China Begins Mass Production of Homegrown DUV Chip Tools (tomshardware.com) 87
According to The Information (paywalled), a state-backed Shanghai company has begun mass-producing China's first homegrown immersion DUV lithography machines, with about five units expected this year for SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT. Roughly 20 more units are expected in 2027. Tom's Hardware reports: The Information didn't name the manufacturer, but its sources described the operation as having pulled DUV development teams from several Chinese companies, one of them the state-backed startup Shanghai Yuliangsheng Technology. SMIC has been testing a Yuliangsheng immersion tool since September 2025. Most components in the new systems are domestic, though some critical parts still come from Japan, and delays at local suppliers have held back output this year.
[...] China accounts for around 20% of ASML's net sales this year, down from 33% in 2025, driven mainly by mainstream logic demand... Independent analysis from the AI Futures Project in June put commercial-scale Chinese immersion DUV in the mid-2030s, with ASML holding 98.7% of the immersion market. Qualifying the new machines for production lines could take many months, and they trail ASML's tools on performance and build quality. China's domestic EUV effort, which Reuters first reported as a working prototype in December, remains years away.
[...] China accounts for around 20% of ASML's net sales this year, down from 33% in 2025, driven mainly by mainstream logic demand... Independent analysis from the AI Futures Project in June put commercial-scale Chinese immersion DUV in the mid-2030s, with ASML holding 98.7% of the immersion market. Qualifying the new machines for production lines could take many months, and they trail ASML's tools on performance and build quality. China's domestic EUV effort, which Reuters first reported as a working prototype in December, remains years away.
one piece at a time (Score:2)
Sing to the tune of Johnny Cash:
They got it one piece at a time
And it cost them a pretty dime
But you'll know you're fucked when they come through your town
They're gonna earn the tech in style
They're gonna drive the prices down
And soon they'll be the only game in town
Thanks Trump (Score:2)
We can put our entire workforce on the shoe stamping and pants sewing jobs coming back from China, while the Chinese get to do advanced high tech stuff. Another win-win brought to you by tariffs.
Re: Thanks Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is less about tarrifs and more about China's care for technological independence.
Replacing dependence on a Dutch company has little to do with US tarrifs and more to do with independence from the "West".
Re: Thanks Trump (Score:4, Informative)
This a thousand times.
China used to be happy to buy everything it needed from the West. But then the US spent decades screaming Bloody Murder China Is Teh Enemy and guess what, China listened, and figured they need to be able to cover their needs on their own. And the rest is pretty much history. China is now speedrunning every tech tree like there's no tomorrow, and with how the world and the US is going, they're most certainly right to do so.
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Re: Thanks Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
One tech event in isolation indeed does not look like speedrunning. But you witness them taking milestone after milestone every year, that perspective becomes challenged. Now you can piss on every achievement and say that they are nowhere near yet, but with every step they are getting closer, and they are taking the steps at speeds no one thought possible even a few years ago.
China has a homegrown AI industry running on a homegrown tech stack, and they are leaving the US in the dust by now, all the while being about 100x cheaper. They have fleets of robotaxis and trucks roaming the streets and highways like it's no big deal. They are eating up the cheaper end of mobile and communications chips market. And so on. Better take note, Tortoise, because this Achilles don't give a damn about Zeno.
As to them buying lito from other countries, the US is working hard at putting a stop to it. Whether they succeed or not, China can not afford to get caught by surprise.
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. But you witness them taking milestone after milestone every year, that perspective becomes challenged.
The problem is you think copying a machine and technology from 30 years ago is a "milestone". Most people do not think that.
Now you can piss on every achievement and say that they are nowhere near yet, but with every step they are getting closer, and they are taking the steps at speeds no one thought possible even a few years ago.
I am presenting facts. I am not trumpeting every announcement as a major breakthrough when it is not.
China has a homegrown AI industry running on a homegrown tech stack, and they are leaving the US in the dust by now, all the while being about 100x cheaper.
