China is putting everything on the table. You have no choice. Either it develops its own cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing technology or it will lose its fight for world supremacy with the US. Without 100% Chinese advanced chips its military capacity, the development of its models of artificial intelligence (AI) and the competitiveness of its technology companies will suffer in the medium term. Huawei and SMIC are making advanced integrated circuits, but they use machines from the Dutch company ASML and a technology known as multiple patterning that compromises its competitiveness.
This scenario has caused the Chinese Government support with very juicy subsidies to companies that have the capacity to develop cutting-edge photolithography equipment, such as YesCarrierShanghai Yuliangsheng, Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), Huawei or SMIC. However, its most compelling commitment has taken the form of two extraordinarily ambitious projects that seek to put the capacity to produce cutting-edge semiconductors in China’s hands before the end of the current decade.
Shenzhen Hybrid SVU Machine
Exactly one year ago, in March 2025, it was leaked that Huawei was testing the first extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography equipment designed and manufactured entirely in China. Over the last twelve months information about this machine has been arriving very slowly, but currently we know enough to take this project very seriously. Its purpose is to place in the hands of Chinese integrated circuit manufacturers the possibility of producing highly integrated chips without using ASML equipment.
However, unlike the EUV machines of this company from the Netherlands, the prototype of the project led by Huawei It uses an LDP (laser induced discharge) type ultraviolet light source, and not an LPP (laser generated plasma) class. On paper the LDP source is capable of generating UVE light with a wavelength of 13.5 nmso this Chinese prototype should be able to compete head-to-head with ASML’s UVE photolithography machines. The LDP radiation source is less powerful and simpler to implement than an LPP source, although it has been leaked that the Harbin Institute of Technology, which is located in northeastern China, is testing a 100 watt LPP source.
The Changchun Institute of Optics, Mechanics and Physics appears to be able to manufacture the mirrors required for an EUV machine using atomic polishing techniques
The most interesting thing about this project is that, if we stick to what we know, it seems to have shaped a hybrid photolithography machine which combines solutions developed by China by reverse engineering ASML’s deep ultraviolet photolithography (UVP) equipment in its possession and innovations devised by Chinese research centers. The Changchun Institute of Optics, Mechanics and Physics appears to be able to manufacture the mirrors required for an EUV machine using atomic polishing techniques with performance close to that of the mirrors produced by ZEISS for ASML.
On the other hand, Tsinghua University has recently presented advances in polyteluoxane photoresists designed specifically for interact with the wavelength of 13.5 nm. Furthermore, Xuzhou B&C Chemical, which is one of the leading photoresist materials manufacturers in China, anticipates that in at most five years will have the capacity to produce large-scale advanced KrF photoresists (Krypton Fluoride) and ArF (Argon Fluoride). Be that as it may, the leaks maintain that the first test integrated circuits will be produced by this machine in 2028so that large-scale manufacturing will begin no later than 2030.
Tsinghua University’s SSMB-UVE project continues to advance
Each of ASML’s UVE machines incorporates its own ultraviolet light source, but Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences seek to generate this radiation, which is so important for produce advanced chips using a synchrotronwhich is nothing more than a circular particle accelerator that is used to analyze the properties of matter at the atomic level, such as various types of materials, or even proteins. It’s called HEPS (High Energy Photon Source o High Energy Photon Source).
China’s plan is to place several semiconductor manufacturing plants around the particle accelerator to which the synchrotron will deliver the SVU light.
SSMB-UVEwhich is the name of this project, comes from the English name Steady-State Micro-Bunching-UVEwhich we can translate as Microclustering in steady state for the generation of UVE radiation. A priori we may think that a particle accelerator has nothing to do with the manufacturing of integrated circuits, but we would be overlooking something very important: the HEPS synchrotron has the capacity to produce high power UVE light. In fact, it is a source designed to generate a large amount of radiation.
China’s plan is to place several semiconductor manufacturing plants around the particle accelerator to which the synchrotron will deliver EUV light in the same way a power plant delivers electricity to its customers. The leaks ensure that this project has already completed the verification phases of the particle beams, although in principle nothing seems to indicate that this synchrotron will be able to be used to produce large-scale integrated circuits in the short term.
Presumably the Shenzhen hybrid EUV machine will be ready before the SSMB-UVE project, but the path of the latter, if it finally comes to fruition, it will be much longer because it aspires to put a next-generation UVE radiation source in China’s hands.
Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini
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