China's Huawei files new EUV lithography patent, moving forward with its drive to semiconductor self-sufficiency

[Delicieuxz]

China's Huawei has filed an EUV lithography patent titled "Mirror, Photolithography Device and Its Control Method", which indicates that China is making some headway with its plan to develop its own EUV lith tech, to immunize itself from external supply challenges, risks, and threats, a prime example of which would be US sanctions prohibiting ASML from selling EUV lithography technology to China.

ASML Stock Falls on News of a Huawei Patent Application. Time to Sell?

According to a report from Taiwanese media outlet UDN, Huawei has filed a patent on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment in China. Currently, actual working EUV technology is ASML's realm to rule, though its predecessor technology, which involves deep ultraviolet (DUV), has some competition.

EUV is incredibly important: It enables the manufacture of chips with transistors (the tiny switches in a chip that handle the computing process in a computer) just a few nanometers in size. Chips designed at this microscopic level are what power our smartphones and high-performance computing like AI in data centers. Decades of research and a handful of key acquisitions have put ASML many years in the lead when it comes to EUV technology know-how.
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However, filing a patent -- especially a patent solely for use in China -- is not the same thing as actually building a working piece of equipment. It took ASML many years to complete a working EUV prototype, and many more years after that to actually commercialize its most advanced machines. If the patent is granted, Huawei merely possesses a legal document. It will still need to build its EUV machine. Which, mind you, requires many thousands of critical and specialized parts, some of which are made in the U.S., where there are restrictions on exports of advanced chipmaking technology to China.

UDN article: Huawei's breakthrough show EUV lithography technology

Faced with the problem of chip bottlenecks, Huawei recently released a patent for a new extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. Huawei's patent "Mirror, Photolithography Device and Its Control Method", and this method can solve the problem that coherent light cannot be uniformed due to the formation of a fixed interference pattern. It is optimized on the basis of extreme ultraviolet light lithography devices. In order to achieve the purpose of uniform light.

According to external analysis, this is Huawei's complete abandonment of illusions and a signal that it will personally end up investing in the research and development of lithography machines.

The CEO of ASML recently lambasted US sanctions on semiconductor exports as being driven by less-than honest intentions - a claim which is strongly supported by a lot of things I won't post here due to forum rules concerning politics.

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1603123201826902017

Other recent news of China's chip-making progress include a report that China achieved 7nm more quickly than expected (and is working on 5nm), and that China will release a domestic chip with performance allegedly comparable to Ryzen 5000 / 11th-Gen Intel in 2023.

I see China's progress as a promising thing for the future of tech competition, pricing, and innovation, and also for matters of international relations via the decentralisation of economic and technological hegemonies.

 

[Delicieuxz]

China cracks advanced microchip technology in blow to Western sanctions
Non-paywalled copy: China cracks advanced microchip technology in blow to Western sanctions

Patent filings reveal that Huawei has made advances in a crucial method of chip manufacture, raising the prospect that the company could eventually start making some of the smallest and most powerful microchips by itself
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The highly specialised technique has only ever been cracked by Netherlands-based company ASML. A €208bn business, ASML’s chipmaking secrets are jealously guarded by both the company and the West.

Dutch foreign trade minister Liesje Schreinemacher told the country’s parliament in November that ASML’s chip technology was a jewel in the country’s crown to be protected.

EUV machines each cost between $150m and $300m and are about the size of a London bus. Factories typically need between 9 and 18 machines, driving the cost of new chip plants well into the billions.

ASML’s microchip manufacturing machines are used by world-leading chipmakers such as Intel, Samsung and Taiwanese chip giant TSMC. In January 2022, Intel ordered five EUV machines to help fit out a new chipmaking factory.

Separately on Friday, Huawei said it was “back to business as usual” after two years of disruption triggered by US sanctions.

In an end-of-year message Chairman Eric Xu said the company had emerged from “crisis mode”, saying: “US restrictions are now our new normal, and we're back to business as usual”.

 

[brando2]

Once again china magically figures something out in record time. It's almost like they're psychic or something

 

[staknhalo]

Once again china magically figures something out in record time. It's almost like they're psychic or something

Yeah it's less a patent and more a press release "fine, we don't need you anyway, do something"