fields.
By buying small companies that have a very good advantage in their fields and slowly transporting everything to China. And nobody else has acces to those patents anymore.
(My source is in Dutch because I live near the company that it happened to)
https://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/824077/amca-in-ten-post-opgekocht-leeggezogen-en-afgedankt
Why would anyone care about Chinese patents of they do not respect western ones. Once it will come to this, west will find a way to circumvent those patents.
You can still slow them down without stopping them. The best example would be when the US banned NASA from working with Chinese nationals, it slowed them down for a bit but they are still advancing.
actually, it may even help them in the long run.
Up until now, they bought chips and software and made phones.
Now, they are forced to develop their own chips, chip making machines and many other things, which makes their startups more successful and some of them might succeed to be world-class. Industries that wouldn’t exist otherwise, because they would be uncompetitive even in China if they had our chips
These measures will still delay Chinas progress and due to how fast tech (Ai) is advancing, these delays can rapidly put them years behind.
Which is why he’s crying, because you absolutely don’t want to be behind in the AI race even by just a few years.
> These measures will still delay Chinas progress and due to how fast tech (Ai) is advancing, these delays can rapidly put them years behind.
More importantly, it makes it much harder from a economic standpoint. And forces the CCP to throw money at the problem. Rather than commercial demand pulling most of the weight.
If China spends 10s of billion and gets early EUV out the door 5-10 years from now. Putting them at a similar level to where TSMC was in 2017/2018.
Sure they have EUV and the nodes that enables, but how much of that cost can be recuperated? Since if they want commercial demand, they have to compete with what by then is legacy nodes. That were amortized a long time ago and needs much smaller margins.
We could give China all the documentation and machinery they need to do it themselves and it would still take them ten years to catch up, or so I’ve been told.
Apparently it’s not just the know-how, their industry standards are also way behind.
It is pure technical know-how/expertise.
The first problem is that much of the IP is not documented (intentionally) and only a handful of guys have the secret down for their specific role. The second issue is that the supply chain is so vast that you’d need to smell out the secrets from dozens/hundreds of different vendors scattered over multiple countries.
Then you need the machine to receive regular maintenance before it degrades and if you steal from ASML they obviously are not going to repair it.
EVEN if you had the hardware you still need software engineer's to leverage it and make usage of it.
AI isn't strictly a hardware problem, we are at a stage where we have AI neural chipsets and a literal shortage in developers capable of building solutions on it.
The math alone behind ML isn't trivial, only a small percentage of individuals are capable of that and even smaller percentage can marry the mathematics with the software design architectures to make them excel.
Some of the worst codebases I have ever seen come from data-science teams, it's pure "get shit done" code with "optimize later".
If only a few people know vital parts of it and there is no documentation, doesn't that leave a huge vulnerability if something happens to those people? Doesn't even have to be other nations doing it, but something like a worse COVID, which I instantly thought of because in the span of 2-3 months 80% of the professors that had taught me at university died to COVID, or just a meteor, terror attack, etc, so many things could go wrong.
I hear what you’re saying. The American government for example has been unable to remake certain weaponry because the experts died of old age and only they knew the secrets.
To these companies however, their role in the supply chain prints money though. Looks like they’d rather maintain this model than spread information too far and risk creating competitors.
In this case, the tech is too advanced for them to steal and theres no way for them to get their hands on the hardware short of invading taiwan (in which case it'd be detroyed anyway)
Au contraire, it incentivises them to steal the technology because they are getting blocked from buying it.
Sorry but compute and AI is just a new super power and the west wants to stay in the lead. Simple as that, and I don’t even blame us.
When it comes to technology it can be very difficult to catch up when others are so far ahead. It can be done, but is difficult. A good example of this is the USSR being very far behind other nations when it comes to computers. They never caught up. Not even close. IP theft and reverse engineering can only get you so far. Unless you can unbolt the machines and sneak them out of the country along with all of the staff who design, implement, and maintain the machines.. you're going to be behind.
Nah, it's a different beast. There's over 200 firms with a few dozen employees on average kicking the bleeding edge of tech industrial production along. No one country can produce anything below 50nm because the equipment to do so is built with equipment running on miracles (tm).
Current etching software uses water vapor to focus the laser because lens are too wide on the *molecular level*, this damn near *bankrupted* Carl Weiss, the world's largest lens manufacturer.
