Multinational financier Goldman Sachs postulates that lithography technology in China is significantly trailing that of the United States – with a lag of around two decades. Lithography is a fundamental subset of the procedure to fabricate semiconductors. The ability to produce high-performing chips within the Chinese territory is constricted due to limitations in this particular field.
The superior lithography equipment is crafted by ASML, a Dutch corporation. The uniqueness lies in the fact that these state-of-the-art pieces of machinery incorporate components that have their origins in the US. This dependency empowers the US government to control and limit their supply to China.
Huawei, a tech behemoth from China, must adhere to sanctions imposed by the American government. A severe blow to them has been the prohibition to secure chips made by Taiwan’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Tensions arise from the controversial connection Huawei has with the Chinese military.
As a ripple effect of the punitive measure, Huawei pivoted to SMIC – Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, for fulfilling its requirements of chips. However, the Chinese are dealt with another setback in the form of sanctions that impede SMIC from acquiring the revered Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) chip fabrication lithography machines. As a consequence, the maximum sophistication achievable in China caps at 7-nanometer chips.
These semiconductor chips are often constructed utilizing older and less efficient DUV equipment from ASML. The lion’s share of advanced lithography scanners calls for inputs or components crafted predominantly in Europe and the United States. Hence, Chinese companies’ capabilities fall short when it comes to manufacturing their own advanced lithography scanners.
Fresh insights from an illuminating report by Goldman Sachs unveil the grim reality that China’s domestic lithography equipment industry seems to lag significantly, roughly by twenty years, behind market leaders like ASML. Lithography is an intricate meshwork of various procedures in the overall process of manufacturing chips.
The essence of lithography extends to transposing the intricate designs of the chips from a device known as a photomask, onto the receptive surface of a silicon wafer. State-of-art machinery, characteristic of ASML’s production line, such as the EUV and High-NA EUV scanners are adept at imprinting intricate circuit patterns onto the silicon material. This results in an appreciable enhancement to the performance metrics of the chip.
Subsequently, once the desired patterns are upscaled onto its surface, a silicon wafer undergoes through numerous stringent processes. These processes import requisite materials, etch the wafer, remove unwanted residues, and ensure the intactness of the reproduced circuits. The entire operation necessitates lithography equipment of supreme quality, given the pivotal role in reproducing high-resolution circuit patterns onto the silicon wafer.
The echoing consensus among the fraternity encapsulates that lithography forms the linchpin in the swimmingly flawless reproduction of circuit details onto the silicon surface. Thus, this renders the lithography tools as the most defining parameter in chip production.
Recently, Goldman Sachs released another report projecting the relative backwardness of China’s domestic industry. It suggests that it would likely take China at least 20 years to match the capabilities of ASML’s newest generation of chip manufacturing technology.
Presently, dominators in the industry such as Taiwan’s TSMC are engaged in mass production of 3-nanometer chips, while gearing up to churn out the more advanced 2-nanometer products. Goldman’s insights luminary pointed that ‘ASML harnessed 20 years along with an investment exceeding US$40bn in R&D and CapEx to transit from 65nm to sub-3nm lithography.’
Chinese manufacturers of lithography equipment are currently stuck at the 65nm technology level. Goldman’s dataset reveals that for Chinese companies to reach the technological prowess of ASML, it appears to be a steep mountain to climb.
All these hints at the conclusion that it is practically implausible for Chinese companies to narrow down the gap in the semiconductor technology space and compete with Western countries anytime soon, given the current geopolitical and technological landscape.
The post China’s Lithography Tech Lags Two Decades Behind US, Says Goldman Sachs appeared first on Real News Now.
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