Mr Viral
Chipmaking tool biz ASML plans to open a new facility in China this year amid rising trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
The supplier of advanced lithography equipment disclosed in its latest Annual Report that it aims to inaugurate a Beijing-based Reuse & Repair Center in 2025, recognizing the importance of China as one of its largest markets, alongside Taiwan.
This is a facility for reconditioning and reusing materials from systems that have been returned from the field, so the unit won’t manufacture from scratch.
The decision comes after US authorities extended the list of restrictions on suppliers of chip manufacturing tech in December to include metrology – the precise measurement and validation of semiconductor materials using e-beams, X-rays and more – and software. Meanwhile further fab locations, mainly in China, were added to the export blacklist.
In retaliation, Beijing kicked off an investigation in January to decide if US subsidies to chipmakers are harming its semiconductor companies and amount to unreasonable trade practices.
This was days before President Donald Trump’s administration – which itself isn’t keen on the CHIPs Act – took over in Washington and introduced a further hardening of its stance on China, hiking tariffs on goods imported from the country by an extra ten percent.
ASML is currently the world’s only supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography equipment, used in the making of advanced chips with smaller features to cram in more circuitry. Export of these products to China was blocked by the Dutch government several years ago.
Fresh reports from China now suggest local researchers may have found a way to produce light at a 13.5 nm wavelength – the same in ASML’s EUV kit – and are working to produce homegrown tech to sidestep the export ban.
According to TechPowerUp, Chinese megacorp Huawei is testing the system at a facility in the city of Dongguan, with trial production runs scheduled from September, and mass manufacturing targeted for 2026. It is said to use a technique called laser-induced discharge plasma (LDP), claimed to be simpler and less costly than ASML’s laser-produced plasma (LPP) technology.
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Huawei has previously caught the US off-guard by introducing a smartphone using a homegrown 7nm processor, technology it was not believed capable of producing.
The Register asked Huawei to comment but it decliend the invitation. ASML had not responded at the time of publication.
In contrast to ASML, IBM shuttered its Chinese research and development operations at the start of March.
Big Blue signalled last year that it intended to close its China Development Lab and China Systems Lab after 32 years of operations, due to fractious relations between Washington and Beijing.
It was also reported at the time that the closure was blamed on competition from China’s state-subsidized rivals, and that IBM was shifting R&D work outside the country. It is believed to impact more than 1,800 staff.
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In other chip news, the Office of the US Trade Representative has announced a public hearing this week for an investigation into claims of China “targeting of the semiconductor industry for dominance.”
This refers to China ramping up production of so-called mature nodes –manufacturing processes that are no longer at the cutting edge but still used to make chips for a wide variety of applications including automotive, industrial, and consumer products.
The European Commission is similarly concerned that China could flood the global market with cheap chips, undercutting Western manufacturers and pushing them out ®.
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