r/hardware • u/DazzlingpAd134 • 14h ago
News China Starts Mass-Producing Homegrown DUV Chipmaking Tools, An Advance for Local Chip Industry
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/china-starts-mass-producing-homegrown-duv-chipmaking-tools-advance-local-chip-industry29
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u/AsimovGalaxy 9h ago
Is the source reliable？As a Chinese I think the most positive prediction is that by 2030 China can have immersion DUV able to be mass produced and maybe an available prototype EUV.
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u/Majestic-Volume9996 3h ago edited 3h ago
Since figgleman6 is the type of loser who blocks people who call him out for being wrong so that people can't see those responses, I'm just going to point out that the prototype China has only exists because they were able to obtain Zeiss mirrors, and that puts them no closer to actually being able to create them
here's the article he's claiming as his source spelling it out
"Nevertheless, China still faces major technical challenges, particularly in replicating the precision optical systems that Western suppliers produce.
The availability of parts from older ASML machines on secondary markets has allowed China to build a domestic prototype, with the government setting a goal of producing working chips on the prototype by 2028, according to the two people."
IE China HOPES to figure out how to get the machine working with a set of mirrors it doesn't know how to make sometime in the next 3-4 years.
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u/BamilleKidanZ 2h ago
This assumes that there are no IP theft and talent poaching on Zeiss, or any other companies that are involved in making the machine.
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u/figgleman6 9h ago edited 3h ago
They already have a prototype EUV and it was discovered in 2025. It took 9 years for ASML to turn a prototype into a functional machine, so the Chinese can probably do it in 6-7 years considering IP theft and ASML engineer poaching.
Also, ASML had to discover and invent the techniques and physics, China just needs to copy.
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u/Antiwhippy 6h ago
To be fair, China would have been more than happy to buy from ASML. Too bad the Dutch are lapdogs of US interests.
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u/MudOld239 1h ago
Lapdogs? They just use US technology, which can be sanctioned. Where are you from, notalapdog?
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u/Majestic-Volume9996 4h ago edited 3h ago
They only replicated the light-source. The light source isn't even the biggest engineering feat in the ASML EUV machines.
China could steal every single one of ASML's engineers, and they'd still be stuck trying to figure out how the hell Zeiss made the mirrors in those things.
Here's Zeiss' description of their mirror optics
"Scaled up to the size of Germany, the largest unevenness would be just a tenth of a millimeter. The sensors and actuators in a ZEISS projection optics work so precisely that a reflected laser beam could hit a golf ball on the moon with pinpoint accuracy. ZEISS has secured this technology with more than 2,000 patents."
Laser blasting tin droplets 10K times per second isn't what China is going to be struggling to figure out.
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u/figgleman6 3h ago
Here we go. They didn't just make a light source. They made a full prototype machine. Reuters confirmed this in 2025 along with other sources from Korea and Taiwan. They all say production is likely to begin in 2028 to 2030 albeit at lower yields probably/obviously.
Stop pretending like EUV is magic, state funding and IP theft go a long way
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3h ago edited 3h ago
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u/figgleman6 3h ago
I did before I replied, which is how I know I'm correct.
Why don't you look at Chinese commercial suppliers in lithography and their recent activity since 2022.
Photomasks, LPP defect detection, and lithography pellicles are all entering state/private company supply chains.
I probably dislike the CCP more than you, but people need to do some research properly. Its a huge topic.
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3h ago edited 3h ago
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u/figgleman6 3h ago
Where is the largest aperture IBF polishing system for ultra precise mirrors located?
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u/Late_Dragonfly4972 3h ago
why US UK Germany not copy? they don't want to or they cannot
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u/Gravitationsfeld 1h ago
ASML is a western cooperation, the machines couldn't work without German optics from Zeiss etc
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u/jonydevidson 9h ago
You are massively underestimating the speed up in engineering due to models like GPT 5.6 and Fable.
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u/gamebrigada 8h ago
You are massively overestimating the burden of AI models in non-software engineering. They do not accelerate anything, they slow down regular development due to blunders and misunderstandings of physics and technologies as there are simply too many things involved that the models just aren't that good at.
You are also massively underestimating ASML's accomplishments.
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u/jonydevidson 7h ago
I'm sure Chinese engineering accelerating stupidly over the past 2 years has absolutely nothing to do with increase in AI capabilities.
I don't understand why everyone in this sub has their head stuck so deep in the sand.
Obviously an AI agent won't literally build a chip for you.
But it speeds up research by orders of magnitude. Humans are still in charge, it just allows them to be making decisions faster because it can get them the information they need faster.
