Let's first look at the competition between the two giants in the global chip industry from Asmel. Kissinger, the new CEO of Intel, pointed the finger at TSMC just after he took office. He emphasized that Taiwan Province is an unstable place. While striving for US subsidies, TSMC left the most advanced products in made in taiwan. He called on the US government to revive its own chip industry. His family is Intel.
And the showdown between Intel and TSMC, the real focus is on EUV mask aligner. At present, TSMC keeps ahead of Intel in terms of quantity and experience in mask aligner. We assume that TSMC and Intel buy new equipment and develop new technologies at the same speed, so TSMC can always maintain its leading position in Intel, and Intel will never turn over to be the big brother.
The chip industry can be said to be the most important industry in the world at present. Due to the lack of chips in the past two years, many electronic products, automobiles and other products that need chips have increased their prices. The world today is inseparable from the calculation of chips. The key factor affecting the pattern of chip industry is EUV mask aligner produced by Asmel.
What kind of machine is EUV mask aligner? What kind of company is Asmel? To understand these things, we have to start with the manufacturing process of chips. The so-called chip, there is another name called integrated circuit, a fingernail-sized chip can be stacked with tens of billions of transistors. Almost all electronic products need it to operate normally.
Chip manufacturing is like building a house. The first step is to plan the design of the house. Chip engineers will draw the corresponding circuit diagram according to the functions of the chip. After having the circuit diagram, there will be a place to stack electronic components, just like we have to have a piece of land first to build a house. And this land is the wafer, with the wafer, how to shrink and print the circuit design? The answer is light. It is very important to reduce the design to the wafer through ultraviolet light, and how the final quality of a wafer is. Next, the wafer will be packaged with an insulating shell, and the production of this chip will be completed.
As we said above, lithography is the key to chip quality. In other words, whoever can get the most advanced mask aligner will surpass his opponent in the chip competition. Who should I buy the best mask aligner? Asmel, of course, and it is the only one in the world. Although Asmel is not the only one in mask aligner market, there are also Japanese Canon and Nikon, but Japanese mask aligner can only be mixed in the low-end field, and only Asmel can make high-end mask aligner. Then why can only Asmel make the highest-end mask aligner? Japan, Germany and the United States, the traditional technological powers, are better than the Netherlands.
Asmel's EUV mask aligner cost1.300 million USD, why is it so expensive? Because it is almost the crystallization of the highest wisdom of all mankind at present, if you want to complete the manufacture of an EUV mask aligner, you need to assemble more than 0/0 top companies around the world. It can be said that at present, no company can handle all the spare parts alone. EUV mask aligner is built on an extremely sophisticated industrial chain. Every key spare part is taken out separately, and whoever can do it well is the world's top in that field.
The mirror is produced by Zeiss in Germany, and the requirement for lens smoothness has reached the level of going against the sky. Assuming that a mirror is as big as Germany, the highest protrusion on the lens can't exceed 1 cm. Asmel's advantage is that it firmly controls the whole industrial chain, the light source comes from the United States, the lens comes from Germany, and a mask aligner 10-0-plus top-level company involving many powerful scientific and technological countries. There are historical reasons why Asmel in the Netherlands can do this, not Japanese, German and American companies.
The early mask aligner appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the process technology was far less powerful than it is today, and the technical requirements in mask aligner were relatively low. Most semiconductor companies could make it with a little effort. When the semiconductor industry in Japan rose rapidly, Canon and Nikon of Japan entered the mask aligner market conveniently and achieved very good results. Later, the United States used the national strength to suppress the Japanese semiconductor industry, forcing Japan to sign a series of agreements, just like we are now targeting Huawei in China. The only difference is that we didn't choose to bow our heads and admit our cowardice.
At this time, Asmel was still a small company owned by Philips, with only 30 employees from top to bottom. Because it didn't make money, it was later developed independently, which was actually abandoned. While suppressing Japan, the United States also needs to support new substitutes. At this time, Asmel made the light source technology break through the limit by betting on the immersion development technology proposed by TSMC Lin Benjian. This insistence brought a turning point to Asmel.
With the support of the United States, many top companies provided technical assistance to Asmel and supplied key spare parts. Asmel finally made the highest-end mask aligner and dominated the global market from then on. The well-known semiconductor manufacturers, Intel, Samsung and TSMC, are all shareholders of Asmel, and they have a very close relationship. This is also the fundamental reason why the United States will not let TSMC do OEM work for Huawei, but TSMC will be obedient, so that Asmel will not sell advanced mask aligner to SMIC, and SMIC will only stare blankly. Because Asmel was trained by the United States.
As for when we can build the most advanced mask aligner? The answer to this question is hard to say, but in short, it won't be in recent years. Even if Huawei invests heavily in R&D, it can't catch up in a short period of time. So the technology accumulation of many top companies for decades or even centuries needs the joint efforts of many industries and companies in China, and it is possible to catch up with the most advanced technology at some point in the future. Although not in recent years, I believe this day will not be too far away.