On his trip to Southeast Asia, René Raaijmakers learns why a highly developed country like Korea is so interested in technology from the rural plains of Brabant.
A small mishap in Seoul. The lock of my hotel room jammed. I couldn’t get in or out. From the moment the problem was reported to the reception desk, everything moved quickly. Within a minute, the cleaning lady arrived. She checked the door and confirmed the problem. Shortly afterward, three technicians arrived with a large trolley loaded with tools. Once the lock was fixed, they tested it five times. Five tests were the standard routine, one of the men emphasized – in good English, I should add.
I had just witnessed a phenomenon that in Korea is called “pali pali.” You could translate it as “quick quick,” but that doesn’t quite capture it. The entire culture here is infused with pali pali: customers must be helped as quickly as possible, and if something goes wrong, you apologize extensively. I witnessed that too. Half an hour after the repair, someone returned to apologize again and offered to move me to a better room.
So, what do you think SK Hynix and Samsung expect when there are problems with machines from ASML or Nearfield? Pali pali!
In recent years, alongside lithography and metrology equipment makers, Dutch suppliers have also started doing business in Korea. Particularly, Demcon and Prodrive have become known here and are learning – sometimes the hard way – what it means to work for Korean customers. Of course, you have to bring something valuable to the table. Both companies benefit from the knowledge they built up within the Dutch high-tech ecosystem.
The Koreans are especially impressed by the proposition Prodrive brings. Since the 1990s, encouraged by ASML, it has built deep expertise in power electronics and mechatronics. Limited by resources and manpower, ASML outsourced a significant part of the development and production of precision drive technologies to the Son-based supplier. Part of the developed IP and knowledge is now Prodrive’s.
That’s exactly what Korean equipment makers need today. Here, manufacturers of back-end equipment are investing heavily in hybrid bonding, the technology that will allow the semiconductor industry to move from 2D to 3D integration in the coming decades. SK Hynix and Samsung will use it intensively to produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI data centers, as well as DDR and NAND memory for computers. Their equipment suppliers – Hanmi, Hanwha and Semes – can’t afford to miss this shift. Electronics giant LG is also sensing opportunities and is developing its own bonder. It’s an open secret that Prodrive supplies technology to at least one of these players, although the company doesn’t confirm this publicly.
Why would a highly developed country like Korea be interested in technology from the rural plains of Brabant? The knowledge certainly exists here. Samsung’s subsidiary Semes has both the technological capabilities and the financial strength to build advanced equipment independently. Smaller back-end equipment manufacturers, however, still face a major step. “They now have to move from micrometers to nanometers,” is the short and simple explanation of professor Joo Seung-hwan of Inha University, an hour’s drive from Seoul.
Back-end equipment manufacturers see opportunities to achieve higher margins in advanced packaging, but traditionally, they operate in a market with strong cost pressure. Unlike large multinationals, they’ve historically invested little in academically trained engineers. Collaboration between the high-tech industry and universities is also limited – not only among smaller firms but even among the larger players.
In many ways, this also applies to Besi, but the back-end equipment supplier jumped onto the hybrid-bonding train much earlier, encouraged by TSMC. Besi may be a Dutch company, but it has very limited activities in the Netherlands. Like several competitors, however, it sources much of its advanced motion expertise from the Brainport region.
In that sense, it’s intriguing that some of the world’s most advanced drive technology – developed under the influence of ASML – is now helping to build the machines that will enable the third dimension in chips.
Main photo credit: Prodrive Technologies
