According to reports, the Biden administration has reached an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan to limit China’s access to advanced chipmaking machinery.
According to Bloomberg, officials from the two countries agreed on Friday to implement some of the same export controls that the United States has used in the last year to prevent companies such as NVIDIA from selling their latest technologies in China.
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According to the agreement, export controls would be imposed on lithography system manufacturers such as ASML and Nikon.
According to Bloomberg, the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan do not intend to make the agreement public. Furthermore, implementation could take months as the countries work out the legal kinks.
“Talks are ongoing, for a long time already, but we don’t communicate about this. And if something would come out of this, it is questionable if this will be made very visible,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday.
The agreement, according to reports, will cover “at least” some of ASML’s immersion lithography machines.
Last year, ASML was the sole manufacturer of the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines required by chipmakers to create the 5nm and 3nm semiconductors that power today’s smartphones and computers.
Cutting China off from ASML’s products is part of the US Joe Biden administration’s effort to halt the country’s domestic chip industry.
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Meanwhile, Chinese state media reported last summer that SMIC, China’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, had begun volume production of 14nm chips and had successfully begun making 7nm silicon without access to foreign chip-making equipment.
SMIC is working on 5nm semiconductors, according to China, but it’s unclear how the company will do so without access to EUV machines. We await updates as to how this will play out since China is involved.
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