Micron pushes tighter controls

Micron is pressing Congress to tighten U.S. chip-tool restrictions on Chinese rivals, including limits on selling and servicing equipment used in their fabs. (reuters.com) Reuters reported on April 22 that Micron has been a driving force behind the MATCH Act, a bipartisan bill that a House panel was set to vote on April 23. The bill would add new export limits on semiconductor manufacturing equipment and push foreign suppliers to match U.S. controls. (reuters.com) The MATCH Act was introduced in the House on April 2 by Representative Michael Baumgartner, a Washington Republican, with bipartisan co-sponsors including Representative John Moolenaar, the chair of the House Select Committee on China. Baumgartner’s office said the measure is meant to close “critical gaps” in export controls on chipmaking equipment. (baumgartner.house.gov) The fight centers on the tools that build chips, not the chips themselves. Lithography, etching and deposition machines are the factory gear that turns silicon wafers into memory and logic chips, and China still depends heavily on foreign vendors for many of those systems. (crsreports.congress.gov) Washington has been tightening those controls for years. A Congressional Research Service report says the United States has expanded export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking technology since 2018 to slow China’s ability to produce cutting-edge chips. (crsreports.congress.gov) The April 2 version of the MATCH Act went further by trying to align allies such as the Netherlands and Japan with U.S. rules, a move aimed at suppliers outside the United States. Reuters reported on April 16 that lawmakers later narrowed the draft after industry pushback, but kept a countrywide restriction on ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion tools. (reuters.com) That matters for Chinese manufacturers such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and ChangXin Memory Technologies, which have relied on imported tools to expand domestic production. Reuters said the bill is designed to close gaps that still let some non-U.S. equipment and service support reach Chinese fabs. (reuters.com) Micron has its own history in this dispute. In May 2023, China’s cyberspace regulator barred operators of critical information infrastructure from buying Micron products after a security review, a move that hit the U.S. memory maker during a broader U.S.-China tech clash. (techcrunch.com) Not everyone in the industry wants Congress to move faster. The Information Technology Industry Council said this week that lawmakers should avoid “broad requirements” and give the Commerce Department’s export-control bureau more resources instead of creating overlapping mandates. (itic.org) If Congress advances the bill, the next fight will be over enforcement: whether Washington can restrict not just U.S. tool sales, but the maintenance, parts and allied-country support that keep Chinese chip lines running. (reuters.com)