One would expect that reverse engineering technologies wouldn’t be impossible.
The importance of these technologies for China is huge.
Moreover, they have a massive budget and probably also own a couple of ASML’s euv lithography machines.
Why is it that they cant remake these machines?
I heard some sources say that it might take them a decade.
In: 338
EUV barely works in the best of circumstances and they have no capability of getting a machine to their country to do the reverse engineering
This episode of Odd Lots goes into great detail as to why, if you’re interested in the answer then I highly recommend you give it a listen.
[https://pca.st/episode/607465cc-af91-446c-9944-891a51ec7e06](https://pca.st/episode/607465cc-af91-446c-9944-891a51ec7e06)
Yes the cutting edge machines they make are of incomprehensible complexity. However:
It’s not even that China don’t know or can’t figure out how the machine works. It’s that there are hundreds of thousands of parts in it, coming from literally thousands of suppliers, the supply chain is about as complex as the machine itself, and some of the parts are only made by one single manufacturer often in the US who are tightly controlled in terms of who they can export to. Every single part in the machines are bleeding edge. (I’m making this example up but:) Imagine the mirrors in it need to be flat down to the nanometer level. There are only a tiny number of companies and processes that can achieve that. Now imagine there’s some similar restriction across thousands of parts coming from thousands of suppliers. If any of the parts are imperfect then it isn’t going to do what you want it to.
This is why it would take a decade or more for China to catch up. It has taken ASML decades to get to the place they are now. Making another one of their advanced machines, even if you have one that you could strip down to the nuts and bolts, is an absolutely monumental task.
China probably does *not* own any ASML EUV machines. These are extremely high demand machines and are all called for by TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. ASML cannot build enough to satisfy demand of just these three players. They also need a fleet of PhD engineers just to run. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are 20+ years behind on this; the complexity is staggering, and likely needs a culture that promotes innovation/free thought to be successful, IMO.
Shout out Asianometry on youtube. Has excellent videos covering lithography in general and quite a few on ASML’s EUV machines.
China probably does *not* own any ASML EUV machines. These are extremely high demand machines and are all called for by TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. ASML cannot build enough to satisfy demand of just these three players. They also need a fleet of PhD engineers just to run. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are 20+ years behind on this; the complexity is staggering, and likely needs a culture that promotes innovation/free thought to be successful, IMO.
EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) technology is difficult to develop because it requires knowledge of cutting edge technology in a number of different scientific fields that are all highly controlled: optics, electronics, materials science, and lithography. Not just knowledge of how they work, but the more sophisticated knowledge of how to *manufacture the components at a meaningful scale.*
The reason it is so difficult to develop is because Ultraviolet radiation at such extremely small wavelengths is extremely energetic. So energetic that it does not like to refract like normal light, and requires a complicated system of gradually focusing mirrors to focus the beam. The technology for these optical refractors is only understood by a handful of the most advanced optics companies, Zeiss being the most prominent one. The construction of these focusing lenses requires knowledge of specialized lensing materials, angles and manufacturing technologies that none else has access to.
To complicate matters further, the source of the extreme ultraviolet radiation is a highly complex laser driven plasma element that is poorly understood outside of ASML.
To put the icing on this omega complicated cake is the masking process that becomes extremely complicated at such small sizes. The purpose of EUV is to help etch nano scale circuits in silicon. But at such small sizes you encounter significant quantum interference. This requires sophisticated understanding of how to design the ‘mask’ that contains the circuitry you want to etch (think of this like a very fancy stencil). Without extensive research and testing into the properties of EUV light you would not be able to make proper use of the mask, and develop new masks for your chips.
So, in the spirit of the sub, I’ll give a simpler explanation. EUV lithography is such a significant departure from previous lithography methods that it poses a nearly insurmountable obstacle to reverse engineering or copying. Without understanding all of the science that went into testing and producing all of these individually cutting edge technologies you cannot even begin to build the machinery to produce the EUV light. And even if you did, the process of developing the mask at these small scales is so complicated that it requires years of testing and development without insider knowledge.
Watch [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxv3JoS1uY8) showing a microprocessor in more and more detail.
Notice all those lines that cross over and under each other at about the 2 minute mark? Those are wires that connect all the components on the chip. Under neath them are the transistors and other integrated components of the chip. Every single component has connections that need to be made and wires that aren’t supposed to be connected can’t touch for the chip to work properly.
This is done in a very similar way to stone or wood block printing (you make a mask that shows where a wire should be and then remove the material that wasn’t covered by your mask). Then you do it again.
Near the very end they show a grid showing squares that are 20 nanometers across, (the chip being zoomed into is very old technology that’s much larger). That means all the wires and stuff are much, much smaller to support transistors that are 20nm rather than the size on the chip they’re zooming into.
ASML makes equipment that lets you make chips that have 3nm components meaning each small square would contain 50 modern squares.
EUV barely works in the best of circumstances and they have no capability of getting a machine to their country to do the reverse engineering
I’m working for one of ASML’s suppliers: ZEISS, who are producing the optical components for the lithography machines.
The main obstacle to reproducing this tech is detailed process knowledge and not just building the machine itself. Just to produce the mirrors for this system hundreds of problems have to be solved every day. This includes seemingly trivial questions like:
– What should the transport box for this mirror component look like?
– This cleaning agent seems to increase the roughness of the mirrors. Can it be replaced with something better?
– The yield has decreased by 4 %. Where in the 10-step production process did a problem sneak in?
Now multiply this by a factor of a hundred for every high-tech component in the machinery: The EUV light source by Trump or the stage system for the silicon wafers which has to be accurate to a few nanometers and withstand insane accelerations. China doesn’t just have to copy the EUV machine. And has to build a new high-tech industry and copy the world’s leading companies in laser technology, optics, piezo stage design, and more.
If you ask me they should instead attempt to build alternative approaches like electron beam lithography or ion beam lithography. Those aren’t any easier to build but at least they don’t start the race 10 years behind.
This episode of Odd Lots goes into great detail as to why, if you’re interested in the answer then I highly recommend you give it a listen.
[https://pca.st/episode/607465cc-af91-446c-9944-891a51ec7e06](https://pca.st/episode/607465cc-af91-446c-9944-891a51ec7e06)
Yes the cutting edge machines they make are of incomprehensible complexity. However:
It’s not even that China don’t know or can’t figure out how the machine works. It’s that there are hundreds of thousands of parts in it, coming from literally thousands of suppliers, the supply chain is about as complex as the machine itself, and some of the parts are only made by one single manufacturer often in the US who are tightly controlled in terms of who they can export to. Every single part in the machines are bleeding edge. (I’m making this example up but:) Imagine the mirrors in it need to be flat down to the nanometer level. There are only a tiny number of companies and processes that can achieve that. Now imagine there’s some similar restriction across thousands of parts coming from thousands of suppliers. If any of the parts are imperfect then it isn’t going to do what you want it to.
This is why it would take a decade or more for China to catch up. It has taken ASML decades to get to the place they are now. Making another one of their advanced machines, even if you have one that you could strip down to the nuts and bolts, is an absolutely monumental task.
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