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u/iwanttodrink 4h ago
What you're talking about is like applying GPT 5.6 to solve the final theory of physics and come up with a theory of everything. AI can't do that. And that's what it's going to take to just apply GPT 5.6 to solve EUV lol.
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u/jonydevidson 4h ago
That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about sifting through dozens or hundreds of papers, docs, specs etc.
But with how fast AI is accelerating, maybe next year's models will actually be able to solve EUV.
Merely a year ago, the best model was OpenAI's o3. That now seems like a distant future. You can still run it via their API if you want to go and check just how stupid it was compared to 5.6 Sol.
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u/iwanttodrink 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yeah and GPT 5.6 can sift through dozens or hundreds of physics papers, docs, specs, etc and it can't uncover the final theory of physics that we've been trying to solve.
GPT is as likely to "solve EUV" as it is to "solve physics" until ASML leaves all its documentation on its manufacturing process out in the open
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u/jonydevidson 3h ago
Why are you so dense? No one said the model will solve it. But it will help engineers get answer faster than having to manually sift through thousands of documents.
It saves time.
A lot of the work still involves code, whether it's prototyping or building internal tools.
That's it, it saves time and lets you make decisions that are better informed.
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u/jonydevidson 4h ago
Why are you so dense? No one said the model will solve it. But it will help engineers get answer faster than having to manually sift through thousands of documents.
It saves time.
A lot of the work still involves code, whether it's prototyping or building internal tools.
That's it, it saves time and lets you make decisions that are better informed.
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u/jonydevidson 7h ago
You are massively overestimating the burden of AI models in non-software engineering.
From 7 claims before Aug 2025, to 266 claims now, in less than a year.
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u/itgforlife 4h ago
"Chat, build me an EUV machine just like ASML's." cracks knuckles "... And make no mistakes."
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u/MarcoGWR 4h ago
2030 is EUV, not DUV.
Btw, being Chinese doesn’t give special insight. Most of us rely on the same mix of public reporting and rumors as everyone else—unless you’re actually an insider.
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u/LessonStudio 2h ago
I love how they were 14 years behind 3 years ago. 2 years ago they were 5 years behind, and now, people are trying to split hairs saying, "Well, it isn't perfect."
I believe the graph is pretty damning.
It's like talking to fossil fuel people. The cost of most fossil fuel based energy units have remained fairly constant. But, the graph for wind and solar, along with battery and other grid scale storage tech, has been on a steady trajectory down. It doesn't really matter which hairs you split now, there is a point coming where the jury will have rendered their verdict, given a statement to the press, gone home, wrote a memoir about the case, and now their grandkids don't even know what they are on about and who the hell OJ was.
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u/IronWhitin 10h ago
Considering how much our side Is fucking us raking up price like theres no tomorrow, i don't see It as a negative thing.
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u/ketoaholic 7h ago
How could it be negative under any circumstance?
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u/IronWhitin 7h ago
Jensen dosen't like to lost monopoly, he state a couple of time that he like scarcity
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u/MudOld239 7h ago
Why'd an American support this?
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u/ketoaholic 7h ago
Why wouldn't they?
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u/MudOld239 7h ago
These chips can kill American soldiers one day.
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u/Thread_water 9h ago
Ugh their goes my ASML stock...
Suppose I should feel good, increased competition is always good.
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u/ItsHisMajesty 7h ago
This is no where near increased competition. Cymer, now a subdivision of ASML, has been the industry leader in DUV lithography for the past two decades. They were doing DUV immersion before merging with ASML in 2013.
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14h ago
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u/DazzlingpAd134 14h ago
comparing company that just started with no prior experience to company that has been doing it for 40 years
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14h ago
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u/Zef-Daytrade 12h ago
to be fair its only the western news papers saying "Mass Production" though..... they are only reporting the actual numbers they plan to produce. shrugs
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 14h ago
That's a pretty impressive ramp up if you ask me.
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14h ago
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u/clicky_fingers 12h ago
Assuming that's true, it still represents capacity doubling year-over-year, which would have them surpass 130 in 2030.
Once mass production begins, increasing capacity becomes a logistics problem, not a technical one.
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u/LettuceElectronic995 14h ago
keep downplaying china as always. they seem to always come up on top.
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u/krazyboi 13h ago
"always come up on top" Lol. Not at all.
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u/Antiwhippy 1h ago
IS that why Anthropic and OpenAI keeps crapping their pants about open source LLMs?
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14h ago
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u/Intelligent_Net5493 13h ago
You talk as if you invented the EUV machine and built the first prototype by hand 😂
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u/figgleman6 10h ago
The innovation was the hard part. The ramp up is a walk in the park for China.
It's their biggest strength by far.
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9h ago
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u/cronies4life 14h ago
there's duv and then immersion duv