9 ms·
Can China build its own ASML?
- monssooon 3mo agoThey can land stuff on the moon... Generally they have world class engineers and production... Just from that point or view I don't see why not...
- usrnm 3mo agoHumanity has been able to land stuff on the Moon for 60 years. It's not easy, but not particularly cutting edge as well. A modern EUV machine is much more complicated
- A_D_E_P_T 3mo agoThe answer is, of course, yes. What is there to stop them? Sure, it's difficult -- but where there's a will, and where the resources of China are involved, there is most assuredly a way. I remember when their cars were a joke, and when their cellphones were cheap trash. Now I don't think I'd buy a non-Chinese new car or cellphone, lol.
- chvid 3mo ago"What is there to stop them?" Washington for sure is trying their very best and has so far been quite successful.
- defrost 3mo agoASML of the Netherlands agreed to go along with past US requests to not supply China with bleeding edge machines, so China is making do with the older models while working hard to break the non-US hardware monopoly. Washington, via the recent MATCH Act, has requested ASML to not supply or maintain any of the older equipment. ASML has travelled to Washington to tell US Congress to take a long walk off a short pier.
- chvid 3mo agoIf history is a guide, the Dutch will do what the US asks of them.
- toxicunderGroov 3mo agoSadly yes, wish we'd just told them to fuck off and make a deal with China, they are the future - but we seem to be very scared of daddy.
- Gud 3mo agoWhy, so China can copy the technology and produce their one 5 years later?
- toxicunderGroov 3mo agoIts not impossible but If it was that easy the Americans and Taiwanese would have already done that.
- Gud 3mo agoThey are all economically aligned with the Netherlands in a way mainland China never will be.
- chvid 3mo agoSo the Dutch can make more money and pay less for ai, memory, cpus etc that currently is being monopolized by big tech.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- csomar 3mo agoHaving a reliable supplier in such a time will be a deterrent to building their home grown alternative.
- fauigerzigerk 3mo agoThe US has successfully stopped them from acquiring the machines. That's not the same as stopping them from acquiring the capability to make them. On the contrary.
- Markoff 3mo agothere is reason why they call trump in China Chuan Jianguo" (川建国) aka "Trump the Nation Builder", though not sure Americans would like to know which nation he is building and which one he destroys
- satvikpendem 3mo agoTrump has done more for Chinese sovereignty and autonomy than any president in recent memory. No wonder he's making the world great again.
- seanmcdirmid 3mo agoBefore I left China in 2016, I had lots of chats with Chinese coworkers who liked Trump a lot more than I did. I guess Trump just comes across as a strong leader in China even if he is way more crude than a typical Chinese leader who acts strong but speaks diplomatically.
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo agoIs cutting edge even necessary? If you could build the last two nodes 10x as cheaply that would be way more valuable.
- SXX 3mo agoIf you have stolen IP designed for cutting edge processes you need about the same tech to produce said IP. Producing 10x of 10-years old GPUs is not exactly useful for modern AI codebases for instance.
- holoduke 3mo agoConstant blaming and framing others of stealing. State support, unfair practices etc is not gonna help you become successful. China is now part of the game. You better work with them.
- jon-wood 3mo agoDespite rumours to the contrary the world does need things that aren't useful for modern AI codebases still, I'd really appreciate it right now if China could get some fabs going that just manufactured RAM, storage, and maybe a selection of chips that the big ones have given up on because its more profitable to endlessly churn out GPUs and NPUs.
- kasabali 3mo agoI wouldn't mind getting 1080ti s , kaby lake cores or gigabytes of DDR4 for cheap.
- trvz 3mo agoCheaper isn’t even required; just better scalability.
- eloisant 3mo agoThey're already capable to build microprocessors completely in-house. This is precisely the cutting edge we're talking about. This matters for AI datacenters in particular, if they want to be autonomous in building them they need to be able to build advanced microprocessors locally.