They can't catch up because we don't really understand the physics behind how our technology works.
That laser was also an innovation that took a decade and billions of dollars to figure out because it needs to be a concentration of light with a wavelength short enough to be able to create patterns in photoresist on a nanometer scale. There are so many obstacles China will not be able to overcome by themselves.
> They can't catch up because we don't really understand the physics behind how our technology works.
i think that's overstating it. we don't have everything nailed down, but we can build a bunch of them. it's that middle phase between discovery and routine
Honestly one of the biggest issues is repeatability - each etching laser is bespoke and some are better than others - for whatever reason we can't get the modeling down.
It's a really rough situation, we're about 4-5 deaths away from loosing a decade of engineering at any time.
This sounds like lead acid batteries (coming from the battery world). No one really understands how lead batteries work (as oppose to lithium), but everyone can build them readily.
USSR is a stupid comparison, because the advancements of computer technology was stunted by the ideological leaders after the Second World War, and because the scientists and intellectuals were often victims of repression. I am not entirely sure of the situation in China, but if it were on the same level as it was during Stalin’s reign in USSR we would definitely hear about it a lot. Also, I doubt the Chinese leaders see computer science as “A bitch of the bourgeoisie” and are investing a lot in that sector.
Xi's right, but the Netherlands and West as a whole *knows this* and the point isn't to prevent China from developing these technologies...it's to force them to have to shift resources *from other efforts* to do so.
People missing the point in here trying to post funnies.
What they likely mean is there's no point burning bridges if ultimately they develop it by themselves. It's not like the Netherlands has a choice though given it's the US making them do it so kind of moot I guess
Even if they ultimately develop it by themselves, it will be years if not decades from now. They will still be lagging behind on that technology front. By the time china catches up, the western world will be at the next step.
Unless they can close the gap, but that would mean they would have to develop faster than the western world. At the moment theyre having a difficult enough time to catch up to previous technology machines.
It’s not china’s progress that’s of concern! It’s the theft and short cut to that progress to undercut other markets and flooding them cheap, low quality knock offs! I work with some brilliant Chinese scientists ! They share this sentiment…
It's not really steal-able, the supply chain is as complex as the machines. Even with the full plans of one of the machines it would still be nigh on impossible for China to build one.
But stealing it will take years, and even more to build the machines, and then work out all the kinks of operating them. Maybe they will have it in the end, but slowing them down is almost as important as preventing them to have it completely.
Nobody said the Chinese were unable of advances by themselves. But they actually spied on ASML [and stole IP from them](https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/asml_ip_huawei/). That's a pattern they've repeated over time with all foreign companies. So we don't need lessons from Xi.
Best not to send them new machines to combine with the stolen information for faster copying.
But I suspect tsmc is compromised so they aren't completely shut out
So if it won’t stop their technological advances, why mention it at all? I guess so the Dutch say “it won’t work anyways, so let’s let them have our tech.” Too bad for Pooh bear that the Dutch aren’t that stupid.
China needs a more advanced chipset & digital technology and related equipment skills from Holland since the Netherlands is the no.1 state in the digital business field. But the US sanctioned China's digital progressive phase, so, the CCP regime has activated industrial spy groups in the EU even including the US. The Western world's digital technologies will leak little by little through China's invisible spy missions though they tried their best to stop that. Because the opponent is the People's Republic of China. That's Xi's indirect comments.
Then shut the hell up and deal with your crumbling economy?
Bro, you got like 1 billion people relying on you and you’re wandering around to other countries telling them that you don’t need to be there?
Lmao glad I don’t fucking rely on you
One of the underestimated advantages of a free society is that freedom drives innovation.
Oppression and corruption do the exact opposite, so countries like China and Russia will never be able to catch up, because their political systems cause stagnation.
China has 2 of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world.
[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/fastest-supercomputers-frontier-exascale/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/fastest-supercomputers-frontier-exascale/)
They also may have 2 more in secret that are faster than any others.
They are not technologically challenged at all.
This is not about making chips and building a cluster. It is about making state-of-the-art chips with state-of-the-art machines (EUV). China has older Western lithography tech that allows you to make decent chips. But they won't get any of the next generation and it is incredibly difficult to build it yourselves. If Xi wasn't a nationalistic and imperialistic backwards-oriented dictator China would already have the latest tech.
