I think I am the perfect person to answer this. I have been working in the semiconductor industry for years, currently living in the Netherlands, lived and worked in China for 3 years, I know a lot of engineers from ASML (expecially after they hired hundreds of Turkish engineers).
我认为我是回答这个问题的最佳人选。我在半导体行业工作多年,目前生活在荷兰,在中国生活和工作了3年,我认识很多来自ASML的工程师(特别是他们雇佣了数百名土耳其工程师后)。
Let me tell you something: High-end semiconductor manufacturing is black magic. Both the processes and tools used for it are very complex. ASML’s EUV lithography machine is probably the most complex tool humankind ever developed since it stopped jumping between trees. It took billions of Euros and decades of experience to perfect it. Other experienced lithography machine suppliers failed at it. China has no experience in high-end semiconductor manufacturing tools with the exception of one-off/few-off prototypes.
让我告诉你:高端半导体制造是一种黑魔法。它所使用的过程和工具都非常复杂。ASML的EUV光刻机可能是人类发明的最复杂的工具,因为它不再在树之间跳跃。它花费了数十亿欧元和几十年的经验来完善它。其他经验丰富的光刻机供应商在这方面失败了。中国在高端半导体制造工具方面没有经验,除了一次性或少量的原型。
ASML’s EUV lithography machine. Needs 41 semi-trucks to get transported, costs $150 million, has 100.000 major parts, has mirrors that need months of grinding to reach needed smoothness, needs multiple people with PhD’s as machine operators. Quite high-tech. Isn’t it?
ASML公司的EUV光刻机。运输需要41辆半卡车,耗资1.5亿美元,有10万个主要部件,镜子需要数月的打磨才能达到所需的光滑程度,需要多名拥有博士学位的人作为机器操作员。很高科技。不是吗?
EUV光刻机
Unfortunately, ASML is a very convenient target for the USA. The company uses a lot of critical parts from the USA but those parts don’t represent anything significant in the US economy in terms of their monetary value. Chinese electronics industry still depends on foreign chips so it can not threaten fabs with banning the sale of chips in China that were manufactured using ASML tools. Also, China isn’t a big customer of ASML too. In short, China can not answer with reciprocal sanctions.
不幸的是,ASML对美国来说是一个非常方便的目标。该公司使用了许多来自美国的关键部件,但这些部件的货币价值在美国经济中并不代表任何重要的东西。中国电子行业仍依赖外国芯片,因此无法通过禁止在中国销售使用ASML工具生产的芯片来威胁晶片厂。此外,中国也不是阿斯麦的大客户。总之,中国不能以对等制裁作为回应。
Is China hopeless? No.
中国绝望了? 不!
1- All of those tools are engineered and made by humans, and the laws of physics are the same both in the Netherlands and China. If the Netherlands could, then there is no reason for anybody else to fail with the correct approach.
1-所有这些工具都是由人类设计和制造的,而且物理定律在荷兰和中国都是相同的。如果荷兰可以,那么其他国家就没有理由用正确的方法失败。
2- China is filthy rich compared to the Netherlands. Chinese economy is 17x of the Netherlands’, 9x of SK’s, 27x of Taiwan’s, 3+x of Japan’s. With state support, Chinese fabs and tool makers can hire the top people from the rest of the world with salaries ASML, LamResearch, AM, Synopsys, TSMC, Samsung, … simply can not compete with. A significant portion of these companies’ employees are expats anyway, most of them are just after money.
2、中国比荷兰富得流油。中国经济是荷兰的17倍,SK的9倍,台湾的27倍,日本的3倍。在国家的支持下,中国的晶圆厂和工具制造商可以用ASML、LamResearch、AM、Synopsys、台积电、三星等公司无法与之竞争的薪水从世界其他地方雇佣顶尖人才。这些公司的员工中有很大一部分是外国人,他们中的大多数只是为了钱。
In fact China is already doing this successfully with good results. For example, it already has a working EUV lithography machine prototype, already caught up with the rest in chip testing, packaging, wafer production, also its first immersion lithography machine (good enough for most things) is getting prepared for commercial use.
事实上,中国已经成功地做到了这一点,并取得了良好的成果。例如,它已经有了一台工作中的EUV光刻机原型,在芯片测试、封装、晶圆生产方面已经赶上了其他公司,同时它的第一台浸没式光刻机(对大多数事情来说已经足够好了)也准备投入商业使用。
3- China is a scientific powerhouse on its own. It is the country with most patent applications, most research output, graduates more STEM students than any other country, 2nd largest R&D spender, has 11 universities in top 100. This leads us to my first point. If the Netherlands could, so can China if given enough time.
中国本身就是一个科学强国。它是专利申请最多、研究产出最多的国家,STEM专业的毕业生比其他任何国家都多,研发支出排名第二,有11所大学进入前100名。这就引出了我的第一点。如果荷兰可以,那么只要给中国足够的时间,中国也可以。
4- Catching up is much easier than innovating. Knowing something is possible and having a general knowledge of how it works make things much easier.
赶超比创新容易得多。知道某件事是可能的,并且对它的工作原理有一个大致的了解会让事情变得容易得多。
5- Time is on the Chinese side. Technology of semiconductors is close to maturity/stalling (choose the word depending on your view). If the development slows (which it does) it gives China the opportunity to catch-up. If a tech revolution happens, then the playing field evens out anyway.
5-时间在中国这边。半导体技术接近成熟/停滞(根据你的观点选择这个词)。如果发展放缓(确实如此),中国就有机会迎头赶上。如果科技革命发生了,那么竞争环境无论如何都是公平的。
6- You don’t need EUV for the most things. You don’t even need high-end processes for the most things. There is more to semiconductors than the latest smartphone processors, GPUs, and CPUs. Look at iPhone 12 teardown videos. You will see a lot of chips. Only one of them needs EUV. An average modern car has 250+ computers inside. That means thousands of chips. All of them are manufactured using old processes. This is even more true for military and space applications. Those use very old chips that are known to be reliable and secure.
6-大多数事情都不需要EUV。大多数事情你甚至不需要高端的流程。半导体不仅仅是最新的智能手机处理器、图形处理器(gpu)和cpu。看看iPhone 12拆卸的视频。你会看到很多芯片。只有一个需要EUV。一辆普通的现代汽车内部有250台电脑。这意味着成千上万的芯片。所有这些都是用旧工艺制造的。在军事和太空应用方面更是如此。它们使用的是非常老旧的芯片,但已知是可靠和安全的。
Conclusion: Blocking ASML from selling EUV machines to China can hurt Chinese businesses for some time but in the grand scheme it is insignificant. The USA needs to run faster rather than keep trying to block China if it wants to preserve its dominance in tech.
结论:阻止ASML向中国销售EUV设备可能会在一段时间内伤害中国企业,但从长远来看,这是微不足道的。如果美国想要保持其在科技领域的主导地位,它需要跑得更快,而不是一直试图阻止中国。
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