The Dutch tech company ASML is Europe’s most valuable company, thanks to its production of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines. These underlie the most advanced chip-making in the world, and as such are one of few possible choke-points on the entire AI industry. ASML has mastered the technology and intricate supply chain to make the $400m per unit machines needed to etch patterns on to silicon, where light is focused to a 13.5 nanometre wavelength (about 1/10,000th of the width of a human hair). Without its machines, there are no chips; without the chips, there are no more datacentres. That means everything from Taiwanese chip-maker TSMC’s $265bn investment in future fabrication facilities (known as “fabs”), to the $7tn-worth of datacentres that the industry is expected to build globally (though primarily in the US) by 2030. Without more datacentres using these current and next-generation chips, AI’s progression along an exponential growth (and risk) curve would come to a halt.
So the EU bans the export of ASML machines, the EU therefore controls AI development and isn’t that lovely?
Living in Paris is affecting Laddie’s brains. He’s starting to think like an enarque.
Its weird how they do not have a problem with a company being a monopoly when their side is doing it:)
Also, ASML only remains a monopoly for as long as it doesn’t price its services too high and/or refuse to serve too many customers.
At some point people will just ignore the law on patents and do their own thing – as China does – when the potential profit is high enough.
China has already prototyped of a close copy, another prototype that uses a different technology that ASML rejected decades ago for reasons that were valid at the time and a far more powerful/faster fundamentally different design based on a Free Electron Laser is being researched that should be way better than what ASML has on offer in 5 years.
Except that there’s a difference between the Slab in the Lab , and a a fully functioning production unit with less than x% rejects that can produce in commercial quantities…
Living in Paris?
Explains the T-shirt, if nothing else.
“Why would the EU do such a thing? Not merely for humanist reasons, but for self-interested ones. In the best case, a flat export ban would result in a reorganisation of the supply chain, and bring more crucial decisions under EU jurisdiction – where it would be subject to the regulatory oversight of the only player that has shown it will regulate AI extensively. Of course, the best case is a far-fetched one: it is more likely that the US would retaliate by blocking ASML’s access to US-based suppliers. But even if this happened, it would still be in the EU’s interests to provoke such a showdown, based on the narrow logic of pure economic and geopolitical self-interest, in that the EU would cease to fall behind in relative terms in AI models and the datacentre “compute” (processing power) needed to run them.”
The problem with the average journalist clown is that they don’t know the subject beyond reading other journalist clown trash.
The various moves by Biden and Trump made against China (like the CHIPS Act and export tariffs) have made the Chinese nervous about how much the USA could restrict their development, and ever since they’ve pumped money into self-sufficiency. Alibaba are making their own rack servers, designing their own chips. CXMT are making memory chips. There’s various chatter about them having already built their own DUVs (the less advanced tech than EUVs) and that there are people reverse engineering the EUVs.
Banning them getting the tech will just lead to more investment. There’s no Cloggie Magic that only they can create EUVs because of an upbringing of edam cheese and Golden Earring. China will get there.
*Export* tarriffs? Not satisfied with inflicting punishment beatings on Americans who want to buy things, USGOV is now inflicting punishment beatings on Americans who want to sell things?
Yup. There was a ban on exports of the top end Nvidia kit to China, which then became a tariff.
Of course, what the Chinese did was just rent capacity on hosts elsewhere in the world.
I have to say it’s nice DoomGoblinning from the snooty faux-Parisien…
Except for the little fact that the EU doesn’t have that power, period.
First of all, it will fall afoul of the US, which has made some pretty hefty concessions to ASML to get that export-ban-to-china for certain types of Fabbers in terms of orders and funding of research.
(and an actual limit to chinese
SpiesStudents within ASML, and limits to chineseSpiesOwnership of (parts of) subsidiaries and suppliers…..)Second of all, ASML can’t just sell *any* kit willy-nilly to any available customer.
What they make is considered national critical technology, and requires approval from the dutch government before any deal goes through.
Because both ASML and the dutch government bits dealing with those transactions are full well aware of the fast-and-loose approach to IP and reverse engineering from actually quite a lot of nations if it suits them, including the US, there’s some pretty solid hoops to jump through before you can even order from ASML, and some more to actually get the goods.
And that’s dutch government, not the EU.
The EU has tried to …influence… decision-making in that direction several times by Diktat and found out we slap fingers with a spiked bat in those cases.
Other than the usual polite diplomatic channels the EU *doesn’t* have the power to tell ASML, or the dutch government, what they can and cannot sell.
As much as the Commisars and Groaniad DoomGoblins wish to be able to do so, it simply doesn’t.
As a critical tech it’s basically national property and falls under our Sovereignty, and we’re … pretty prickly when it comes to that.. as the EU has found out numerous times, not only in this case..
The EU, in all its stupidity, could of course try to force the issue…. They’re welcome to try.. Nexit is very much still on the table over here. And that might just be the drop that makes it happen.
So the DoomGoblin is barking up the wrong tree, while no doubt rubbing one out in his fever dream of an EU Federal State being able to do that.
Idiot…..
There is only the one word I would add here;
Finland.
Er, ok , two words;
Nokia.
I do not share your optimism, if that is the right word.
They will have learnt. Or pretended to.
Pendant warning:
“Without more datacentres using these current and next-generation chips”
These are the kind of sentences that expose how people don’t understand what they are writing about. Datacentres don’t use chips, they are used in datacentres (often, but not always) they are bought by different entities that lease space in datacentres.
“Only Europe can make it stop.”
Stupid boy.
Great idea! Trade isolationism always works out well. See: World War II.
Isn’t the ability to provide data centers with sufficient electricity likely to be a major constraint on AI’s expansion? Solar panels on the roof won’t be sufficient.
It’s kind of curious that the units a DC’s capacity is measured in are MW, not FLOPs, bandwidth, or anything else. An input or consumption metric not output.
As far as solar goes, there’s a fair amount of interest in other sources, geo-thermal, hydrogen, SMRs and heat storage and stuff.
So there are firms like Form Energy (iron-air, aka rust, batteries), Plug Power (hydrogen), Sage, Ormat, Fervo (geothermal), Deployable Energy (SMR), Electrified Thermal Solutions (heat) all knocking around in the US, plus conventional hybrid generators like NextEra/Dominion. Some are public, some private, early stages.
So, that’s the US, the UK equivalents are, er, less visible.
But;
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/scientists-discover-regions-of-the-uk-with-greatest-potential-to-use-heat-from-deep-thermal-waters/ (early 2023).
“[T]here is the potential to recover thermal heat of 106 to 222 GW from the rocks at depth under central and southern Britain. The largest potential resource is under the East Midlands and Greater Manchester, as well as the Humber and Cheshire regions.”
Might be interesting for GM, probably better than engineering a commercial property boom.
“[T]here is the potential to recover thermal heat of 106 to 222 GW from the rocks at depth under central and southern Britain. The largest potential resource is under the East Midlands and Greater Manchester, as well as the Humber and Cheshire regions.”
Would be even more interesting if it could be combined with fracking. Maybe exhausted fracking wells could be drilled a bit further and turned into geothermal sources?
There’s a thought, although there’s the grand total of one fracking site in Lancs.
Looks like the Lancs area would be good for both though, more than the Weald Basin.
GW or GWh? Makes a big difference!
A one-off 222 GW wouldn’t be worth the effort (couple of days of electricity demand).
I would have to assume that the BGS actually meant an annual number, not a simple one-off.
Quite how many years before the Greenies notice, is a bit of a moot point.
You can see it coming.