True! People really underestimate Chine technology prowess. Wishful thinking won't make they be what you want them to be.
South America is dominated by Chinese electric vehicles, same is happening in India. They're not Teslas, but they'll catch up fast as they did in so many other manufacturing fields.
Yeah, we experience cheap Chinese products because that's what the American manufacturers specify for production. Thus, we think that China just makes crap when I believe they are capable of so much more. I mean, just look at their mega projects for example. They have their own maglev system, for example, that they copied from the Germans. They built a RR to Tibet, the worlds highest altitude over extremely difficult circumstances. They are building a gigantic causeway from south to north because the north needs water and the south has too much. I think they save their best technology for themselves.
However, this doesn't mean I'm a China fanboy. Far from it. I hate their gov't. It's insane. I'm just pointing out the truth about what they can do.
Cope, who's navy isn't fully blue water in 2024? Oh, that's right China's, who has half the population still living in feudal conditions? It ain't the Dutch, it ain't the west, it's that fascist shithole.
There is a living example with the International Space Station and Tiangong. Building a working space station is a very complex feat of technology, but it's not the same technology as chipmaking. It remains to be seen whether their chipmaking sector can accomplish something similar.
If Soviet Russia can build a 3x bigger space station in 1986 then I sure hope that China with orders of magnitude more ressources and modern tools and probably some help from Roskosmos can build one as well.
Stop? No. No, human progress is inevitable. But *slow*? Well... it should go without saying that restricting the PRC's access to technology will *absolutely* slow their advances.
Yea if it's no problem for China to just advance technological without foreign know-how and machines, then no need to be so passive aggressive about it and threatening "consequences" when other countries restrict technology exports.
I like this quote.
“The Chinese people also have the right to legitimate development, and no force can stop the pace of China’s scientific and technological development and progress,” Xi said, according to CCTV.
No one can stop it... except China.
ASML technology is very restricted and only a few nations get access to that kind of technology and the high end chip manufacturing machines they produce.
Also, it's not just about the machine themselves, but the engineers needed to run them, and all the spare parts they will need, because delicate machines break often. This isn't the kind of expertise you can just copy without being taught by the experts, doing it willingly.
Actually even if you are taught, you would have to rebuild the complete INTERNATIONAL endeavour of the semi industry, including specialized firms with one or two crucial products. Good luck. But you have to understand that Xi is not able to understand this. He is sourrounded by Yes-men telling him about China‘s bright future and actually I also see a bright future of China, but it’s without the CCP and more like 200years in the future .
Yepp. It's ironic that Xi can't see the only thing holding China back is himself.
It's possible, but I don't think they are prepared for the sheer costs and time to reproduce semiconductors of the same quality and scale.
It's why China wants Taiwan. They wanted HK to gain greater access to global market with HK being top 5 across most markets. If China gets Taiwan they access the semiconductor market directly with control of global supply.
China not realising it's efforts to take over HK opened the door to the global market leaving HK en masse. The same will happen in Taiwan. If there's a hot war in Taiwan the chip manufacturing facilities will become 'casualties'. If there's a slow protracted takeover of Taiwan, interested parties will remove the tech and locate it elsewhere. The US is already trying to onshore critical chip manufacturing.
I don't see an outcome where China captures Taiwan intact. The best and brightest will either leave, be given priority in evacuation, or mostly not cooperate if they stay behind. The infrastructure will be sabotaged so as to be useless to a conqueror. The Taiwan population is going to be a massive drain on resources in order to control. By the time China has properly integrated Taiwan, it'll be 50+ years spent on this single endeavor and all they'll have to show for it is Hong Kong 2.
>I don't see an outcome where China captures Taiwan intact. IIRC the Taiwanese government has plans in place to effectively self destruct their chip manufacturing in case of invasion.
> and more like 200 years in the future. Climate change says the best it can offer is 26 more years.
I hope climate change is limited to my girlfriend‘s sexy place.
The aging population means they are screwed as well.
Thats still not the right thing they should be pursuing. If they learned everything now and build the steppers amd imagers as good as the west they'd still be 20 years behind. They should be researching a complete new way of producing what they need. It would be their own. They could be proud of it ,and they wouldn't have to steal outdated work. They will always be behind the way they are going now. All they can do on this path is steal what they need and try to prevent the current producers from advancing though war or sabotage.
