Beijing's Semiconductor Industry Remains Well Behind Western Rivals
Historically, over a dozen companies produced lithography tools. However, as they became more complex, only ASML, Canon, and Nikon survived, with ASML being the undisputed market leader and the only maker of EUV lithography scanners.
As China is essentially developing a parallel semiconductor ecosystem, there have been reports of multiple entities working on lithography systems, including Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), AMIES (which seems to be a SMEE spin-off that includes Aishengna and Yuliangsheng units), SiCarrier (reportedly controlled by Huawei), and even Naura (which denies that it is developing litho tools). SMEE, which was established in 2002, is by far the most important established Chinese manufacturer of litho tools. Meanwhile, so far none of China-based makers of lithography have established mass production of immersion DUV scanners capable of producing chips at 45nm and below.
SMEE reportedly formally introduced its first immersion DUV lithography system called SSA/800-10W and capable of making chips on nodes down to 28nm back in 2023. However, there have been no evidence that SMEE has indeed started mass production of the SSA/800-10W and that it has been adopted by a single manufacturer for mass production of chips. While it is conceivable that not all chipmakers announce deployment of breakthrough tools, especially keeping in mind that Chinese vendors like SMEE have plenty of foreign suppliers, we would have seen at least some indirect evidence (starting from procurement/acceptance records as well as component orders all the way to job postings and scientific papers) that SMEE started shipments of the SSA/800-10W in 2023 – 2024 by now, assuming of course that there were any shipments.
Interestingly, but the reports about China-made immersion DUV scanners now mass-produced by Shanghai Aishengna Electronic Technology Group (a unit, or an affiliate of SMEE) re-emerged this July, again, without any evidence. This time around, the reports did not even mention targeted nodes or throughput capabilities. To make matters even more suspicious is the lack of reports about shipments of evaluation tools to chipmakers (like ASML does this with its High-NA EUV machines) as well as preliminary results of their process qualifications (like Intel does with ASML's High-NA EUV machines).
For a first-ever Chinese immersion scanner, it is reasonable to expect Chinese chipmakers to use it on engineering wafers, characterize it against ASML machines, develop recipes, identify drawbacks, and pass that information back to SMEE, something that should take about a year. Only once that first machine performs adequately does it make sense to order and qualify multiple SSA/800-10W units for mass production. In fact, such qualification will likely take another year for a single layer and more time for additional layers. To that end, an insertion of an all-new lithography scanner into an existing flow will take at least two years, but likely more. To that end, once SMEE (or its business units) and its customers figure out how the first Chinese immersion scanner should work, these scanners will still be far from mass deployment.
In any case, without any real indicators that Chinese makers of wafer fab tools can produce and ship immersion lithography scanners to customers, we can only state what the UBS analyst did: China's lithography industry is in a position where ASML was in the mid-2000s.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04, @01:26PM (1 child)
Doesn't anybody understand? Cutting edge isn't necessary. If you can make the chips fast and cheap, we can afford PCBs to hold more chips. There is some issue of speed-density, and this may be part of why the recent 'breakthroughs' didn't happen back in 1991 when I was playing with 5 node neural networks computed on a 30MHz 386...
2004-ish RAM speeds were about 10% of modern RAM speeds, so you run things 10x slower - the algorithms and systems are massively parallel. Even if your LLM agent does run 10x slower, if it's doing work that you don't have to, that's still a force multiplier.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Saturday September 05, @05:36AM
You also don't need to be targeting the AI sloppers, nVidia have already got that market covered so it's pointless to try and compete with them there. What you are targeting is making 10 billion STM32-equivalents at half the price they are now, and for that older technology is more than adequate. It's like BYD making good, affordable EVs that easily outsell Tesla despite Tesla having the bragging-rights biggest-dicksize vehicles.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Username on Friday September 04, @01:52PM (1 child)
Once the current nikon and asml litho machines reach end of life there will be a mass exodus, and adoption of native solutions. I assume the chicom companies above know when that time is and will have something comparable by then.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04, @04:55PM
Every once in awhile they're going to have something better, not just equivalent.
Like capacitive touch screen interfaces back around Y2K:
Based on recent tech analysis, here is how the balance of power breaks down across these key sectors:
Technology Area
China's Primary Strength
U.S. Current Standing
EVs & Battery Supply
Total control over raw material refining, components, and scaling.