There are claims by China about their AI. Given how AI claims from US companies are dog shit, I am reluctant to believe China's claims either.
As to them buying lito from other countries, the US is working hard at putting a stop to it. Whether they succeed or not, China can not afford to get caught by surprise.
Your entire point was about how China doesn't have to buy from "the West." They haven't had to buy from the West all this time. Decades now, Chin
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Yep. A 15yr plan started within months of the first wave of semiconductor sanctions. 2030 is the target date for best-of-breed across the full stack using only Chinese owned IP - no shortcuts.
Only a fool bets against a Chinese whole of government plan.
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Yep. A 15yr plan started within months of the first wave of semiconductor sanctions. 2030 is the target date for best-of-breed across the full stack using only Chinese owned IP - no shortcuts.
Depends on the DUV machines are. If they are just blatant copies of existing machines, I am not sure that qualifies as "only Chinese owned IP".
Only a fool bets against a Chinese whole of government plan.
Given Chinese manufacturing history, knockoffs would be the first thing they would do. Also if you've been following Chinese government plans, you'd know that they have had massive failures. For example look up "Chinese ghost cities" where China built large cities with almost no population. Or the status of Comac C919, the Chinese government's answer to Boeing's 737
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Following is massively easier than leading...
If someone else has already done something, then you know it's possible and just need to work out how. And the more information you have about the existing implementation the easier it is to replicate it, as even very minimal high level information is going to steer you in the right general direction.
If you're leading then you can't be sure what is possible, you could spend a lot of resources chasing dead ends.
Re: Thanks Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
UV has a top limit, sure. But homegrowing that tech expands what they can do *now*, builds local knowhow on building fab machines, and primes them to not be as stymied when they move on to building more recent forms of lithography. (You cannot cut off their supply of asics to prevent the manufacture of better fabs)
You kids cant see the forest for the trees, complaining about the saplings china is planting being small, while croaking pridefully about how big your own trees are.
In time, china will dominate chipfab.
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UV has a top limit, sure.
DUV has a bottom limit. It is about 7nm. Beyond that, circuits can be printed however it requires multiple passes. Multiple pass means more defects and less yield. Realistically any fab could have used DUV for features less than 7nm; the problem was that the yields were so low due to defects that they could not make a reasonable profit. EUV has been able to get past the limits of DUV and.
But homegrowing that tech expands what they can do *now*,
Homegrown only means they are making older technology in China. That does not mean they somehow can advance the technolog
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1) "smaller" = "Bigger" (in terms of sales, and modern utility. This is exactly what I meant, UV Light has a threshold over which the structures are smaller than the wavelengths you are trying to use to make them. this means you have to use some kind of mask technology, and you get strange quantum effects from the photons doing things photons do when they are restricted by tiny masks.
2) You are forgetting something here, to make a tortured inference that doesnt really fit anyway. Most of the technology
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1) "smaller" = "Bigger" (in terms of sales, and modern utility. This is exactly what I meant, UV Light has a threshold over which the structures are smaller than the wavelengths you are trying to use to make them. this means you have to use some kind of mask technology,
It is not a "mask technology." You are talking all the trade secrets of ASML to make feature smaller than 7nm.
Most of the technology used in a fab is either precision electronics (needed to control the energizing source's true positioning to efficiently control its beam), which you can do with less sophisticated chips than the ones you are making.
You said " But homegrowing that tech expands what they can do *now*, builds local knowhow on building fab machines, and primes them to not be as stymied when they move on to building more recent forms of lithography. ". More recent forms is 2nm. Future forms are less than 2nm. Not sure how you can argue that China does not need more sophisticated tech while arguing they can make sophisticated tech.
You dont need 2nm tech to make 2nm tech. You can make 2nm chips with 14nm ones though.
C
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Citation Needed.
Well the alternative is the EUV 2nm machines spontaneously generated all by themselves. I think that needs a bigger citation than needing to use last gen's tech to make the next gen's tech.
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Well the alternative is the EUV 2nm machines spontaneously generated all by themselves. I think that needs a bigger citation than needing to use last gen's tech to make the next gen's tech.
