We do. But we made a mistake in believing “free trade”. When Western countries found themselves not as compititive as Chinese companies, they destroyed their “rule based world order” by breaking the rule they set up for decades.
Meet SMEE’s lithography machine —— 2 generations behind the ASML.
It is a DUV machine that can do 14-28nm chips, although it is not advanced enough comparing with ASML’s machines, please be reminded that 28nm is advanced enough to make most of the chips on earth, not only mobile phone CPU’s called chips.
The micro chips in your TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, the teller machines, the toys, the cars…they consisted the majority of the total chips production, they don’t need that advanced technology to make. Despite the cost, this SMEE machine can also do 7nm chips, but that’s too expensive and has a higher failure rate. In a word, not economic.
The reason for SMEE’s machine not widely used is simply because ASML’s machine is more advanced and economic. When a machine can do 7nm chips, it can also do 28nm chips, one time investment meets all needs. Therefore, not many companies want SMEE machines.
As a result, SMEE stucks in a struggling circle: few clients choose SMEE——less money earned——less investment to do R&D——falls behind ASML——few clients choose SMEE.
However, America’s sanction forced every Chinese chips companies to consider a potential risk: am I one day being listed in the sanction list? So they turn to buy SMEE’s machines as a backup. Anyway, China is the biggest chips manufacturer in the world, please be reminded again that not only advanced chips called chips, there are tens of millions wafers (a wafer can split into 2–300 chips) market in mature chips.
As the biggest manufacturer, it’s needs is unignorable. Where there’s a need, there’s a supply. When Chinese chip makers can’t access to ASML machines, they will naturally turn to local equipment suppliers.
Some insider’s information said the next gen. EUV (one generation behind ASML, can do 5 or 7nm chips) machine’s prototype is finished, and it will be put into market in two years.
America’s sanction will only booster China to invest more on its own equipments.