- exceptione 3mo agoThe comparison with cars and cellphones falls short for ASML machines. The former categories involved western companies transferring IP to Chinese counterparts. So far, the Chinese have succeeded in stealing IP from ASML, but this is complexity in its own category. Also, the whole supply chain is part of the solution. That is a lot to copy. But I agree that, given enough time, China should be able to. But Volvo en Tesla handing over IP themselves, and phone makers letting China produce and assemble phones (maybe not as extensive these days anymore) is something different. EDIT: I mentioned Saab when I meant Volvo. Not sure if people downvoted based on that, I have no info on Saab so consider that as a mistake.
- saidnooneever 3mo agopeople overstate complexity of ASmL machines. They are not impossible to make or use, specialist work sure but its possible. The only reason why no one does it is: 1) IP laws, 2) Costs China has Money and Smart people. (and very effective corporate / nationstate espionage) so they can most certainly reproduce advanced machines. They might not have incentive yet to do it because it will not make them popular, and potentially output products would be banned on US/EU. They play a long game and want US and EU consumers to ask tehir governments to please allow the chinese products.. so their market share is safe and stable. I think once there is enough incentive for them they would do it. They simply do not want to do it currently.
- exceptione 3mo agoWhy do you think they don't want to do it? I find that a weird statement, and your given reasons don't make sense to me. This is one of their core programs, and as part of that have taken over some IP via espionage programs. China is actively trying to build one for quite some time now. > people overstate complexity of ASmL machines. They are not impossible to make or use, specialist work sure but its possible. The only reason why no one does it is: 1) IP laws, 2) Costs Citation needed, if these were the real roadblocks China would have had the machines by now already. Even with all the parts at hands (don't forget: from a total of 5100 suppliers) the Chinese couldn't assemble one. It is complex with a lot of know-how involved. The real reasons are: enormous complexity, lots of original research involved, deeply specialized supply chains. Recreating that takes lots of time and money. Even if you cut corners and steal IP. So that leaves China with 'time' as the real impediment. And who knows, AI will be a boost to get to that goal?
- amelius 3mo agoWe'll soon be reading science textbooks in Chinese.
- TFNA 3mo agoIt has recently been reporting that China is cutting back foreign-language programmes in universities because AI translation is seen as the way of the future. So, in their view everyone will soon be reading science textbooks, whether of Chinese provenance or not, in any language.
- realusername 3mo agoI think they are onto something, language learning is quickly shifting into a hobby category (I don't mean it negatively)
- lambdaone 3mo agoThe problem with not learning languages is that it restricts you to computer-mediated communication. If you learn other languages than your own, even at a fairly basic level, there is a whole world of social interaction and culture out there that just can't be accessed with a machine in the way. This isn't to say that automated translation is bad, I use it extensively, but not all interaction worth having is online.
- TFNA 3mo agoThe expectation is that AI translation will also become quasi-realtime, so for in-person interactions, too. Many cultures will probably much rather interact with a foreigner speaking proficient AI translation, than a language-learner speaking with a poor accent and constant grammatical imperfections. Go to the Netherlands now as a Dutch learner who hasn't reached B2 level, for example, and local people won't like it, it just wastes their time compared to using English.
- lambdaone 3mo ago
- joe_mamba 3mo ago>The answer is, of course, yes. No, not in this case. > I remember when their cars were a joke, and when their cellphones were cheap trash. Any country can make cars and phones now if they REALLY want to, they just don't because they wouldn't be competitive on the global market at performance and at scale. But not anyone can just make an EUV machine if they want to. Becoming a leader in commodity white goods like a phones and cars is a different beast than EUV machines. The challenges are not even remotely comparable. China doesn't have a Zeiss, it doesn't have an ASM, it doesn't have a Cymer, it doesn't have a Trumpf, and it doesn't have a dozen other domestic competitors to western suppliers of critical parts that make an EUV machine. And each of those suppliers, like Zeiss for example, is a leader because it has decades of expertise that can't be speed-run, even with IP theft. So before China can have an ASML it first needs a Zeiss. So ask yourself where is their Zeiss and are they beating the west's Zeiss?
