Chinese EUV

Completed in early 2025 and now undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML (ASML.AS), who reverse- engineered the company's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines or EUVs, according to two people with knowledge of the project. ...

In April, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said that China would need "many, many years" to develop such technology. But the existence of this prototype, reported by Reuters for the first time, suggests China may be years closer to achieving semiconductor independence than analysts anticipated. ...

"The aim is for China to eventually be able to make advanced chips on machines that are entirely China-made," one of the people said. "China wants the United States 100% kicked out of its supply chains." ...

Thank you for the insights.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

One sort of doubts that a Dutch or American court would fall for that “reverse engineered” bit.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Courts must reckon with a nation's pilfer prerogative, a precedent set by state sponsored Caribbean piracy. Apparently optics are the key component. A manufactured mess may materialize, comparable to the capacitor plague perpetrated by people with a formula but not a recipe.

Then once they're in a position to mass produce these chips, they'll sell them or give them away to 'less responsible' countries. We need to act fast; there's still just about enough time to nuke 'em.

If a country violates a patent on a machine, can the patent-issuing country ban products made with that machine?

Interesting that some ex-ASML EUV electronics is available on ebay, with free shipping from Korea.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Imagine making 3 nm chips on a tofu dreg machine.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Yup. The user of the infringing machine will be infringing the method claims, iirc. (But of course IANAL.)

I was mostly thinking of the people involved. You can be sued down to your socks, and in a case like this, where national security is involved, you can go to jail.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

This is actually pretty silly. Presumably China - and everybody else - is actually working on the next EUV source, most likely some kind of table-top-synchrotron to put an intense beam of relativistic charged particles through a wiggler.

Hitting random droplets of molten tin with a pulsed laser is downright inelegant, even if it works very well.

And it doesn't produce any kind of beam until you put it through some very fancy grazing-incidence EUV optics.

Interesting I am sure China will soon have a manned Mars base too!

I use Huawei stuff .. 4G USB modem stick, gives me internet on laptop or Raspberry's anywhere in Europe. Huawei makes very good stuff. My Chinese made Xiaomi smartphone is very good too. Always remember: China invented the gunpowder too:-)

China has a better political system than that crazy nutcase now in his goldplated Warhouse in the You Ash with its 2 parties fighting each other.. Beep!

We have a local company trying to do that,

Synchrotron radiation was used in early nm lithography, but exposure rates were too low for production.

Not random, for sure, but the process is super messy. The machines are getting too expensive, around $400M each.

I like the rubber stamp idea.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Tofu dreg on Mars!

US parties compete and police one another for corruption. "Communism" is all about corruption and thuggery and torture and war.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Football sized synchrotrons exist, so it is easy to copy them. More compact accelerators have been talked about - laser wake-field accelerators come to mind - but they are development projects, and can fail.

but presumably could be made faster, with an uncertain amount of decidedly expensive development work.

As long as the chips produced keep selling at a profit, the machines aren't too expensive.

You would. You can understand it.

US politics institutionalises corruption. It has worse income inequality than any other advanced industrial country.

Actually "communism" is Karl Marx's version of socialism, and his insistence on the "leading role of the party" got him thrown out of the international socialist movement.

"If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself." Mikhail Bakunin.

Communist regimes are no more enthusiastic about corruption, thuggery, torature and war than their autocratic right-wing counterpart - look at Donald Trump.

China has done some work on cleaning out corruption, but autocratic regimes do tend to fall back into bad habits remarkably rapidly.

In US lawyers suck the people. In a good communist system people work for all the people. In US mostly for their own profit. Compete? Na, snake oil sells. Russia was first in space, periodic system, Pavlov, science, even the Tokamak is Russian.

The dirty war mongering beast that bought its place in the goldplated war house ..eeh white house? now using its imperialistic insanity to attack Venezuela, hides its crimes by sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC), grabbing land, trying to get Greenland, killing people in Gaza, grabbing the Westbank..

US will soon no longer exist, its size, relative to the rest of the world that is now against it, is INSIGNIFICANT and so is its achievements in science there days. An you play along as long as it sells (nuclear fuzzion for example). A fresh nuclear wind is forming, the times they are changing.

You know about the law of the strongest?

That never happens; human nature fights the concept. The Party works in its own interest and brutally crushes opposition, even constructive criticism. See Cuba and North Korea and all the rest.

Sure, between stopping European wars. Profit is great, as long as there is reasonable competition. Profit is a result of, and identifies, and encourages, innovation and efficiency. Profit feeds people.

Other countries should compete with the USA. That would be good for everybody.

Near first in deaths too.

I've met four cool Russians lately, recent expats, and hired one. Putin is chasing his best talent out. He wants dumb poor patriots and cannon fodder.

I worked in the USSR for a while. It was, still is, tragic to see how badly their elite crushes the people.

All the coolest young people come here. Especially California and especially San Francisco.

People like TSMC and Samsung and even Intel are building their new fabs in Texas and Arizona.

We have gobs of coal and natural gas. The USA is blessed with astounding natural resources. And secure borders.

I'm thinking that Texas and Louisiana and Florida will be hot in the coming decades; they have energy and common sense. Europe seems to be in decline. China and Russia aren't making babies, especially girl babies in China.

Smartest wins these days.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I certainly don't understand it, but it sounds cool.

Now you can insult me for understanding it and again for not understanding it.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I was reading immigration from the US to the Netherlands is increasing this year US people fleeing 'merrica.

Something to do with sanctions, it wont't work as your King Kong sends their experienced workers back...

Stop reading so many comics ;-)

Chances are the -united- states will fall apart. Either after the first nukes hit it, or before that to escape from King Kong's madness.

One ant heap against the other... History has a few lessons, how the Roman empire fell for example:

Anyways, my laser projector makes a nice animated Christmas tree :-) Good food here too! Marry Christmas!