China continues to make extraordinary progress when it comes to manufacturing its own advanced chips, but it still has a big problem: it does not currently have manufacturing equipment. extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE) own. Of course is working in the development of this technology, and one of the strategies it is following to overcome this challenge is unique… and almost obvious.
Reverse engineering. In his 2010 book ‘Copycats’ Professor Oded Shenkar argued that it is often the case that imitators end up triumphing over innovators. Although in the West the view is the opposite, in China there is a positive view of copying and reverse engineering processes are an important tool to copy technologies. That is what the country has supposedly tried, as indicated in The National Interest (TNI).
From producing for the world to producing for themselves. Already we review the conclusions from the book ‘Apple in China’, which is a perfect example of how by delegating production to China, Western companies have ended up contributing to the country’s development and its specialization. The trade war has logically made China now seek its independence in the face of the vetoes it is suffering from developing its own technological solutions.
From UVP to UVE. There has already been significant progress in this area, and recently we counted as a Chinese manufacturer already has a prototype of a UVP machine (deep ultraviolet) for the creation of relatively advanced chips. If there is a crucial challenge to be able to create these even more advanced chips, it is power. have UVE photolithography machinesbut having that first problem solved is important to make the leap to EUV technology. And this is where something unique has been discovered.
Let’s see how it works inside. As revealed in TNI, it has been revealed that China has been “caught” trying to reverse engineer a machine ASML UVP Photolithography. Not so much to mass produce these machines, sources indicate, but because Chinese technicians are trying to learn how they work in order to replicate them and, from them, develop more advanced machines and chips.
It’s not broken just because. However, it seems that when disassembling one of these ASML systems, Chinese technicians damaged it. That made them notify the official ASML technicians to solve the problem. When they arrived, they discovered that the machine had not simply broken, but that the Chinese had tried to dismantle it and then reassemble it.
ASML’s de facto monopoly. ASML’s UVE photolithography machines are considered the most complex and advanced in the world, and the truth is that today the Dutch company has a de facto monopoly with such systems. It is these machines that allow access to the production of the most advanced chips – such as those used in NVIDIA’s modern AI accelerators – and have become the true bottleneck of the semiconductor industry.
Beyond the damaged machine. The incident reveals two crucial points. The first, Beijing’s extreme urgency to be able to control chip production from start to finish. The second is that the challenge of creating these machines goes beyond mere hardware copying: lithography systems require extraordinary technical mastery of components such as precision optics or materials science.
Too many obstacles? China may have brilliant engineers, but ASML machines also have a highly specialized supply chain which undoubtedly makes it difficult for such a machine to be built entirely in China. A good example is Zeiss SMTthe German company that supplies the ultra-precision optical systems and mirrors needed for UVE and advanced UVP photolithography systems.
A long way to go. This supposed problem reveals the difficulties that China is going through in order to have machines with advanced photolithographic technologies. At Nikkei Asia They were already talking in July about how complex it is to achieve a “Chinese ASML.” In this analysis they cited Didier Scemama, director of hardware research at BofA Global Research, who estimated that China still has years to achieve something like this. “It may take 5, 10, 15 years, we don’t know. Will it be competitive with what ASML does? It’s highly unlikely, but it will be good enough for China.”
Image | Zeiss
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