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by throw0101c 848 days ago
> However they seem to have missed the boat on EUV tech.

Licensing:

> To address the challenge of EUV lithography, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA) with the invention and rights wholly owned by the US government, but licensed and distributed under approval by DOE and Congress.[8] The CRADA consisted of a consortium of private companies and the Labs, manifested as an entity called the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company (EUV LLC).[9]

> Intel, Canon, and Nikon (leaders in the field at the time), as well as the Dutch company ASML and Silicon Valley Group (SVG) all sought licensing. Congress denied the Japanese companies the necessary permission as they were perceived as strong technical competitors at the time, and should not benefit from taxpayer-funded research at the expense of American companies.[10] In 2001 SVG was acquired by ASML, leaving ASML as the sole benefactor of the critical technology.[11]

[…]

> This made the once small company ASML the world leader in the production of scanners and monopolist in this cutting edge technology and resulted in a record turnover of 18.6 billion € in 2021, dwarfing their competitors Canon and Nikon who were denied IP access. […]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph...

4 comments

so they decided foreign technical competitors should not benefit from US taxpayer-funded research (makes sense) but then allowed ASML to buy SVG and thereby monopolizing (quite literally) this most critical of technologies? idiots.
The first part doesn’t make sense at all. A huge percentage of american taxpayer funded research is released openly to the world. It only makes sense in using it to create the latter monopoly, though, I guess showing where incentives really lie.
I thought the US favored companies over individuals, but evidently this isn't limited to US based corps.
Did Intel get the license?
Intel's focus was chip design and manufacturing, not tooling; it took a long time (and money) for ASML to develop its cutting-edge EUV tech. Besides SVG, ASML also bought other key US EUV component developers like Cymer (lasers) and HMI.
First I've heard of this, that's absolutely awful.
Why?
Do you think monopolies are generally bad or generally good?
Why are you asking me?

The state has a monopoly on violence, is that generally bad?

Yep!

Specifically, Antitrust (as is mentioned).

Canon and Nikon were leaders in lithography at the time, and ASML/Philips were a laggard 3rd.

Thanks for that background. I thought the US was a total 0 on know how when it came to sub 7mm chips.