Manufacturing anything large is an international affair these days.

https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2020/inside-high-tech-m...

"ASML has five manufacturing locations worldwide. Our lithography systems are assembled in cleanrooms in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, while some critical subsystems are made in different factories in San Diego, California, and Wilton, Connecticut, as well as other modules and systems in Linkou and Tainan, Taiwan."

And you can assume those factories depend on sub-assemblies from lower tier factories which are made in even more places.

>Manufacturing anything large is an international affair these days.

...or even the humble pencil:

https://genius.com/Leonard-e-read-i-pencil-annotated

ASML's core IP was developed and is owned by the US government, that's why they can't ship anything to China without the US's permission. ASML has some fancy stuff but is entirely dependent on the US at the end of the day

from all the way back in 1999 - https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/

Correct, but ASML is not a chip fab

No but it is the monopoly supplier of the single most important device for fabs.

If ASML (and all their knowledge) disappeared off the face of the earth today progress in semiconductors would probably be set back a decade or two.

The fact they are a single company in one country that the global industry depends on for progress in semis should be of concern.

What company has the next-best litho machines after ASML?

There is no alternative. Without EUV machines (produced solely by ASML), anything below 10nm is infeasible until we find a different way that works at scale.

> As of 2022, ASML Holding is the only company who produces and sells EUV systems for chip production

Okay, so still: what is the company making the next-best chip making machines, using the next-best technology after EUV?

Nikon and Canon, in that order. Neither has managed to produce EUV machines, but they were somewhat competitive at higher nodes.

That's really interesting, I had not heard those names in this space before. I would have expected Applied Materials. Maybe Nikon and Canon are suppliers of optics to the more industry specific companies?

Nikon actually supplied the machines for Intel through their 10nm debacle. Canon has completely retired into the low end market, but used to be massive. You're right that I forgot about Applied Materials.

I think historically it's been a challenge mostly related to precision optics, given that semi production is more or less like exposing photographic paper from a negative, through a lens using a light source.

With EUV the challenge is the crazy difficulty of generating the required light source at the right intensity and focusing it. At that wavelength things behave differently, to say the least.

what if there are none that are really comparable? I don't think we can go back to those huge transistors

Well, in that case I want to know, so that would also be a valid answer to my question.

You can do a lot with 6502s, which are still being made. (And we can probably make better than that. 80486s?)

But it doesn't only have factories in the Netherlands and is as much controlled by a single "entity" as Intel is (e.g. the US doesn't control Intel).

Most relevant as far as I can tell this situation was intentionally created that way to be able to better keep China off the high end chip market.

There are tons of these.

Intel FLIR DeBeers Westinghouse for nuclear stuff Lots of specialty suppliers for aerospace where there is only one or two companies that do a particular thing.

Its actually super common.

Would it be? Or would it be one step back for a few years and then two steps forward by the 10 year mark due to renewed competition?

It took decades for ASML to successfully develop EUV lithography. It was widely thought to be impractical prior to that. No one else was willing to even try.

ASML is not a leaf in the dependency tree of the global semiconductor fab supply chain. It does in turn rely on several other highly specialized partners to supply them with custom-developed components for lithography machines, well-known ones are for example Zeiss and Trumpf (both based in Germany). These partners probably duplicate a significant amount of knowledge necessary to build EUV machines, considering that their components were developed in tight partnership with ASML.

I think the point was that high-tech shouldn't be concentrated in one location. What if ASML was in China?

ASML is prohibited from shipping its newest machines to China by the Dutch government, because of heavy US pressure. I'm sure China would love ASML to be fully based there.

Well, as far as I can tell, China is seems willing to sell just about anything to anyone as long as they can pay.

ASML also makes their high end lithography machines (the ones that cost $100M+ a pop) in Connecticut, USA: https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/locations/wilton-...