A brief history of European chips:
the Dutch company that holds the world's semiconductor chips by the throat
Recently, chip has become the hot topic of national attention again. As 5G has been gradually commercialized and AI has been widely used today, the importance of chips for a technology enterprise is self-evident. Tencent technology recently launched a series of planning, focusing on the development of each chip country. When you think of Holland, you think of giant windmills and colorful tulips. Few would have noticed that in Veldhoven, a rain-soaked southern Dutch city of fewer than 300,000 people, sits ASML, the world's biggest maker of lithography.
How important is asml's position? If it were shut down, so to speak, global semiconductor chip production would grind to a halt.
Asml's position in the industry can also be glimpsed through a recent news. In early may, the Santa Clara superior court awarded asml $845 million and most of XTAL's patents and customers.
Behind the lawsuit, one of asml's customers wanted to use XTAL to break asml's market monopoly.
Here, perhaps, the market data are more convincing.
In 2017, a total of 294 lithography machines were shipped globally, and asml shipped 198 lithography machines, accounting for 68% of the market share. In terms of higher-end EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines, the market was 100% owned by asml. Because of this, there are customers worried about their neck asml, so they rack their brains to cultivate asml's competitor XTAL.
A tree born of the smallest grain grows together. Asmai just established, it may be said that father does not love mother, relying on painstaking drilling out of a set of play, eventually from nikon and other old lithographic machine large mouth to grab rice to eat, from bronze on the top of the king.
Setting up nikon precision in silicon valley would put combatant command at the heart of America's high-tech industry.
PerkinElmer, which has seen its share fall from more than 30% to less than 5%, has abandoned its semiconductor business entirely to focus on health-testing equipment.
Big GCA customers such as IBM, AMD, TI and Intel lined up to nikon.
Nikon and GCA each had 30% of the market share. This situation did not last long.
In the large nikon wanton release of self, asmer was born. A few years ago, philips LABS developed a prototype of an automated Stepper lithography machine, but no one wanted to talk to P&E, GCA, Cobilt or IBM about its commercial value. At this point, a small Dutch company called ASM International offered to cooperate. After a year of hesitation, philips reluctantly agreed to a 50-50 joint venture, known as asml.
Philips is willing to work with a small, little-known company for two reasons:
On the one hand, philips was promoting more profitable CDS with SONY at that time. In 1984, the sales volume of CDS reached 13 million, more than twice that of the previous year.
Nikon, on the other hand, penetrating in lithography market, losing established semiconductor equipment manufacturers, to make matters worse, philips was about to start large-scale layoffs, bad economic conditions and bad lithography market environment, make it not big bets lithography, therefore with ASM International cooperation, but is think of a pit on the sidelines.
When asme was set up, its status was similar to that of a child bride. Philips did not allocate funds or even provide offices, with 31 employees working in simple wooden sheds outside the philips building. Years later, asml's CEO, Peter Wennink, could not help but say "poor" when he recalled the company's beginnings. In a word: no money, and suppressed by opponents.
For 16 years until 2000, the lithography market was almost always nikon's backyard, with asml holding less than 10% of the market.
Until a Chinese named Lin benjian appeared.
TSMC's Lin ben-chien sentenced the "dry" microfilm technology to death
In 1959, six months old fairchild semiconductor company hurney invented a "flat process" for manufacturing diffused transistors, making them as efficient as printed books. One of the processes involved in this process is to project a transparent wafer with a circuit diagram onto the silicon wafer correctly. "Surface treatment process after the birth of" become the standard of integrated circuit technology, has been in use today, its first USES the "dry" in the air (medium) for lithography technology is also used in the 1990 s (such as lens, the light source has been improved), then hit, still cannot will the light wavelength of 193 nm to 157 nm.
At the time, a number of scientists and almost the entire semiconductor industry were involved, pouring billions of dollars and a lot of manpower into various schemes to shorten the length of light waves.