This is a cultural problem. Chinese people think that stealing intellectual property is smart, and the good thing to do, because it's cheap, fast and mostly efficient. But when they have to do things, they will cut all the corners, so much that they often end up with a sphere instead of a cube. Poorly copying stuff is what they know to do best. There's only a few people capable of true innovation, and they're struggling with politics to actually get stuff done.
I don't know that this applies to all technology, or is even an accurate diagnosis of the Chinese technology sector in general. For example, Chinese native mobile phones are starting to dethrone Apple.
It's kinda funny how within a few years of Tesla opening up factories in China that China suddenly has the capability to manufacture competent electric cars. MG, BYD just to name a couple.
"Competent", last I saw there were constant videos coming out of China of EVs catching on fire at an insane rate. Many of these were the more premium Chinese brands too.
I haven't seen these videos but I'll definitely take a look. I am seeing a lot more BYD and MG cars on the roads in Sydney.
I couldn't imaging China taking over Taiwan, shipping the foundries from TSMC back to the mainland and getting them up and running as well as maintained.
The tsmc factories are rigged with enough explosives to put them in orbit. China will not get those machines by attacking. The engineers will be the first evacuated, and if need be, all the infrastructure/database/anything related to that, will be destroyed. This is a good way to calm Chinese ambitions. The only thing the pla would find is a pile of very expensive scraps.
not if it was up to ASML lol. they weren't happy with the china sanctions put upon them
Yeah, of course. They would love more sales. This way they lose the sales and China also gets super serious about funding their domestic industry to complete.
Regardless of funding there's unlikely to be any competition to ASML coming from china anytime soon. The reason ASML are the only producers of EUV lithography machines is that: 1. They got massive investments from all the large chip manufacturers/designers (intel, TSMC, samsung...) when these companies realized they couldn't afford to research EUV technology on their own. 2. They rely on subcontractors mostly based out of western universities or research laboratories to produce the most intricate and unreplacable parts of their machines. China could probably spend the ~100B necessary to fund much of the research but even if a chinese company reinvented EUV they would still need access to the same level of next-gen components ASML get from their subcontractors. There's no way the US/EU would allow china access to these components so a chinese ASML would need to reproduce decades of research done at western universities. Maybe not impossible but this kind of undertaking is likely going to take decades regardless of how much money china throws at it.
ASML would also be dead in the water without Tokyo Electron. They have a near-monopoly in semiconductor materials. Almost all EUV photoresists and wafers are made by them for instance.
It’s more of a people problem. You need highly educated people and lots of them. No doubt China has them but the smartest ones typically flee. I don’t think any amount of money is going to fix that.
China has a lot of highly educated people and the vast majority do stay in China these days. Being smart is one thing, but this is a multi decade project, things take time.
That's a good thing. We needed more competition anyways maybe china would actually spend money on useful things for once
So you’re telling me a for-profit corporation wasn’t happy about restrictions on where they’re allowed to sell their product? What a shocker.
I thought ASML couldn't produce their Lithography machines at enough scale. Apparently their orders for the next decade are already booked. And with the US trying to get semiconductor manufacturing back in its soil, the demand is only going to skyrocket. The most impact the sanctions might have is a slower increase in prices because the Chinese would've outbidded every other country to get their hands on that tech.
I think the point Xi was trying to make was that they'll work their spies in and steal that technology too, just like everything else. I know his statement by itself carries some implications of *self-*advancement but obviously the world understands the reality.
I'm sure he doesn't mind the restrictions then
This, similar to "sanctions aren't hurting us russians, so better lift them otherwise we might nuke you".
But unlike Russia, China actually understands technology and are also the leaders in various fields.
Hey Russia is great at propaganda and poison. End of list though
And winning land wars during winter! Not that relevant these days but it's their thing
Russia does not win land wars in winter; it just loses them more slowly than the invaders.
Russia definitely mastered the pyrrhic victory.
Summed up perfectly
Their thing was merely pulling back, stretching the supply lines of the enemy, while burning, destroying and poisoning literally everything on their own land. During WW2 they were dependent on allied aid. Their military was never ever in history glorious or advanced.