The problem is the simplified thinking that an EUV machine is just an iteration of a DUV machine and not knowing the leap in technology between the two. The leap in technology is more like going from carburetors to fuel injection in cars. At the basic level, the principle of both of those technologies is mixing fuel with air for combustion for both, but fuel injection is not a simple iteration of the carburetors.
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The problem is the simplified thinking that an EUV machine is just an iteration of a DUV machine and not knowing the leap in technology between the two.
Either way you don't need a working EUV machine in order to make an EUV machine.
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Either way you don't need a working EUV machine in order to make an EUV machine.
What are you talking about? If you don't know how something works, how do you make it? In the world of lithography only ASML has been able to make a EUV machine. Nikon couldn't. Canon couldn't. The knowledge of how EUV works isn't common knowledge otherwise more than 1 company in the world would be making them.
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What are you talking about?
It's a simple question. Did ASML need a working EUV machine in order to build an EUV machine?
The answer is obviously no. I don't really get why you are arguing this.
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It's a simple question. Did ASML need a working EUV machine in order to build an EUV machine?
That is the most idiotic question I have ever heard. ASML spent more 20 years making EUV happen. That is after research demonstrated the possibility of using 13.8nm back in 1991. ASML did not make magically EUV machines one day. On the other hand, China has magically started mass producing DUV without showing any prototype machines.
The answer is obviously no. I don't really get why you are arguing this.
Not sure how you don’t know that something magically appearing should be suspicious.
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That is the most idiotic question I have ever heard.
Look in the mirror, bro.
The GGGP stated you don't need a working EUV machine in order to build an EUV machine and you have been arguing that point for like 5 posts now.
GGGP> You dont need 2nm tech to make 2nm tech.
YOU> Citation Needed.
also you:
"That's idiotic".
Yes. I 100% agree it is idiotic.
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The GGGP stated you don't need a working EUV machine in order to build an EUV machine and you have been arguing that point for like 5 posts now.
You do understand that someone "stating" something does not make it true. By that logic, I am stating now you murdered Abraham Lincoln.
GGGP> You dont need 2nm tech to make 2nm tech.
Please cite ANYWHERE that 2nm tech is being made by non EUV machines. I'll wait. All you have is someone saying it is true.
Yes. I 100% agree it is idiotic.
So you agree you are being an idiot?
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So you agree you are being an idiot?
No I'm agreeing that you're a moron.
Do you need a working EUV mahine in order to build your first EUV machine?
Yes or No. Simple question. The GGGGP was saying you do not.
That is what you appear to be disputing and I agree with you that you are being an idiot for disputing it.
All you have is someone saying it is true.
Is that what you think? You really fail at reading. He's talking about making 2nm fabs not making 2nm chips.
Not-so Weird Quantum Effects (Score:2)
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It's a bit more than that. They're innovating in 3d chips. If they can't get ultimate density one way, they're picking another. So when they *do* get EUV...well...
That said, I don't know how they're handling heat, so perhaps they can't blend the two.
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It's a bit more than that. They're innovating in 3d chips. If they can't get ultimate density one way, they're picking another. So when they *do* get EUV...well...
What 3D chips innovation are you talking about? China has announced "3D printing of chips" There are no details about what this innovation actually is other than China saying it will be an advantage. In terms of 3D chips, FinFET [wikipedia.org] has been done in chips since 22nm (over 20 years ago). More recent advances include stacking a cache layer at the packaging level with Ryzen X3D chips.
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So if they're making machines then all those things will follow.
We do not have any details about these machines other than they are DUV. All that has been posted is they are making 25 machines in the next 2 years. Meanwhile ASML is shipping 130 every year. Until these machines are actually making product, I am skeptical.
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But China demonstrates that they iterate and they iterate hard so you can be sure when the 2nd, 3rd, 4th... generation follow (as they will) their capabilities will be that much more.
