Aren’t Philips and ASML both effectively under American control anyway? Is the TSMC part of the stack that special in terms of actual IP (versus more squishy organizational know-how)?
> Aren’t Philips and ASML both effectively under American control anyway?
IDK about Philips but ASML follows US export restrictions due to a deal it agreed to when it bought a US company a few decades ago, yes.
> Is the TSMC part of the stack that special in terms of actual IP (versus more squishy organizational know-how)?
I don't want to go into too many details as I work in the Intel Foundry but it's certainly both. We'd be very happy to know how TSMC does some specific things, let me put it that way.
At the same time, our execution has been dubious since 10 nm.
IIRC it wasn’t because of an acquisition but part of a joint venture with ASML, Intel, and some other companies to develop EUV with a bunch of Department of Energy funding that started in the late 1990s.
> In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the CRADA it operates under is funded by the US taxpayer, licensing must be approved by Congress.
ASML follows US restrictions because of US power. That purchase is just convinient excuse. If they never bought it, US would force them other way (e. g. access to banking).
Europe has banking, too. Even better: nobody in Europe sends paper checks around anymore, we use instant wire transfers here! European banking is way ahead of US banking in a lot of ways.
So, banking is not exactly something that the US can use to coerce a European company. There are much more effective avenues for coercion, though. But IIRC, in this case, the US gov basically convinced the Dutch gov that making ASML adhere to US restrictions would be in the best interest of both of them, and not much coercion was necessary. After all, both countries are on the same side when it comes to the system conflict with China.
Philips as far as im aware doesnt contribute that much anymore. NXP split off forever ago. Philips may have build TSMC together with the taiwanese government but its hardly relevant nowadays.
Philips spun off both NXP and ASML years ago, so all their relevancy in chip manufacturing disappeared and went to both companies. Same happened with LED manufacturing, going to Signify NV.
Philips has only kept its expertise in medical devices and a large pool of patents for many technologies (MPEG-2, H264, Ambilight, BluRay, OLED, etc.)
