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Nexperia, a Chinese Semiconductor manufacturing plant, located in the Netherlands, was seized by Dutch authorities last week in response to embargo pressures.
A Dutch seizure of Chinese-owned computer chip maker Nexperia came after rising U.S. pressure on the company, a court ruling released on Tuesday showed, underscoring how the firm has been caught in the crossfire between Washington and Beijing.
The government said on Sunday that it had intervened in Netherlands-based Nexperia, which makes chips for cars and consumer electronics. It cited worries about possible transfer of technology to its Chinese parent company, Wingtech.
[...] Nexperia is one of the largest makers globally of basic chips such as transistors that are not technically sophisticated but are needed in large volumes.
[...] The source said that company executives in the meeting believed that Dutch authorities were acquiescing to the United States and added that the company was very confident that it could have the decision reversed.
The Dutch government said on Tuesday there was no U.S. involvement or pressure in the decision to intervene in Nexperia.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26, @05:18PM (1 child)
No spine at all. As easy to conquer as it ever was.
And this is a reminder that Trump has taken nothing. It is all given to him by weak pansies looking for a handout and special treatment
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 27, @08:36PM
How is mentioning corrupt capitulation to American pressure offtopic?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Username on Sunday October 26, @05:41PM (4 children)
>Nexperia, a Chinese Semiconductor manufacturing plant
First, google told me this is a Philips plant, then was spun off into it's own thing, probably because of profitability reasons, and eventually bought by a chinese company.
>possible transfer of technology
The reason certain parts become less profitable is because of weak demand. A competitor is doing a better job at making it, and is flooding the market. This is most likely because of chinese plants in china making the same parts. If this is happening, it means china already has the tech. I think this is just for show. Or to stop wingtech from importing already made chinese parts into their swamp german plant, and sell it from there, bypassing import tariffs.
(Score: 5, Informative) by sgleysti on Sunday October 26, @08:30PM
I'm an electrical engineer and use these kinds of parts in products at work. They're basic old tech like the summary says: Discrete (individual) transistors and diodes, simple individual logic gates, maybe some voltage regulators. Stuff that usually has at least 3 sources and is available from Chinese companies.
Nexperia does have a cool tech for bipolar junction transistors called BISS: breakthrough in small signal. They have really nice Vce(sat) vs. base current characteristics. I'll bet other companies are making those too now, but I haven't looked as I don't generally need to get that fancy at work, and I don't need multiple sources in personal projects.
Nexperia also came out with some SiGe diodes a while back. Very cool because they have a better forward voltage vs. leakage current tradeoff than Schottky rectifiers, but they cancelled these parts probably due to inadequate demand. Sad day.
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday October 26, @08:31PM
I actually never knew Nexperia were Chinese owned. I remember looking them up once and seeing Dutch addresses and history. Hmm. I never really liked their datasheets anyway. I will probably try steer clear of them now, it’s so easy to find almost identical transistors, FETs etc from others like ST, TI, etc.
(Score: 5, Informative) by sgleysti on Sunday October 26, @08:34PM
Oh, also, Nexperia is great because they publish simulation models (SPICE models) for most of their components. I've found the models to generally work well and not cause convergence issues for the simulation's numerical solver.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Monday October 27, @08:39AM
This loses a bit of its credibility when you realise that the Dutch government spokesperson who said this was Hieronymus van Munchausen.
(Score: 5, Touché) by AlwaysNever on Sunday October 26, @08:26PM (2 children)
...until the USA had their cake eaten. Now globalization is to be curtailed.
It's the rule-based world order, as long as the rules benefited the USA. Otherwise, is the "new" rule-based world order.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday October 26, @08:52PM (1 child)
Hey, don't be so narrow minded. I'm sure all the companies that outsourced as much labor intensive work as they could made a lot of money from that transition.
(Score: 2, Touché) by anubi on Sunday October 26, @11:41PM
It's the Invisible Hand that Adam Smith spoke of.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Monday October 27, @04:30AM (2 children)
I was a bit alarmed when I first got wind of it.
A lot of companies depend on semiconductors, and the unavailability of just one component can be devastating, as the companies' product has no use at all unless it has all of its parts.
Our adoption of litigation to enforce artificial monopolies makes extortion by controlling supply of an essential component possible. Otherwise, such an extortion attempt would simply be met by locally manufacturing an equivalent part.
I fear the concept of anyone having the power to extort by nothing more than claiming "dibs" on a piece of information. There is little anyone can do about "trade secrets" where one company makes a product ( say a screwdriver ) that is superior to everyone else's product. Something in the process of making it. Or maybe something like Coca Cola and their secret recipe. As long as there is nothing harmful, I see nothing wrong there. I would, however, have a big problem honoring a claimed right to carbonate a beverage.
With as specialized as semiconductors get these days, I am extremely leery of anything that only one entity can legally provide. I don't know if this is the case but it wouldn't concern me much if only one company was providing the entire world with 6mm machine nuts. That would be a natural monopoly. At that scale, that could turn out nuts better and cheaper than anyone else could. Economies of Scale.
But if they got predatory, anyone else could make them as well.
I feel the same about semiconductors. I hate the idea of the possibility of extortion at lawyerpoint. When the solution is simply to have someone else make it.
Too much like one mechanic claiming rights to service a city only to set the price of an oil change, working with the City Code Enforcement to make sure no one else can do it.
I was afraid that that was what I was seeing. All this political bickering depriving companies of critical components Here was a Dutch and Chinese company joined at the hip. Both supporting the other. Bust it up and nothing. A lot of companies who depended on them would be royally screwed.
I've just seen too many problems based on "rights".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by sgleysti on Monday October 27, @07:53AM
Your broader point is well taken. In this case, Nexperia makes commodity parts that tend to be available from several vendors. These are "discrete" or individual semiconductor components: Single transistors, diodes, etc. Nexperia also makes simple integrated circuis (ICs) such as single logic gates and voltage regulators. Some other companies in this market include Diodes Incorporated, onsemi, Diotec, Micro Commercial Components, Leshan Radio Company, and Panjit. That's only a sample.
Nexperia was spun out from NXP, which continues to produce more sophisticated integrated circuits like microcontrollers, power supply control ICs, and battery monitoring ICs.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 27, @02:51PM
> ... A lot of companies depend on semiconductors, and the unavailability of just one component can be devastating, ...
A few decades back, I visited a local company making piezoelectric transducers. Some of their products included a built-in FET (I believe as a charge amplifier). When their semiconductor supplier changed to a smaller die size (normal cost-saving in the chip business), at least one spec of the new part was inferior for their use.
At that point the piezo company bought the old FET production line! It wasn't very big, didn't require a super fancy clean room and I'm guessing the price was cheap--the original supplier just wanted the floor space back. Now they are vertically integrated and not dependent on any supplier for that FET. As far as I know they are still cranking out that "obsolete" FET and building it into their piezo sensors.
I wonder how often this happens?
Back in the 1920s(?), Henry Ford built the Rouge Plant--which started with steel-making and spit out cars, most of the input to the plant was raw materials. Since then, most companies have not been that completely vertically integrated.