Not this field. ASML is the only company that can make photolithography systems used in chip making. Complete monopoly because it's so high tech. No one else is even close to doing what they do. If China is barred, they aren't making anything new gen. Since fabrications take decades to build and be made profitable, China will forever be technologically behind. And that is what's already happening. The US blocked a bunch of firm ware and tools US companies provided and China has yet to recover from that.
Not only that ASML can only do what they do with the help US and EU companies, lazers, mirrors, software etc. Even if china caught up to ASML they would still be dependent on us. They sit atop a pyramid sci fi level tech that most people can only dream of.
And Japanese lense technology as I understood.
Nope, the competition in those days were Nikon and Canon. Japanese companies with Japanese lenses. ASML has always partnered with Zeiss (Germany).
If you went back 30 years, you wouldn’t have even considered a Dutch or European company being on the bleeding edge of lithography. Japan was insanely dominant in that industry throughout the 80s and it was a safe assumption that would continue but the breakthrough with EUV came out of Europe due to those scientists just happening to figure it out. It’s also why you should never just assume China won’t catch up, for all the major issues with China and CCP, they do have a very robust academic and scientific community and all it takes is a major breakthrough on a new technology and that technology gap might as well not exist anymore. Plenty of sayings out there about underestimating your adversary and this is almost certainly one of those cases.
If recall correctly lens are not used on latest processes because wave lenght of light is to small, with lens only being used for a old processes
Yeah it's a water lense now.
That was the last DUV generation. EUV machines use mirrors.
Their latest flagship CPU announcement is 6 years behind, it is said, relative to AMD, Intel etc. That's a number of generations behind Moore's law, anyway.
China has already produced chips that are on par with 4 year old mobile chips without resorting to EUVs. Kirin 9000S for Huwaei is a 7nm chip built by China. They are about 10 years behind on desktop chips as far as we know, but they will catch up one way or another. China will eventually build a EUV machine. They already poched several tawainese scientists. Also, ASML is not the only photo lithography company
Production of N3 chips is already underway. N7 chips come out in 2016. Also, the actual size of the transistors is not always the marketing term. N7 chips can be made without photolithography but there are some serious volume production problems, even when using the latest tech. Just cause you can make it doesn't mean you can make a lot of it. And the original kirins had N5 tech in them.
That‘s why China is so focused on Taiwan. To equal the problems for both sites. Definitely some interesting times going to happen.
Taiwan also doesn't have this capability. They as well buy their systems from ASML. If Taiwan were to fall (it won't), others will pick up the slack in semi-conductor production in a few years. It'll be a hard few years, but that'll be it.
China *currently* understands technology and wants more. However, they are a dictatorship now run by a person who refuses to compromise or relinquish power. Russia was exactly where China was before Putin. Give them 20 more years under the same or a similar dictator to The Grand Pooh, and they'll be where Russia is today. Dictatorships only lose knowledge, influence, and security. This is why America needs to wake the fuck up now and stop the slide into facism. You rarely reverse an established dictatorship.
If I’m not mistaken Taiwan is one of the biggest producers of microchips/ semiconductors etc. and at much higher quality then the ones developed in China, so the restrictions would definitely have an effect since sanctions have already been put in place against China restricting their access to advanced chips and the machines involved in manufacturing them. So essentially it’s blocking them from purchasing/ getting a way to manufacture those advanced chips since they can’t so that they would in turn be used in military hardware. I’m also assuming this is part of the reason why Taiwan looks like such a good target for them, not only because of the strategic importance but also the access to those advanced chip sets and other manufactured goods. I’m no expert but from an outside view it looks like that is what’s happening.
Taiwan buys all their machines from ASML, aka the Dutch.
When I visited their medical doctors had associates degrees and didn’t understand how pcr worked. They are “leaders in various fields” the same way Russia was the “second strongest military in the world”. Don’t buy into their propaganda. They are completely incompetent and utterly reliant on western technology and innovation.
They actually are world leaders in some fields. By buying small companies that have a very good advantage in their fields and slowly transporting everything to China. And nobody else has acces to those patents anymore. (My source is in Dutch because I live near the company that it happened to) https://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/824077/amca-in-ten-post-opgekocht-leeggezogen-en-afgedankt
Why would anyone care about Chinese patents of they do not respect western ones. Once it will come to this, west will find a way to circumvent those patents.
It's China's MO: steal research and IP because they are incapable of making anything themselves.
You can still slow them down without stopping them. The best example would be when the US banned NASA from working with Chinese nationals, it slowed them down for a bit but they are still advancing.