- eloisant 3mo agoThey have more than 1 billion people that are getting more and more educated, they have the capital and will to invest in it, they will get there eventually. The "moat" we're talking about with private companies is that it's very hard for competitors to get enough funding to compete, and private investors are unwilling to invest in a company that will compete with a big established player. That's completely different when a state has a strategy and decides to invest to achieve a goal.
- Chu4eeno 3mo agoThe problem is that their government doesn't let them go anywhere but into factories, no matter the education. They were promised upwards mobility, but their leaders need factory workers, more than ever.
- joe_mamba 3mo agoHuh? Where did you get your sources? Chinese factories are more automated than ever. More and more skilled chinese do skilled white collar work not repetitive factory assembly work.
- ilovecake1984 3mo agoTheir cars and phones are still second rate. They are, however, cheap enough to be good value.
- crote 3mo ago> Their cars and phones are still second rate So are modern Western cars - and arguably also phones. If I'm forced to drive in a bug-riddled impossible-to-repair privacy-invading spaceship either way, why would I go for the overpriced outdated Western one rather than the affordable innovative Chinese one? I would prefer a boring 2000s car with an electric drivetrain, but it's not like anyone is making them...
- rvnx 3mo agoAbout privacy invasion, it works for all countries in the world. Vendor-lock is quite high, possibly higher in the US. Look at iPhone, hardware is behind, restricted, unauditable privacy and questionable software in terms of performance (especially starting iOS 26, where you lost the choice for Liquid Glass). Impossible to reasonably sync AirPods or watches, Macbook or choose the firmware version. In comparison, the irony is that China offers the freedom (like with Qwen). On these supposedly evil Chinese devices (phones, headphones, watches, etc), you have an open platform with great hardware, that you can modify as much as you want, and the only people who restrict you is... Google (making sure you cannot root without losing to important apps, so technically you can root, but practically you can't). All the claims about "China = bad hardware and bad software" were true 20 years ago, but this is not the case anymore. That being said, should certainly be quite cautious about default setup... you have US surveillance, PLUS, Chinese surveillance.
- Markoff 3mo agoopen platform? what Chinese phones have as easily unlockable bootloader as pixels? thanks for info btw after one pixel with swollen battery I'm never buying one again, but I have to admit they have great cameras, reasonable dimensions and easily unlockable bootloader, sadly it's wrote pointless with faulty unreliable hardware and shit bare bone software
- andy_ppp 3mo agoThe usual game plan of getting the technology they want to copy by offering cheap and highly skilled Chinese labour and access to the Chinese market by building the machines there is not available to them, so the likelihood is this will take longer and be more difficult than other implementations. There's hundreds of other technologies needed other than the lasers and the mirrors and the software and the experience running these machines at scale. I think to make more than a handful of GPUs they will be behind for at least 5 years. This doesn't mean they will always be behind though. If I was ASML I would have an AI generated honeypot of techniques that are plausible but incorrect for China to go after on this and make sure you get hacked by them.
- IAmBroom 3mo agoMy ASML supervisor literally said to me. circa 2006 (when I asked why we didn't shred our engineering papers): "With all the trouble we have getting these things to work, we should give our notes to the competitors to slow them down!"
- IshKebab 3mo agoCrazy that the US had to block ASML selling to China. I would have thought they'd do that themselves to reduce the risk of reverse engineering.
- gregoriol 3mo agoTrying to prevent someone from having something they want is the best way to make them work twice harder to get it.
- tancop 3mo agoasml will be profitable even after china catches up with their current tech. its not a silicon valley type company that wants a monopoly. if anything most of their engineers secretly want china to compete so they can push each other to do more advanced research.
- rvnx 3mo agoOne scenario: it will be profitable because European and US governments are going to forbid companies like NVIDIA to use Chinese machines.
