It was just a smartphone, and yet: When the Mate Pro 60 from the Chinese manufacturer Huawei came onto the market in August 2023, it sent shock waves in Washington. Because it contained something that many experts had hardly thought possible – a main chip with very advanced technology. How did the engineers from Huawei and the Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC manage to develop and, above all, produce such an advanced processor?
Artificial intelligence, fast computers and modern weapons – if you want to be at the forefront, you need the latest, most powerful chips. The small silicon plates have long since become the most critical technology in the world. The fight over this between the USA and China has just reached a new level. It has now been announced that the US government brought forward a ban on certain chip production machines that was originally planned for the turn of the year by a few weeks.
Since the Huawei shock, experts from politics, business and certainly also the secret services have been puzzling over how this could have happened. A crucial question concerns the machines from the Dutch manufacturer ASML. The production of high-performance chips, such as those found in the iPhone, has become so complicated that ASML is the only company in the world to master an important process. The USA had already issued an export ban for the most advanced ASML machines in 2019 under President Trump. The Biden administration expanded the export ban to include the next weaker generation of machines in 2023, but was unable to enforce an immediate ban. The export of these machines should only be banned at the turn of the year 2023/24.
Pressure from Washington
Many Chinese companies therefore ordered machines in stock. In the third quarter of 2023, China business accounted for nearly half of ASML’s revenue. Washington didn’t like that at all, which is why national security advisor Jake Sullivan is said to have put pressure on the Dutch government and ASML. This is reported by the Bloomberg news agency, citing informed circles. The goal: to bring the ban on the machines forward, so to speak. Whatever happened. Weeks before the actually announced delivery stop, the delivery of some machines was banned.
But why such a fuss about these machines? What makes ASML so unique? The idea is to create billions of transistors the size of a thumbnail on silicon wafers. For this purpose, very short-wave ultraviolet light is used. ASML is now the only company in the world that offers lithography machines for the ultra-small structures of modern chips. Getting their most advanced technology to date up and running took decades. It works with extreme ultraviolet light, close to X-rays.
If ASML hadn’t been so persistent, we wouldn’t have the chips that power the latest iPhones or the super-slim yet powerful laptops that most people take for granted. This engineering achievement, which also required huge investments, cannot be easily replicated. If so, it would take years.
Other manufacturers also affected
The US government is therefore using the export ban on ASML machines in its efforts to at least make it more difficult for China to access the most advanced chip generations. ASML is not the only company affected by such restrictions. The American manufacturer Nvidia, for example, is also not allowed to export some of its accelerators for AI calculations to China. It was only in October that the range of products covered by the ban was expanded again.
However, the majority of high-performance chips are still produced in Asia. The Samsung Group from South Korea, TSMC in Taiwan and Intel are the only ones who have mastered the extremely complex manufacturing processes. However, the long-standing dominator Intel has to catch up with a technological gap. The US company’s first large factory, which produces chips with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light, went into operation in Ireland in the autumn. The plant planned in Magdeburg will also produce using EUV technology.