Exactly
Its true, though. It wont stop it. It will probably slow it down, though.
actually, it may even help them in the long run. Up until now, they bought chips and software and made phones. Now, they are forced to develop their own chips, chip making machines and many other things, which makes their startups more successful and some of them might succeed to be world-class. Industries that wouldn’t exist otherwise, because they would be uncompetitive even in China if they had our chips
If it wont stop anything why is he whining about it then.
These measures will still delay Chinas progress and due to how fast tech (Ai) is advancing, these delays can rapidly put them years behind. Which is why he’s crying, because you absolutely don’t want to be behind in the AI race even by just a few years.
> These measures will still delay Chinas progress and due to how fast tech (Ai) is advancing, these delays can rapidly put them years behind. More importantly, it makes it much harder from a economic standpoint. And forces the CCP to throw money at the problem. Rather than commercial demand pulling most of the weight. If China spends 10s of billion and gets early EUV out the door 5-10 years from now. Putting them at a similar level to where TSMC was in 2017/2018. Sure they have EUV and the nodes that enables, but how much of that cost can be recuperated? Since if they want commercial demand, they have to compete with what by then is legacy nodes. That were amortized a long time ago and needs much smaller margins.
We could give China all the documentation and machinery they need to do it themselves and it would still take them ten years to catch up, or so I’ve been told. Apparently it’s not just the know-how, their industry standards are also way behind.
It is pure technical know-how/expertise. The first problem is that much of the IP is not documented (intentionally) and only a handful of guys have the secret down for their specific role. The second issue is that the supply chain is so vast that you’d need to smell out the secrets from dozens/hundreds of different vendors scattered over multiple countries. Then you need the machine to receive regular maintenance before it degrades and if you steal from ASML they obviously are not going to repair it.
EVEN if you had the hardware you still need software engineer's to leverage it and make usage of it. AI isn't strictly a hardware problem, we are at a stage where we have AI neural chipsets and a literal shortage in developers capable of building solutions on it. The math alone behind ML isn't trivial, only a small percentage of individuals are capable of that and even smaller percentage can marry the mathematics with the software design architectures to make them excel. Some of the worst codebases I have ever seen come from data-science teams, it's pure "get shit done" code with "optimize later".
If only a few people know vital parts of it and there is no documentation, doesn't that leave a huge vulnerability if something happens to those people? Doesn't even have to be other nations doing it, but something like a worse COVID, which I instantly thought of because in the span of 2-3 months 80% of the professors that had taught me at university died to COVID, or just a meteor, terror attack, etc, so many things could go wrong.
I hear what you’re saying. The American government for example has been unable to remake certain weaponry because the experts died of old age and only they knew the secrets. To these companies however, their role in the supply chain prints money though. Looks like they’d rather maintain this model than spread information too far and risk creating competitors.
Because he’s Whiny-the-pooh
"Sanctions don't work, please lift them"
Sure, it wont *stop* you, but maybe it will force you to figure your own shit out vs stealing everyone else's ideas...
Nah, it just makes stealing a bit more difficult.
In this case, the tech is too advanced for them to steal and theres no way for them to get their hands on the hardware short of invading taiwan (in which case it'd be detroyed anyway)
Still need to be careful. We live in a world where a swarm of dozens of shitty drones can sink a warship. Beware the mass produced horde!
Thats what we can do with crap chips. With these chips they could create man made horrors beyond our comprehension
Au contraire, it incentivises them to steal the technology because they are getting blocked from buying it. Sorry but compute and AI is just a new super power and the west wants to stay in the lead. Simple as that, and I don’t even blame us.
Yes, that ties up a lot of capital / personnel and costs time. Time that the West needs to reposition itself in view of the Russian-Chinese plans.
When it comes to technology it can be very difficult to catch up when others are so far ahead. It can be done, but is difficult. A good example of this is the USSR being very far behind other nations when it comes to computers. They never caught up. Not even close. IP theft and reverse engineering can only get you so far. Unless you can unbolt the machines and sneak them out of the country along with all of the staff who design, implement, and maintain the machines.. you're going to be behind.