- Quothling 3mo agoI think what is crazy here is that the USA can block a Dutch company from selling their products. Don't get me wrong, this would have made sense in the world 15 years ago, but today? We all know that China plays dirty, but all those US made LLM's sure seem to know an awful lot about things in IP protected content. Though to be fair, I think everyone knew that China was always going to have their 100% domestic chip manufacturing supply chain. I'd argue that the blocks were mainly a delaying tactic by the USA oligarchy. Simply blocking ASML from doing business with China would in itself motivate China to move faster, but I guess the decision makers and their advisors calculated that it would be slower than letting China buy the machinery and reverse engineer it. Of course that didn't really work out. The only reason the media is picking up on these stories is that China, did, get their hands on the machinery, but then... of course they did.
- HSO 3mo agoobviously the qn is if it will be what china wants and needs more likely something better or more suited to the ecosystem in china will emerge
- jruz 3mo agoI love to see China evolving so fast, the only producers bringing prices down.
- metalman 3mo agoChina IS building it's own chip foundrys and lithographic machines that ARE producing chips that ARE closing the gap towards parity with the best western (ASML) companys. The question is can they do that, this year, or next?
- exceptione 3mo agoI thought the time frame of 10 years is the most recent forecast.
- NordStreamYacht 3mo agoInevitable. Huawei already had 7nm a couple of years ago.
- dangero 3mo agoThey used ASML machines to make that…
- NordStreamYacht 3mo agoBy repurposing an older machine which wasn't designed for that node. More than what Intel could do with all their money and access.
- didip 3mo agoI don’t see why not. China can move a mountain with a billion spoons if they want to. China’s willpower and centralized deployment of that willpower is legendary.
- rvnx 3mo agoYes and that will be great. More competition = more choice = less political risk = great. Protectionism policies are blocking low prices (what about tariffs ? what about monopolies ?) and are benefiting only the ones holding the knowledge and factories at the detriment of the rest of humanity. Can't wait for ASML / TSMC / Zeiss equivalents so we can have access to memory sticks and GPUs / AI accelerators to run Qwen Super-Large distilled on Claude Zulu model, GTA VIII or whatever will come at that time.
- innis226 3mo ago[dead]
- babuskov 3mo agoThe question is "can anyone". Makes you wonder why the USA hasn't built one? Maybe the latest technology required some rare discovery. Just like nobody can replicate the taste of Coca Cola, maybe there some tiny detail that they discovered by experimenting.
- joe_mamba 3mo ago>Makes you wonder why the USA hasn't built one? They basically (almost) did. In 2013 ASML bought US Cymer(the maker of EUV light sources) and in 2001 ASML acquired the US-based lithography equipment manufacturer Silicon Valley Group (SVG) after it had encountered liquidity issues. Basically, the US had everything needed, the EUV light sources and lithography machines, just spread over different companies facing financial issues, so ASML came at the right moment and bought them all and integrated into their own business. Just because ASML is based in NL doesn't mean all of its EUV secret sauce IP is domestically Dutch. Most of it comes from the US, which is why the US government maintains such a high influence of ASML's trade restrictions.
- guiraldelli 3mo ago"Most of [IP of ASML] comes from US" is an extremely generous sentence. It is true those companies you referred to were bought and their IP has helped ASML in _EUV_, but they had 20 years of European IP before that, all related other parts of the lithography machine (and not EUV) that made ASML the company it is. If you think that complexity is only in (light) source for EUV (is it already profitable for ASML, by the way?), then you have no idea the complexity of that machine! Disclaimer: I worked in their metrology department.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- joe_mamba 3mo ago> but they had 20 years of European IP before that, all related other parts of the lithography machine (and not EUV) that made ASML the company it is. Was any of that 20 year old European DUV lithography machine IP superior to the IP from the other DUV champions, Canon and Nikon?
- _davide_ 3mo agoWhat a well written article!
