Latest news with #Huawei-linked
Euronews
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Eurosceptic Patriots call for Parliamentary inquiry into corruption scandals
ADVERTISEMENT The leader of the eurosceptic Patriots for Europe group has called on fellow MEPs to establish a European Parliament committee of inquiry on transparency and accountability in the wake of recent corruption scandals including the ongoing investigation into alleged influence peddling involving Chinese tech giant Huawei. In an email made public by Daniel Freund (Germany/Greens), Jordan Bardella claimed such a committee could address 'allegations of corruption, money-laundering, abuse of power, undue interference in legislative processes' and other breaches of the rule of law in the EU institutions. The call comes after the recent scandal which saw five people charged in a corruption probe linked to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, suspected by Belgian prosecutors of bribing EU lawmakers to promote the company's commercial policies in Europe. Huawei said in a previous statement that it "maintains a zero-tolerance stance against corruption", is "fully committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations", and that it would 'urgently communicate' with investigators. Related Lawmakers call for binding 5G security measures in wake of Huawei scandal MEPs who signed Huawei-linked 5G letter deny payments In 2019 the Parliament was rocked by an ongoing scandal involving allegations that officials, lobbyists and their families were influenced by the governments of Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania, engaging in corruption and money laundering. 'EU institutions must operate with full transparency and accountability, and the rules of law should be upheld by all EU institutions and agencies,' Bardella's said in his email. Last month, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally (NR) party in the French parliament, was found guilty by a Paris court of misappropriation of public funds and barred from running for office for five years "with immediate effect." Bardella was elected NR president in 2022. Lawmakers have until 23 April to sign up to Bardella's initiative. It will be up to the Parliament, on a proposal from the Conference of Presidents - which consists of the leaders of the political groups - to decide whether to set up a committee and, if so, with how many members. A cordon sanitaire has been in place through which centrist pro-European groups effectively work together to deny the right-wing groups top jobs such as presidencies or vice-presidencies of the Parliament's committees. As a result of the practice the Patriots failed to secure high level positions despite achieving good results at last June's elections and becoming the Parliament's third largest group. Patriots for Europe have been contacted for a comment.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Beijing races to produce homegrown semiconductor chips
China is moving fast — and perhaps illegally — to manufacture high-end chips domestically. At present, ASML in the Netherlands is the only company that builds the lithography machines required for cutting-edge semiconductors, which alongside Western export controls creates a painful bottleneck for Chinese tech. Beijing wants to change that: Taiwan says it is investigating 11 Chinese companies for allegedly poaching its engineers. Whatever its tactics, China may be having some success. One Huawei-linked company has apparently built lithography machines only a few generations behind the leading edge, while the Asianometry newsletter reported on rumors that another domestic company has come even closer, with a laser source capable of competing with ASML but at lower energy costs.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China's SiCarrier challenges U.S. and EU with full-spectrum of chipmaking equipment — Huawei-linked firm makes an impressive debut
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Chinese chipmakers have been gradually shifting some of their production to tools made in China in a bid to support the local wafer fab equipment ecosystem and reduce reliance on tools produced abroad. China already has several well-known manufacturers of chipmaking tools that specialize in one or two types of equipment, which set sales records in 2024. However, there is a little-known Huawei-linked company, Si Carrier Technologies, that has revealed it has almost all types of wafer processing tools in its catalog published at Semicon China and re-published by Zhininren. SiCarrier Technologies is a startup widely discussed at this year's Semicon China, but is little known outside of the People's Republic. The company is closely linked to Huawei and was founded four years ago in Shenzhen to develop world-class fab tools that would compete against front-end chip production equipment made by market leaders ASML, Applied Materials, KLA, and Lam Research, according to Nikkei. SiCarrier's main investor is Shenzhen Major Investment Group, a government-backed fund supporting other chip ventures connected to Huawei, including PengXinWei Integrated Circuit Manufacturing and SwaySure Technology. SiCarrier currently operates R&D centers in Shanghai, Beijing, Xi'an, Wuhan, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and overseas. Its end-to-end development chain covers materials, components, and full systems. To support rapid development, the company aggressively recruits senior engineers from top global companies like ASML and Applied Materials. The SiCarrier catalog presented at Semicon China includes a wide range of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, metrology tools, and inspection systems. The catalog does not include any lithography tools (possibly to keep its lithography advancements a secret), but Nikkei reports that the company already has litho tools capable of processing 300-mm wafers on 28nm process technologies and older. Even without lithography machines, the company lists dozens of tools that can perform the vast majority of steps in the front-end semiconductor production flow. The company also has metrology, inspection, and testing tools. On the process side, the catalog includes tools used for atomic layer deposition (ALD) for dielectrics and metal gates, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD) blanket film deposition and metal contact deposition, epitaxy, etching, and annealing. The catalog does not explicitly characterize tools and their capabilities in terms of actual fabrication processes, but it does frequently refer to 'advanced process nodes' as well as 'future advanced nodes.' On the metrology and inspection front, the catalog includes tools for the optical inspection of both patterned and unpatterned wafers, atomic force microscopy for morphology inspection at nanoscale resolution, and advanced measurement systems for thin film thickness, element composition, and crystallinity. Finally, SiCarrier also has various testing machines, including wafer electrical performance tests, known-good die tests, and functional tests. However, these tools are currently aimed mostly at power semiconductors. For now, it is unclear whether all of the tools that SiCarrier lists can be ordered and acquired. It is also unclear whether these machines are compatible with existing production flows that rely on machines from ASML, Applied, KLA, Lam, TEL, and others. However, Nikkei claims that SiCarrier has partnered closely with Huawei, which has assembled a large internal team focused on semiconductor manufacturing and equipment, and that they are working to improve process implementation and identify technical challenges across production lines. This could mean that SiCarrier and Huawei intend to build tools for a 'proprietary' production flow involving exclusively Chinese tools. If this is the case, it could take years before the first fab with such a flow comes online. Nonetheless, given SiCarrier's pace so far, it could well impress the industry.