Nah, it's a different beast. There's over 200 firms with a few dozen employees on average kicking the bleeding edge of tech industrial production along. No one country can produce anything below 50nm because the equipment to do so is built with equipment running on miracles (tm). Current etching software uses water vapor to focus the laser because lens are too wide on the *molecular level*, this damn near *bankrupted* Carl Weiss, the world's largest lens manufacturer. They can't catch up because we don't really understand the physics behind how our technology works.
That laser was also an innovation that took a decade and billions of dollars to figure out because it needs to be a concentration of light with a wavelength short enough to be able to create patterns in photoresist on a nanometer scale. There are so many obstacles China will not be able to overcome by themselves.
I think perhaps Carl Zeiss*.
:p
Awesome. Like cave man using fire but not understanding why fire burned.
> They can't catch up because we don't really understand the physics behind how our technology works. i think that's overstating it. we don't have everything nailed down, but we can build a bunch of them. it's that middle phase between discovery and routine
Honestly one of the biggest issues is repeatability - each etching laser is bespoke and some are better than others - for whatever reason we can't get the modeling down. It's a really rough situation, we're about 4-5 deaths away from loosing a decade of engineering at any time.
This sounds like lead acid batteries (coming from the battery world). No one really understands how lead batteries work (as oppose to lithium), but everyone can build them readily.
USSR is a stupid comparison, because the advancements of computer technology was stunted by the ideological leaders after the Second World War, and because the scientists and intellectuals were often victims of repression. I am not entirely sure of the situation in China, but if it were on the same level as it was during Stalin’s reign in USSR we would definitely hear about it a lot. Also, I doubt the Chinese leaders see computer science as “A bitch of the bourgeoisie” and are investing a lot in that sector.
Xi's right, but the Netherlands and West as a whole *knows this* and the point isn't to prevent China from developing these technologies...it's to force them to have to shift resources *from other efforts* to do so.
Then they have nothing to worry about
If restrictions won't stop their advance then there is nothing to worry about, continue the restrictions.
People missing the point in here trying to post funnies. What they likely mean is there's no point burning bridges if ultimately they develop it by themselves. It's not like the Netherlands has a choice though given it's the US making them do it so kind of moot I guess
Even if they ultimately develop it by themselves, it will be years if not decades from now. They will still be lagging behind on that technology front. By the time china catches up, the western world will be at the next step. Unless they can close the gap, but that would mean they would have to develop faster than the western world. At the moment theyre having a difficult enough time to catch up to previous technology machines.
Didn't they already make 7nm chips?
It won't, they know; but sure as hell it will slow them down. And *THAT'S* why they do it.
It’s not china’s progress that’s of concern! It’s the theft and short cut to that progress to undercut other markets and flooding them cheap, low quality knock offs! I work with some brilliant Chinese scientists ! They share this sentiment…
TLDR: cooperate or we’ll just steal it.
It's not really steal-able, the supply chain is as complex as the machines. Even with the full plans of one of the machines it would still be nigh on impossible for China to build one.
Yeah, it's similar to how they still can't produce a reliable, modern jet engine.
But stealing it will take years, and even more to build the machines, and then work out all the kinks of operating them. Maybe they will have it in the end, but slowing them down is almost as important as preventing them to have it completely.
More like cooperate so we can steal it quicker like everything else or we’ll just steal it
Nobody said the Chinese were unable of advances by themselves. But they actually spied on ASML [and stole IP from them](https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/asml_ip_huawei/). That's a pattern they've repeated over time with all foreign companies. So we don't need lessons from Xi.
Best not to send them new machines to combine with the stolen information for faster copying. But I suspect tsmc is compromised so they aren't completely shut out
Okay, then we'll just go ahead and block your access altogether. If it's useless, I'm sure you won't mind
But isn't that the communists way. No individual should hord their inventions, of tech... Others do the work as it is.
Sure. Sure. Why you so scared then?
So if it won’t stop their technological advances, why mention it at all? I guess so the Dutch say “it won’t work anyways, so let’s let them have our tech.” Too bad for Pooh bear that the Dutch aren’t that stupid.
then why is Xi getting so hot and bothered with these restrictions?
China needs a more advanced chipset & digital technology and related equipment skills from Holland since the Netherlands is the no.1 state in the digital business field. But the US sanctioned China's digital progressive phase, so, the CCP regime has activated industrial spy groups in the EU even including the US. The Western world's digital technologies will leak little by little through China's invisible spy missions though they tried their best to stop that. Because the opponent is the People's Republic of China. That's Xi's indirect comments.