Yes but we are talking about machines that are being replaced with EUV and now High NA at the leading edge. For the sake of argument, China is somehow able to mass produce DUV machines with decent yields. All the existing chip fabs can do that now with current machines. Those machines do not disappear into the ether just because China can make them now.
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Not sure how replicating 30 year old tech is "speed running every tech tree."
It took a long time to develop back in the day, it didn't take a long time to develop now. China is very much rapidly developing tech that the west previously spent decades developing.
This relies heavily on knowledge of the past, but it does allow closing of a technological gap and playing "catch up" with the west. If your goal is to export less to China, well congrats, that's what's happening.
I'm sure Trump will throw a tariff or two their way to "even the playing field"
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China is making good progress on EUV too. They have their first machine built now. It's nowhere near as capable as ASML but it's a huge step towards it.
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China is making good progress on EUV too. They have their first machine built now. It's nowhere near as capable as ASML but it's a huge step towards it.
Citation needed.
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https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
The machine is said to be built, and being tested, but has not been used in chip making, and won't be for some time yet. But this is a much bigger step forward than many realize.
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The machine is said to be built, and being tested, but has not been used in chip making, and won't be for some time yet. But this is a much bigger step forward than many realize.
Not if none of it is actually true. What we have is China >B>says something has been done. That does not mean it has been done. We don't any chips; we don't know if it is even EUV. Until there is actual proof it has been done, I would be skeptical. After all, Intel has leap frogged past TSMC in making chips according to Intel.
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Still if you don't think Chinese companies can eventually replicate EUV technology, you are mistaken. It may take a while, but that suits the CCP just fine. ASML has brilliant physicists but so has China.
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Still if you don't think Chinese companies can eventually replicate EUV technology, you are mistaken. It may take a while, but that suits the CCP just fine. ASML has brilliant physicists but so has China.
I think everyone lies about what they can produce when it comes to chips. Intel lies. AMD lies. Apple lies. And those are companies that have to eventually produce products where people can test their lies. If you think China never lies about things they keep in secret, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Re: Thanks Trump (Score:2)
Damn you really hit the nail on the head with that username.
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Re: Thanks Trump (Score:2)
That's why I put west in quotes.
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While true that tariffs aren't the cause here, Trump's policies (and to a lesser extent Biden's) certainly haven't helped. There's extreme pressure from the USA to block any technology from being exported to China, so it's less about independence and more to do with basic survival.
When you tell someone dependent on a thing "You can't have the thing." They will look for alternatives to the thing or make their own thing, no broad agenda required. This works on a national level, it works on a personal level.
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Re:Thanks Trump (Score:5, Informative)
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but they sure as hell can make the majority of chips in production today.
Not today or the near future. Manufacturing 25 machines in the next 2 years, it will be a problem to actually make the majority of chips. By comparison, ASML is shipping around 130 DUV machines every year. That does not factor what Nikon and Canon ships.
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I meant they can now use their own equipment to make the most common chips used throughout the world.
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As expected (Score:2)
Chinese engineers and scientists are smart and numerous, and really good at finding workarounds
Attempting to prevent China from acquiring tech is futile and counterproductive
We should abandon the old cold war attitudes and move toward cooperation
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"move toward cooperation", China is relentlessly predatory and routinely attempts to globally dominate multiple industries. I don't think the rest of us need to cooperate with that.
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Correct. The correct response is to massively build out the west's capabilities, and drive down china's market cornering potential.
the problem is that the western countries seem hell bent on doing this the most grift-heavy ways possible, sabotaging every effort, and then wondering why none of those efforts actually produced useful chipfabs--- (at least on one side of the coin)
While simultaneously nodding cheekily to the above, siphoning off every last dollar of grift, purposefully refusing to create local
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"move toward cooperation", China is relentlessly predatory and routinely attempts to globally dominate multiple industries. I don't think the rest of us need to cooperate with that.
America is getting pretty sketchy as well. For the rest of the world there is less to choose between you than there once was.
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The USA is in the grip of a bizarre international crime syndicate at present but that may not always be the case. Meanwhile China is clearly trying to eat your lunch now and will definitely be doing it in the future.
