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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: 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.