- isoprophlex 3mo agoWhy couldn't they? Why wouldn't they? Why should anyone resist them? The US is ran by a moronic kleptocracy of conmen and number-go-up techbros that give precisely zero shits about human rights and improving life for the average citizen. There is no way to defend the moral or political superiority of the west anymore. And who needs to worry about foreign intervention destabilizing internal affairs when we let the extremists, the populists do that for us? At least if China pulls this off we might get some semi-affordable RAM and SSDs.
- utopiah 3mo agoASML literally makes the most complex machines on Earth. Sure rockets are powerful and they help us reach outer space ... yet they need computers to do so. Computers in turn are made with lithography machines and the SOTA is ASML. Also ASML is not alone. In fact ASML can not exists without its partners, first and foremost American Department of Energy but also s IMEC in Belgium and Zeiss in Germany. Those are all SOTA in either R&D or production. They are not "some of the best" they are literally the best in their very complex expertise. In fact they have to collaborate reach such level. ... and yet, it's "just" that. There is nothing magical about ASML. Yes it might be practically impossible because of IP, economics, etc but still China (or anyone else) can definitely pour a lot of resources to try and make significant process. Will the result be competitive though in light of the moat ASML has, in particular partnerships, that is hard to imagine. PS edit : I did like Chris Miller's "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology" and FWIW did have a former colleague working at ASML and been invited to IMEC events.
- khurs 3mo agoAny nation state can build pretty much anything (albeit over a varying time period), because at the State Level the budgets can be billions, no commercial pressure and also immunity from prosecution (e.g. a Chinese spy caught would be traded for something or another and returned home and state authorised hackers based in China won't get extradited). The only thing to stop them is the will of more powerful states. If you take Iran as an example, they would have possessed Nuclear weapons long ago if it wasn't for USA/Israel as Iran as a state will throw everything at it. p.s. And that's a very detailed and well laid out visual article above usual broadsheet standards.
- fulafel 3mo agoKind of.. but at the same time: A nation state will fail at most things, because there's no budget, and there's commercial pressure, democratic pressure etc. One of the few things to make it work is lack of competition. Iran: they have a nuclear program because they can't buy what they want from the market.
- rich_sasha 3mo agoAs many comments say, of course they can. They are an illiberal country, very good at semi-centrallised command, semi market economy. They have shown a number of areas where through determination and massive central effort they bridged enormous gaps. Chinese cars are already much better than a lot of established tech, not to mention solar, batteries etc. I do however wonder how long China can afford to pay the price for this. China is effectively heavily subsidising it's export and research efforts to catch up. But subsidizing with what? They don't have a magic money tree. To flesh it out a bit more: people in the West complain that the Chinese are unfairly competing, by selling their stuff - cars, batteries, chips etc - at an unfairly low price, either via subsidies or an artificially low exchange rate (or both). There's also IP theft, sure, but there's plenty of home grown IP too. So this means that when German workers build a car, they get paid a lot more than the Chinese workers. The Chinese AI researchers get paid less than the Americans - for the same work. Sure, it's a mix of patriotic fervor, different purchasing power of the salary (agricultural goods are cheaper in China because farmers get paid less for the same work), etc etc. Subsidies are the same thing scaled up - Chinese government collects taxes, i.e. makes Chinese people work more for the same ultimate outcome. But this extra economic heft is not coming from nowhere. China is channeling funds that it could spend elsewhere, but instead spends on high IP industries. Europe and US could do the same. But at a cost! They could tax people more, who would have less money to spend (making them unhappy and affecting GDP growth), or cut investment elsewhere. You could finance it with debt, and we all know how well this tends to go. I don't know enough about the Chinese economy to even try to have an opinion as to where this money is coming from, and what they aren't spending it on but should. But the unwind is coming sooner or later. You can't subsidise something forever. You can't grow your GDP with subsidies. So what's going to give? It might be that they are hoping to kill foreign industry, become a monopoly and milk it, like the US under Trump is trying to in smaller scale. But of they were a free economy, it would be a race - can they stay solvent for long enough? Liberal or not, they are still an economy, and you can't beat gravity forever. I'm curious how it plays out.
