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ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

reuters.com

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Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#141

Post by baq »

hda2 wrote: post #81
chongli wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part is what to do with 90s-era tech when times are good? Nobody’s buying that old stuff (hobbyists aside). So then you just run these plants at a loss? I’d hate to be an engineer at one of those places. Seems like very soul-crushing work.

> So then you just run these plants at a loss? If there is no demand then yes, absolutely. It's normal for countries (inc. the US) to run and subsidize their infrastructure at a loss if it is critical to their national security.

Exactly, same with health care.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#142

Post by baq »

n-e-w wrote: post #2

As a single source supplier for the global semiconductor supply chain this is concerning. Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war?

Creating EUV machines took twice as long as getting people on the moon… not sure if it was as expensive, but setting up EUV lithography capacity for mass production certainly sounds like the Apollo program of the semiconductor industry.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#145

Post by siva7 »

whatshisface wrote: post #65
hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

I think you're leaving a few things off the list. Gasoline, steel, machine shops, chemical plants... by the time you added everything that could lead to crisis if it ran out or stopped working you'd be a proponent of the Juche Idea. ;)

Sure, it’s called critical infrastructure and semiconductor should be added to this list.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#146

Post by sudosysgen »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #113
Sevaris wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes time to catch up. There's no reason they won't be able to though given enough time and money though.

There are reasons they might not, and that is that the rest of the world also has time and money. China is not infinite. Catching up is definitely a lot easier and yes it does take time, but it's not a given. They've been trying to catch up with jet engines for almost as long as the west or Russia have been working on them, certainly would have out-spent the Russians by a wide margin on the effort. So far unable to m…

The Chinese have been seriously trying to catch up in turbofan engines only since 1986. They are now far enough ahead as to be very comparable to the Russians.

They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in military technology.

The Chinese, on the other hand, acrually aren't incesting as much money on these technologies as one would think. The only company (SOE) that has any stake in jet engines is Shenyang, and despite also making whole aircraft, drones and so on, they have 15 000 employees for the whole operation.

Comparatively, Pratt and Whitney, which does only engines and nothing else, and is one of four companies capable of making modern turbofan engines, has more than twice the employees as Shenyang, which designs and manufactures multiple different aircraft. Boeing has ten times as many employees as Shenyang.

As far as outinvesting the Russians, we can compare again the number of employees. The most advanced Russian engines are produced by UEC Saturn, which only makes engines, and by itself has 21 000 employees.

That's again more than Shenyang, which doesn't only make engines.

So no, it's patently false that the Chinese are deploying more resources with less results.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#147

Post by dirtyid »

tcskeptic wrote: post #121

China sabotaging ASML profit on to prevent decentralization of chip production from Taiwan and maintain leverage over the US in Taiwan sovereignty struggle.

Reminds me of Chinese netizen conspiracy theory that US set fire to ASML / Prodrive warehouse in 2019 that delayed EUV delivery to SMIC long enough for Trump admin to pressure Dutch gov to cancel the contract. Plausible more US shenanigans or that PRC is fighting fire with fire. Literally. Conspiracy theories aside, hard to believe stuxnetting semi fabs isn't in the list of options.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#148

Post by sudosysgen »

snicker7 wrote: post #126
scarab92 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things move pretty fast in China, so even though they are slow to innovate they can quickly copy designs where enough detailed information exists in public. EUV took decades and billions of dollars in trial and error before the current techniques were figured out. Due to the West's tendency to publish successful techniques, China won't have to repeat these steps.

Things moved fast in China (rather Shrnzhen) due to a period of ultra-liberal economics that Xi is now dismantling.

Xi has been cracking down a lot on "soft tech". Hardware tech has never been anywhere close to liberal even in Shenzhen, where all levels of government always had massive levels of investment and involvement in the industry.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#149

Post by riffraff »

jhugo wrote: post #108
unethical_ban wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier today I was thinking about this positively. None of my ideas are original, but some anti-corporatism thought struck a chord today. Why do we rely on dictatorships and unstable countries for critical infrastructure? Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here? It isn't "markets" that are wrong altogether, but there is something destabilizing and unethical about…

> Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here? Calling it slave labour is a great sound bite but glosses over the wide variety in working conditions "overseas", and the fact that trade has vastly improved conditions in many such "overseas" countries. I have broadly the opposite view about supply chains and globalisation; the inter-reliance of countries and the trade i…

It's worth noting this was one of the foundations of the European free market and then the European union: make the European countries so integrated that a war becomes unthinkable.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#150

Post by throwawaylinux »

kragen wrote: post #133
chx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

No, I'm not "paid to do this", and none of what I said is half-true or embellished. What is wrong with you?

China was not solely responsible for solar panel cost/efficiency improvements of the past 10 years, so that's embellished.

And yes they make vaccines and nuclear reactors like many countries do or have done. And I'll just repeat that I didn't say they produce or invent zero new things.

For all their rhetoric, there is not matching output of new technologies in my opinion. Almost everywhere I look yes they often play catch up and are close behind in copying or are doing the manufacturing cheaply, but the idea or the innovation and research came from elsewhere. Smartphones, electric cars (or even conventional cars and internal combustion engines -- innovation and quality come from Japan, Germany, SK, etc), jet engines and airliners, CPUs and GPUs, reusable rockets, operating systems, software languages, pharmaceuticals, AI, crypto, for a few random things I can think of off hand. China obviously must do some innovation, it's just nowhere near the size of their economy or boasting, from my experience.

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