Great post! I think this is a valuable introduction to an uncertain and rapidly developing situation.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is responsible for over 90% of the manufacturing of the most advanced chips; South Korea makes the rest. ASML (based in the Netherlands) is the only company that makes the machinery needed for this process. And Japan controls photolithography, which draws circuit patterns on layers of silicon used in a chip.
This seems a bit off. It seems to imply that ASML makes all or most of the machinery in the manufacturing process, and/or that ASML is the only company in the space. I think it would be more correct to say that ASML is the only company that makes the most advanced photolithography machines, and that photolithography is a key and necessary part of the chip fabrication process. (Other photolithography manufacturers—Nikon (Japan), Canon (Japan), and SMEE (China) -- cannot produce EUV photolithography machines, and also seem to produce substantially worse machines than ASML of older types. So it is true that ASML is broadly dominant in photolithography as a whole.)
Similarly, it is misleading/ambiguous to say that Japan controls photolithography—perhaps the sentence is meant to say that Japan controls some photolithography materials, like photoresists?
Thanks for these corrections! You’re right. I’ll make a few quick edits for now, and try to update it properly later (digging into the CSET report again).
Great post! I think this is a valuable introduction to an uncertain and rapidly developing situation.
This seems a bit off. It seems to imply that ASML makes all or most of the machinery in the manufacturing process, and/or that ASML is the only company in the space. I think it would be more correct to say that ASML is the only company that makes the most advanced photolithography machines, and that photolithography is a key and necessary part of the chip fabrication process. (Other photolithography manufacturers—Nikon (Japan), Canon (Japan), and SMEE (China) -- cannot produce EUV photolithography machines, and also seem to produce substantially worse machines than ASML of older types. So it is true that ASML is broadly dominant in photolithography as a whole.)
Similarly, it is misleading/ambiguous to say that Japan controls photolithography—perhaps the sentence is meant to say that Japan controls some photolithography materials, like photoresists?
Thanks for these corrections! You’re right. I’ll make a few quick edits for now, and try to update it properly later (digging into the CSET report again).