2023-10-08 17:10:02
News JVTech China exceeds all expectations: it will have its own 28 nm lithography equipment before the end of 2023
Published on 08/10/2023 at 7:10 p.m.
Share :
On JVTECH, we document for you almost daily the latest twists and turns in the economic war between the United States and China in the chip industry. Today, it is the Middle Kingdom that is taking a pawn from Uncle Sam.
A little context: what’s happening in the chip industry between China and the United States?
The American government has never hidden its animosity towards the Middle Kingdom, and, in this economic war, it is the administration of Joe Biden which most often goes on the offensive. Its goal: to isolate China from other heavyweights in the chip industry (Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, etc.). Over the months, a sort of “Westernized bloc” has formed and China must withstand all its attacks. The latest one is quite recent and we already told you about it on June 27, 2023: the sword of the Netherlands, raised by the arm of Uncle Sam, has just fallen heavily on Chinese industry. Today, the pressure on China is greater than ever.
To prevent China from developing chips engraved in 5 nm and less, an engraving finesse necessary to take the lead in the race for AI and in the development of tech in general, the USA and its allies are blocking deliveries to China photolithography machines. These are the machines that are used to design cutting-edge chips. The Dutch company ASML, a monopoly leader on the market for the most advanced photolithography machines in the world (known as UVP for Deep Ultraviolet and UVE for Extreme Ultraviolet), will no longer deliver anything to China from January 2024.
And since from January 2024, ASML will no longer deliver UVP equipment to Chinese companies, Xi Jinping’s government no longer has a choice. To keep its head above water and not be technologically left behind by the rest of the world, China will have to:
Optimize as much as possible the UVP machines in your possession.Devote all its resources to the development of its own state-of-the-art lithography equipment. This is what the Chinese government is already doing, but it still has a lot of work to do. To compete with Japan and the Netherlands and produce its own cutting-edge photolithography machines, it will take China (many) billions and (too) many years.
China will not give up and does not intend to be left behind in this key industrial sector
This being said, it must be said that the economic effort of the Chinese government to accelerate the development of its semiconductor industry is already bearing fruit. Two of its biggest investments took place in 2014 and 2019, before the tech war we are witnessing broke out. In 2014, it pumped some $19 billion into its chip industry, and in 2019, that figure rose to nearly $27.5 billion. However, these investments do not live up to the latest one.
Xi Jinping’s administration revealed in September that it would invest $41 billion to give makers of integrated circuits and lithography equipment the boost they need to make their own chip production machines at home. cutting edge technology. In recent weeks, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp), China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, has been in the spotlight thanks to its feat which allowed it to manufacture a 7nm SoC, the Kirin 9000S of the Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, with lithography equipment not originally designed to make such advanced chips.
However, the undisputed star of this article is not SMIC, but SMEE (Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group). This state-owned company designs and produces China’s most advanced chipmaking equipment, although its lithography machines currently only allow it to produce 90nm integrated circuits.. From a strictly technological point of view, these semiconductors are light years away from those produced by TSMC, Samsung or Intel, the largest chip manufacturers in the world, which use their most advanced integration technologies. But the situation is about to change.
SMEE is coming in force but there is a but
An economic war is also a communications war and the governments of all the countries involved in this battle of giants are releasing their information in dribs and drabs, at their own pace. In this context, it is not surprising that barely a month after the joint exploit of SMIC and Huawei became widely publicized and just when the echo of this impact begins to fade, another piece of news puts China’s chip industry back at the center of the debate.
And what news. SMEE announced that it will have its first all-Chinese lithography equipment ready to make 28nm chips by the end of 2023. That’s three months at most. This machine will be identified by the commercial designation SSA/800-10W. Although it cannot compete with the more advanced extreme ultraviolet (UVE) and deep ultraviolet (UVP) lithography equipment manufactured by Dutch company ASML, its arrival represents a big leap forward from the SSA600/20, which is the most advanced machine it has at the moment (the one that can make 90nm chips, as mentioned above).
SMEE wants to be the ASML of China. This is exactly what the government led by Xi Jinping needs to protect the development of its semiconductor industry and the technological progress of its country. Be careful, even if this new feat may impress, it is still difficult to predict the date on which the Middle Kingdom will have a lithography machine equipped with UVE technology (the most advanced in the world, owned only by ASML).
Logically, the complexity of this technology is such that it is unlikely to be ready before the end of this decade. Worse still for China, ASML is not sitting still and continuing to advance its machines. The company is about to deliver to one of its customers (likely Intel, although nothing is official at the moment) its first large aperture UVE lithography machine, which can be described as a UVE lithography machine “second generation”. The standoff between the US-led alliance and China continues.
1696791900
#China #exceeds #expectations #lithography #equipment