Let's first look at the competition between the two giants in the global chip industry from Asmel. Kissinger, the new CEO of Intel Corporation, pointed his finger at TSMC as soon as he took office. He emphasized that Taiwan Province 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 chip industry. His family is Intel.
The showdown between Intel and TSMC really focuses on EUV mask aligner. At present, TSMC is 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. Due to the lack of chips in the past two years, many electronic products and automobiles that need chips have increased in price. Today's world is inseparable from the calculation of chips. The key factor affecting the pattern of chip industry is the EUV mask aligner produced by Asmel.
What kind of machine is EUV mask aligner? What kind of company is ASML? To understand these things, we have to start with the manufacturing process of chips. The so-called chip is also called integrated circuit. A chip the size of a fingernail can stack tens of billions of transistors. Almost all electronic products need it to run normally.
Chip manufacturing is like building a house. The first step is planning the design of the house. The chip engineer will draw the corresponding circuit diagram according to the function of the chip. With the circuit diagram, there is a place to pile up electronic components, just like we have to have a piece of land to build a house. And this piece of land is a wafer. With a wafer, how can we reduce the design of printed circuits? The answer is light. It is very important to design the reduction of the wafer by ultraviolet light and how the final quality of the wafer is. Next, the wafer is encapsulated with an insulating shell, and the production of this chip is 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? Asmer, of course, and it is unique in the world. Although Asmel is not the only one in the mask aligner market, there are also Canon and Nikon in Japan, but mask aligner in Japan can only mix in the low-end field, and only Asmel can be a high-end mask aligner. Then why can only Asmel make the highest-end mask aligner? Japan, Germany, and the United States, traditional technological powers, are all stronger than the Netherlands.
Asmel's EUV mask aligner costs $65.438+300 million. Why is it so expensive? Because it is almost the crystallization of the highest wisdom of mankind at present, it needs to assemble more than 0 top companies in the world 10 to complete the manufacture of an EUV mask aligner. It can be said that no company can handle all the spare parts by itself at present. EUV mask aligner is built on an extremely complex industrial chain. Every key component 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 requirements for lens smoothness have reached the level of going against the sky. Suppose a mirror is as big as Germany, and the highest protrusion on the lens cannot exceed 1 cm. Asmel's advantage lies in firmly controlling the whole industrial chain. The light source comes from the United States and the lens comes from Germany. There are more than 10 top companies in mask aligner, involving many powerful scientific and technological countries. There are historical reasons why Dutch Asmel can do this, but Japanese, German and American companies can't.
Early mask aligners appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the technology was far less powerful than it is now, and the technical requirements in mask aligner were relatively low. Most semiconductor companies can do it with a little effort. When Japan's semiconductor industry rose rapidly, Japan's Canon and Nikon entered the mask aligner market conveniently and achieved very good results. Later, the United States used its national strength to suppress Japan's semiconductor industry and forced Japan to sign a series of agreements, just as we are now targeting Huawei in China. The only difference is that we have no choice but to bow our heads and admit our cowardice.
At this time, ASML was a small company owned by Philips, with only 30 employees from top to bottom. Because it didn't make money, it was later independently developed and 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 immersive development technology proposed by TSMC Lin Benjian. This persistence has brought a turn for the better for Asmer.
With the support of the United States, many top companies provide technical assistance to Asmel and provide key spare parts. Asmel finally made the highest-end mask aligner and dominated the global market from then on. The famous 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 listen, so that Asmer will not sell advanced mask aligner to SMIC, and SMIC will only look on. Because Asmer was trained in the United States.
As for when to build the most advanced mask aligner? The answer to this question is hard to say, but in short, it will not be in recent years. Even if Huawei invests heavily in R&D, it is impossible to catch up in a short time. Therefore, the technology accumulation of many top companies for decades or even centuries requires the joint efforts of many domestic industries and companies, so 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.