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SAN FRANCISCO — President Biden and many lawmakers in Washington these days are using computer chips and China’s ambitions with basic technology.

But a massive machine sold by a Dutch company has emerged as a key lever for policymakers, showing how unrealistic any country’s hopes of building a fully self-sufficient supply chain in semiconductor technology are.

Made by machine ASML Holding, based in Veldhoven. His system uses a different type of light to identify ultra-small circuits on chips, giving smaller slices of silicon greater performance. The vehicle, which took decades to develop and was introduced for high-volume production in 2017, costs more than $150 million. Shipping to customers requires 40 shipping containers, 20 trucks and three Boeing 747s.

Complex machinery is considered essential to making the most advanced chips, a capability with geopolitical implications. Trump administration Successfully lobbied the Dutch government Blocking the shipment of such a machine to China in 2019 and the Biden administration showed no signs of reversing that stance.

Manufacturers can’t produce pioneer chips without the system, and “it’s only made by Dutch firm ASML,” said Will Hunt, research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, concluding that China cannot build it. own similar equipment in ten years. “From the Chinese point of view, this is frustrating.”

ASML’s machine has effectively become a bottleneck in the supply chain for chips that act as the brains of computers and other digital devices. The tool’s development and manufacture on three continents using expertise and parts from Japan, the United States and Germany also serves as a reminder of how global the supply chain is and provides a reality check for any country looking to advance in semiconductors. itself.

This includes not only China, but also the United States. Congress discussing plans spend more than $50 billion to reduce dependency on foreign chip manufacturers. Many branches of the federal government, especially the Pentagon, are concerned about the US dependency on Taiwan’s leading chip maker and the island’s proximity to China.

one study It was estimated this spring by the Boston Consulting Group and the Semiconductor Industry Association that building a self-sufficient chip supply chain would require at least $1 trillion and would sharply increase the prices of chips and products made with them.

Willy Shih, a management professor at Harvard Business School who studies supply chains, said that goal is “totally unrealistic” for anyone. ASML’s technology is “a great example of why you have global business.”

This highlights the important role played by ASML, a once obscure company whose market cap now exceeds $285 billion. “The most important company you’ve never heard of,” said CJ Muse, an analyst at Evercore ISI.

Founded in 1984 by electronics giant Philips and another instrument manufacturer, Advanced Semiconductor Materials International, ASML has become an independent company and by far its largest supplier. chip manufacturing equipment that includes a process called lithography.

Using lithography, manufacturers repeatedly project chip circuit models onto silicon wafers. The smaller the transistors and other components that can be added to a single chip, the more powerful it is and the more data it can store. This is known as the rate of miniaturization Moore’s Law, named after Gordon MooreCo-founder of chip giant Intel.

In 1997 ASML began work on the rollout. extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, light. This type of light has ultra-small wavelengths that can create much smaller circuits than is possible with conventional lithography. The company then decided to make machines based on the technology, an effort that has cost $8 billion since the late 1990s.

The development process quickly globalized. ASML now assembles advanced machinery using mirrors from Germany and equipment developed in San Diego that produces light by blasting tin droplets with a laser. Key chemicals and ingredients come from Japan.

ASML’s CEO, Peter Wennink, said the company’s lack of money in its early years prompted it to integrate inventions from private suppliers and create a “collaborative knowledge network” that rapidly innovates.

“We are forced not to do things ourselves that others do better,” he said.

ASML is built on other international cooperation. In the early 1980s, researchers in the United States, Japan, and Europe began to consider radical change in light sources. The concept was discussed by a consortium that included Department of Energy labs alongside Intel and two other US chip makers.

ASML’s president and chief technology officer Martin van den Brink said ASML joined in 1999, after more than a year of negotiations. Other partners of the company include the Belgian research center Imec and another US consortium, Sematech. ASML later attracted large investments from Intel, Samsung Electronics, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to help raise funds.

This development is further challenged by the quirks of extreme ultraviolet light. Lithographs often focus light through lenses to project circuit patterns onto wafers. But small EUV wavelengths are absorbed by the glass, so lenses don’t work. Mirrors, another common tool for directing light, have the same problem. This meant that the new lithography required mirrors with complex coatings combined to better reflect small wavelengths.

Thus, ASML turned to Zeiss Group, a 175-year-old German optics company and longtime partner. Among his contributions were six specially shaped mirrors that were ground, polished and coated over several months in an elaborate robotic process that uses ion beams to remove imperfections, and a two-ton projection system to process extreme ultraviolet light.

Mr van den Brink said producing enough light to project images quickly also caused delays. But Cymer, a San Diego company that ASML acquired in 2013, eventually developed a system that directs pulses from a high-power laser into tin droplets 50,000 times per second—once to flatten them and vaporize them a second time—to create. intense light.

The new system also required redesigned components called photomasks that act as templates in mirroring circuit designs, as well as new chemicals that build up on the wafers that create these images when exposed to light. Japanese companies now supply most of these products.

Since ASML introduced the commercial EUV model in 2017, customers have purchased approximately 100 units. Buyers include Samsung and TSMC, the largest service-producing chips designed by other companies. TSMC uses this tool to make processors designed by Apple for its latest iPhones. Intel and IBM said EUV was crucial to their plans.

“It’s definitely the most complex machine humans have ever built,” said Darío Gil, IBM’s senior vice president.

Dutch restrictions on the export of such machines to China, implemented since 2019, did not have much financial impact on ASML due to the backlog of orders from other countries. But about 15 percent of the company’s sales come from sales of legacy systems in China.

In final report In March, to Congress and Mr. Biden, the Artificial Intelligence National Security Commission recommended that export controls be extended to several other advanced ASMLs. machines too. The Congress-funded group seeks to limit AI advances to military applications.

Mr. Hunt and other policy experts argued that blocking additional sales would hurt ASML without much strategic benefit, as China already uses these machines. So is the company.

“I hope common sense will prevail,” said Mr van den Brink.