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China is relentlessly predatory and routinely attempts to globally dominate multiple industries
The commies are doing capitalism too well!
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China provides massive state subsidies to specific industries and dumps surplus products onto global markets at artificially low prices. Is that capitalism?
https://www.newsweek.com/us-wa... [newsweek.com]
Last fall, the European Union announced it was launching an anti-subsidy investigation into surging European imports of Chinese EVs. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the prices of these vehicles are "kept artificially low" by China's "huge state subsidies."
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Have you see the subsidies we give out? Whole wars fought to prop up specific industries.
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"Have you see the subsidies we give out?"
I don't approve of most of the subsidies, but they are far less than what China spends.
"Even with such a low-end estimate, China is an outlier; it spends far more on supporting its industries than any other economy in this study. As a share of GDP, China spends over twice as much as South Korea, which is the second-largest relative spender in the sample. In dollar terms, China spends more than twice as much as the United States."
https://www.aeaweb.org/forum/2... [aeaweb.org]
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That report doesn't seem to account for subsidies like wars and policies such as keeping healthcare expensive.
The Chinese government does do more to direct the economy than most, which is the real key to its success. Policy doesn't do a 180 every 4 years, and when the government says it wants to see investment in X, you can be sure there will be a huge growth market for it and investors will be lining up to pump money into the sector.
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"subsidies like wars and policies such as keeping healthcare expensive"
The report does constrain it's definition of subsidies, unlike yourself.
"The methodology in this study excludes unquantifiable instruments of industrial policy and may underestimate measures where data are unavailable or incomplete. Therefore, total industrial policy spending in China may be significantly higher."
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The conclusion isn't supported by the premise. If wars are an example of a subsidy that they did not include, you will note that the US has been involved in a lot of wars, and China hasn't.
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Sorry but to me it seems pretty ridiculous to claim that wars and expensive healthcare are subsidies.
Meanwhile China "spends far more on supporting its industries than any other economy".
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Well, if you believe we're headed into The Singularity, then a time delay might be all you need. Certainly it's all you should expect to get.
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The Singularity will happen with Kurzweil goes tits-up. He'll have himself taxidermied and put on display with a vial of his DNA hidden in a cryogenic device inside. Someday, in the fullness of time, he'll be thawed and sent to Mars after Elmo.
DUV is a dead end (Score:4, Interesting)
China is learning that there's a long road ahead just to replicate the equipment that's been available for a decade. Obviously they need to get started on it, especially since there's "a bill now moving through Congress would cut off from ASML sales and servicing by statute", but they won't reach the state of the art for many years even if they steal it as usual.
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DUV does stuff, maybe it's not doing the most recent / powerful nodes, but it does stuff... and the 3D stuff we've seen from the chinese sidesteps most of the issues
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and the 3D stuff we've seen from the chinese sidesteps most of the issues
What 3D stuff are you talking about and what issues are you talking about? When it comes to "3D stuff", the first FinFET transistors [wikipedia.org] were demonstrated in the late 1990s with TSMC making the first ones in 2002. For the most part, anything below 22nm uses FinFET.
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"momentum they have should have everyone in the West shit their pants", let's see some cites. They are far, far behind.
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https://itif.org/publications/... [itif.org]
https://www.aspistrategist.org... [aspistrategist.org.au]
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Climbing the stairs is going to easier for them because they will just have to follow the trail dust, until they catch up with US. Once they catch up, it's going to be as difficult. But the first move is to catch up.
Re:DUV is a dead end (Score:4, Interesting)
China is learning that there's a long road ahead just to replicate the equipment that's been available for a decade.
More like 3 decades if you count the earliest DUV machines.
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Well, are they making the earliest DUV machines or something on par with the most advanced ones?
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Re:DUV is a dead end (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're curious, research into EUV started in the 70s and began in earnest in the 80s. ASML's tin drop EUV source was initially considered in the 80s but stopped because it was felt there were more practical sources. It only resumed in the late 90s.