Strong consumer brands (Tesla) but relies heavily on Chinese supply chains.
Drones & Robotics
Dominant commercial market share and fast laboratory-to-factory pipeline.
High-end defense applications, but lacks consumer scaling infrastructure.
UHV Power Grids
Continental-scale deployment of energy-efficient supergrids.
Highly fragmented, aging grid infrastructure.
Quantum Comms
Satellite and terrestrial quantum-encrypted infrastructure.
Focused primarily on quantum computing logic and software.
Advanced Materials
R&D monopoly on composite materials, chemicals, and industrial scaling.
Leading design capabilities, but limited domestic manufacturing base.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 04, @08:51PM (11 children)
Generally China doesn't research they either steal or fake research. If they take stuff too new and too profitable there will be a reaction. Its interesting the balance point is over 20 years ago. If they try to steal anything newer there will be consequences. This in an industry that only stopped making Z80 CPUs a year ago...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04, @10:10PM
Wow, that's unfortunate. The Z80 is robust, can run in harsh environments with little cooling infrastructure. I wonder what they replaced it with, a Pentium? If they're smart they would be making DEC Alphas... and program everything in Assembly
(Score: 4, Touché) by Snotnose on Friday September 04, @10:30PM
China is cranking out twice as many PhDs as we are, those brains have to be researching something. I suspect just the stuff published by the various SIGs (lithography, wafer, processing, etc) gives Chinese scientists a huge leg up, saving years of research.
As for the Z80 being discontinued, there's still the Z180, Z280, the SH family (SH4, SH6, etc), MIPS, and various ARM cores. Not to mention the ol' reliable PIC.
Being the dumbest idiot in the land and president of the US should be 2 different people.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Saturday September 05, @01:33AM (6 children)
It's weird how you just repeat these vague and entirely unjustified dogmas to yourself.
Do you ever question them, and go "how do I know what I'm saying is true?" or do you just start screaming it louder.
The only broad fields of scientific publishing where Chinese universities aren't the leading research institutions are health(they're number 2) and social sciences(they're number 2)
We're a failing power being dragged even faster down by people like you fastidiously clinging onto desperately outmoded stereotypes that were at best half true and their peak of validity.
Like what's your actual basis for claiming that everything in China is stolen? Do you have a reason or are you just repeating what your betters told you must be true?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Snotnose on Saturday September 05, @05:07AM (1 child)
which of us are you replying to? If him then I agree 100% If me, what's the issue?
Being the dumbest idiot in the land and president of the US should be 2 different people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Saturday September 05, @02:09PM
I know the UI of slashcode can be a bit obtuse, but if you're even wondering who someone is replying to, just hit the "parent" button on their post, and it'll bring up what they clicked reply on.
(Score: 4, Touché) by driverless on Saturday September 05, @05:42AM
He's in a kakistocracy, they're pretty much by definition not his betters any more.
Is "worsers" a word?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday September 05, @06:28PM (2 children)
"citation needed" LOL. That's weak sophistry because its overused. It no longer holds any power.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Sunday September 06, @08:23AM (1 child)
For example (apologies for paywall),
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01705-7 [nature.com]
"For the first time, China has overtaken the United States as the number one ranked country or territory for contributions to research articles published in the Nature Index group of high-quality natural-science journals."
19 May 2023
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07, @06:49AM
There was this too more than 2 decades ago: https://www.eetimes.com/crack-in-sha-1-code-stuns-security-gurus/ [eetimes.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday September 05, @05:39AM
They obviously stole all the US' time-machine technology, which is how Huawei had 5G telecoms gear before their US competitors did.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday September 06, @08:21AM
Anecdotally, in my field, China is pretty much on par with Western R&D. Maybe a few years behind (and catching rapidly). My field requires large scale infrastructure O(1 billion $) that takes time to put in place, so I would expect China to lag somewhat behind the West in that field.
My understanding of publication stats is that China is putting out more papers than e.g. US and many of them are now reaching high quality journals. So more systematic studies seem to indicate that China is, in many areas, surpassing the West.
> China doesn't research they either steal or fake research.
I don't see the evidence for this.