Source: ASML’s rendering of a EUV system.
China may have just found the last piece of its cutting-edge computer chip puzzle.
What happened: Scientists at a lab in Shenzhen have reportedly built an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machine prototype critical to the manufacturing of the most advanced semiconductor chips.
Why it matters: China needs EUV technology to make high-end chips on par with what Western companies can produce. While Xi Jinping has made chip self-sufficiency a top priority, it was expected that it would take at least a decade before China could build its own EUV machines — this moves that timeline up significantly.
With a working prototype, China could now begin producing chips with EUV technology as early as 2030.
Catch up: EUV systems use extreme ultraviolet light to create extraordinarily complex patterns on tiny chips. ASML, a Dutch company that spent decades and billions of dollars developing the technology, is the only one in the world that can build them.
According to media reports, several ex-employees of ASML were involved in the development of China’s prototype and given fake names by Chinese officials to maintain secrecy, suggesting that the project involved a heavy dose of reverse engineering.
EUV is seen as such an important and sensitive technology that ASML only sells to customers in the U.S., Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan — the company’s sales of equipment to China are heavily restricted.
Our take: We should know by now to take China’s government seriously when it says it’s going to catch up technologically in an industry. It’s a pattern that’s played out in cars, fibre optics, robotics, energy, electronics, batteries, and now in chips.—TS