ASML demonstrated a prototype source in the early 2000s, with Nikon and Canon expecting to show one in 2008 or so at the time. But bigger world changing events meant R&D into EUV sources was abandoned by both Japanese companies. Japan pivoted to providing EUV chemicals and leaving ASML which was 3-5 years ahead of them to develop the source further.
EUV research begun 50 years ago and only recently became practical. And it took over a decade to go from a prototype source able to emit about 1-5 watts of EUV light to one able to do about 200W which is just over the minimum required for a practical photolithographic light source. And in the early 2000s, there were doubts on whether it would be possible to build a bright enough EUV light source.
And the government was putting big money into this - DARPA and such were putting big money into EUV research until it got disbanded in the 90s and the companies picked up the research.
Re:DUV is a dead end (Score:5, Informative)
Never been in a fab I see.
For most processes, only the first few layers (out of 50 or more) are printed with the highest resolutions tools. As you move up the device stack, the layers have both larger dimensions and are thicker. Tools like EUV can print very small features but they also have a very small depth of focus. Because of this (and cost and throughput), a fab will have just a few of the highest resolution tools, and a bunch more of the lower resolution tools all the way up to non-DUV (365 nm I-line tools) that only have 300 nm resolution. Fabs will continue to have DUV tools for a long time to come.
I have no idea if this new machine is actually capable of anything, but they are claiming immersion DUV. This is the most advanced DUV technology utilizing a layer of water between the lens and the wafer to increase numerical aperture (and make smaller features). Immersion and EUV are both embargoed from China. The Chinese are able to purchase dry (non-immersion) DUV and UV machines from ASML.
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DUV isn't a dead end. It's a technology used to manufacture the vasty majority of microchips (no, your latest fancy CPUs and GPUs are not remotely the largest market share). There's a reason DUV machines are still being actively built and sold even in the west. The vast majority of the fabs in the world would need those, not the latest and greatest 1 angstrom process.
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Here we go again. Every single time, every advancement a Chinese make, it gets written off as them just copying, catching up, old technology that is no threat to us.
Then a few years later we have to ban their exports because they are too good, too advanced, too efficiently produced. It must be slave labour and that damn time machine they use to steal our future inventions, there is no other plausible explanation as to how they got ahead of us.
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"just copying, catching up, old technology", in this case that's an accurate description, right?
Meanwhile the "China Begins Mass Production of Homegrown DUV Chip Tools" headline which turns out to be "about five units expected this year" is obviously an overstatement.
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Meanwhile the "China Begins Mass Production of Homegrown DUV Chip Tools" headline which turns out to be "about five units expected this year" is obviously an overstatement.
About 10 years ago, I heard the same thing that the Chinese company Comac would win against Airbus and Boeing. Their C919 which directly competed with the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320 family would drive them out of the market as China could scale up their production. The peak production rate of the C919 has been 5 aircraft a year. So in 10 years, Comac has made almost 50 aircraft. Meanwhile Airbus and Boeing make that many A320s and 737s in a month.
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Here we go again. Every single time, every advancement a Chinese make, it gets written off as them just copying, catching up, old technology that is no threat to us.
DUV is literally 3 decades old. These are just facts that DUV is that old. That's like saying Chinese telecommunications companies using fiber optic cable as some sort of telecommunications break through. What is missing from this news are important things about these machines like yield, production rate, cost, etc.
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Lithium batteries were old when they started making those, and now they are the leading supplier. Better tech and chemistry, better manufacturing.
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Lithium batteries were old when they started making those, and now they are the leading supplier. Better tech and chemistry, better manufacturing.
Only if your counter example of lithium batteries is the same as a DUV machine. I would argue they are not remotely the same and this is a logical fallacy of an apples to oranges comparison. But you still not answered the basic facts of these machines: Assuming these machines are not just blatant copies of other machines, what are their production rates, yields, cost. Also what is their manufacturing rate of the machines? Again that's assuming these machines are not just copies. You don't know. No one knows