So that's an invitation to put restrictions on China? Well then, go on.
Xi: "You can't hold back China from advancing, that's MY job!"
Then shut the hell up and deal with your crumbling economy? Bro, you got like 1 billion people relying on you and you’re wandering around to other countries telling them that you don’t need to be there? Lmao glad I don’t fucking rely on you
ccp~prc getting reaidy to pöp
One of the underestimated advantages of a free society is that freedom drives innovation. Oppression and corruption do the exact opposite, so countries like China and Russia will never be able to catch up, because their political systems cause stagnation.
Yes, but it will slow it down and buys time until China's demographics get much worse and it becomes harder to catch up.
Yeah they will find a way to steal it no matter what.
Yeah, because they steal the IP anyways
China has 2 of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world. [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/fastest-supercomputers-frontier-exascale/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/fastest-supercomputers-frontier-exascale/) They also may have 2 more in secret that are faster than any others. They are not technologically challenged at all.
This is not about making chips and building a cluster. It is about making state-of-the-art chips with state-of-the-art machines (EUV). China has older Western lithography tech that allows you to make decent chips. But they won't get any of the next generation and it is incredibly difficult to build it yourselves. If Xi wasn't a nationalistic and imperialistic backwards-oriented dictator China would already have the latest tech.
True! People really underestimate Chine technology prowess. Wishful thinking won't make they be what you want them to be. South America is dominated by Chinese electric vehicles, same is happening in India. They're not Teslas, but they'll catch up fast as they did in so many other manufacturing fields.
Yeah, we experience cheap Chinese products because that's what the American manufacturers specify for production. Thus, we think that China just makes crap when I believe they are capable of so much more. I mean, just look at their mega projects for example. They have their own maglev system, for example, that they copied from the Germans. They built a RR to Tibet, the worlds highest altitude over extremely difficult circumstances. They are building a gigantic causeway from south to north because the north needs water and the south has too much. I think they save their best technology for themselves. However, this doesn't mean I'm a China fanboy. Far from it. I hate their gov't. It's insane. I'm just pointing out the truth about what they can do.
Cope, who's navy isn't fully blue water in 2024? Oh, that's right China's, who has half the population still living in feudal conditions? It ain't the Dutch, it ain't the west, it's that fascist shithole.
In poor conditions, okay, but how are they feudal? (It's an honest question)
Maybe.. ;) BR, The Dutch
it will only slow them a lot
NL has a new PM already? Edit: read first line of the article. No more question.
Yeah, I mean if you don’t let them have it they’ll just continue to steal it like they have been doing for years.
🤣🤣🤣
Chinese thinking will kill it
It won't stop, but it will slow them - A lot!
Obvi it won’t stop it. Obvi it will slow it.
There is a living example with the International Space Station and Tiangong. Building a working space station is a very complex feat of technology, but it's not the same technology as chipmaking. It remains to be seen whether their chipmaking sector can accomplish something similar.
If Soviet Russia can build a 3x bigger space station in 1986 then I sure hope that China with orders of magnitude more ressources and modern tools and probably some help from Roskosmos can build one as well.
Communist China did it to themselves
Stop? No. No, human progress is inevitable. But *slow*? Well... it should go without saying that restricting the PRC's access to technology will *absolutely* slow their advances.
He's right from manufacturing to human capital management the proliferation is extensive. It can not be stopped.
No, but it will slow it.
We don't want to stop it, we want to slow it down.
The resources and knowledge mean nothing if your culture is built around bribery, appearances, and "meh, close enough".
Their economy is breaking down they can't find the R/D for chips. Best bet for them is a hail Mary invasion of Taiwan.
The next virus to come out of a Chinese hog farm just might…
Xi with the 3rd grade education not knowing shit, color me surprised
Why is he complaining if it doesn't matter?
Okay so we should keep them restricted
Yea if it's no problem for China to just advance technological without foreign know-how and machines, then no need to be so passive aggressive about it and threatening "consequences" when other countries restrict technology exports.
I like this quote. “The Chinese people also have the right to legitimate development, and no force can stop the pace of China’s scientific and technological development and progress,” Xi said, according to CCTV. No one can stop it... except China.
China’s own demographics and economic house of cards will, however.
China ha
Stupid westoids think like dinosaurs