- orwin 3mo ago> But subsidizing with what? They don't have a magic money tree. They do though. The advantage of state capitalism is that at anytime you can switch from a fully capitalist economy, where the market is everywhere save the family cell, to a statist economy where the state decides what goes where, to anything in between. If the CCP says 'retirement won't be paid in RMB but in foodstuffs for everyone, and the funds are reappropriated', they kill their debt.
- chvid 3mo agoThe latest from Huawei (which is probably the company to watch here) is an idea called "logic folding" which will squeeze more juice out of DUVL by 3D-stacking logic chips. So far they have announced road maps and benchmarks for their upcoming products using this. A new Kirin-series phone/laptop chip and an Ascend AI accelerator - stated performance comparable to leading US products made with EUVL. Products are due in August.
- chvid 3mo agoHUAWEI Presents the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, Enabling Breakthroughs in Transistor Density and System Performance https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2026/5/ieee-iscas-tau-scaling https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2026/5/ieee-iscas-tau-scaling [Shanghai, China, May 25, 2026] Today, at the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), He Tingbo from HUAWEI delivered a keynote speech titled "New Semiconductor Path in Practice". In her speech, she presented the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, a new principle for guiding the future development of the semiconductor industry. This law proposes replacing geometric scaling with time (τ) scaling as a new guiding principle for the evolution of both semiconductors and electronic systems. Based on this principle, innovative technologies such as LogicFolding can be used to continuously compress signal propagation delay and steadily improve transistor density, which will drive the ongoing evolution of semiconductors and electronic systems.
- ieatcandlewax 3mo agoI saw this clickbait article once about how china was making laser propelled submarines, and the 3D stacking logic chips kind of sounds about as outlandish. Looking into it, they are "folding" a logic chip to have shorter paths with their SRAMs, which is the main application of 3D integration these days, chucking memory (low-power) above high power logic die. stacking logic chips is hard because they have to dissipate a lot of power, and stacking them multiplies your power density (which is already very high for the logic die, generally) by the number dies you stack~effectively. Most of the progress on these sorts of things have just been stacking layer on layer of memory on a single logic die. It looks like they are folding other components other than memory onto the logic die which I haven't seen before, but this isn't cold fusion and even intel has thrusts doing this type of 3D integration.
- Rekindle8090 3mo ago[dead]
- throwaw12 3mo agoI wholeheartedly wish China achieves it sooner. US sanctioning GPUs to China, then blocking access to latest SOTA models will impact everyone in the world negatively. We need competition, Europe is not an option anymore, hopefully Chinese labs will keep open sourcing SOTA models Based on the trend, if China wins, everyone benefits, if US wins, only Americans will benefit and everyone else will suffer
- peter-m80 3mo agothe real question is "when?"
- maxglute 3mo agoThe question is can ASML and western semi keep up with PRC long term. Every western semi player is projected short 100k talent while PRC is only semi power on trend to produce enough IC talent for the entire supply chain, and surplus to seriously investigate multiple paths. I.e. west/ASML stuck on LPP EUV with seriously terminal economics, while PRC doing LPP, LDP, synchrotron, nanoimprint, FEL etc all of it, several branches of which could essentially instantly validate ASML model.
- IAmBroom 3mo agoThese arguments always remind me of 1960s-1970s era spy movies, where Bad Guy has the secret design for SuperNewBig computer chip, which will tip the balance of power inevitably in his favor. Meh. For a year or so, his computers will work a little faster. Unless they power an armageddon-device, it's just a short head-start in a long race. Can China build its own ASML? NEVER! Western brains and economic greatness cannot be equalled! Yes, China will catch up. It won't give them anything but a short lead.