Highest High Tech: China Has A Prototype EUV Photolithography Machine (ASML)

A Reuters exclusive, December 17:

Exclusive: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

• Shenzhen team completed a working prototype of a EUV machine in early 2025, sources say
• The lithography machine, built by former ASML engineers, fills a factory floor, sources say
• China's EUV machine is undergoing testing, and has not produced working chips, sources say
• Government is targeting 2028 for working chips, but sources say 2030 is more likely

SINGAPORE, Dec 17 (Reuters) - In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. 

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. 

EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold War. They use beams of extreme ultraviolet light to etch circuits thousands of times thinner than a human hair onto silicon wafers, currently a capability monopolized by the West. The smaller the circuits, the more powerful the chips.

 

China's machine is operational and successfully generating extreme ultraviolet light, but has not yet produced working chips, the people said.

 

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.

 

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.

 

But those close to the project say a more realistic target is 2030, which is still years earlier than the decade that analysts believed it would take China to match the West on chips.

 

Chinese authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

 

The breakthrough marks the culmination of a six-year government initiative to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency, one of President Xi Jinping's highest priorities. While China's semiconductor goals have been public, the Shenzhen EUV project has been conducted in secret, according to the people....

....MUCH MORE, a major, major story 

Recently:

December 7 - Chips: "How ASML Got EUV"

December 2 - Chips: China's Huawei May Have Found A Way Around ASML's Technology

As the kids say: Big if true.

In late October we linked to this story, "China reportedly caught reverse-engineering ASML’s DUV lithography". The efforts, which have been going on for years are a very tough slog.*

The Chinese are trying to recreate the most complex machine ever manufactured by human beings. In the example above, the Chinese engineers broke the ASML machine. Hilarity ensued.

They called ASML to request a service call. 

Now it appears they may not have to conquer the next-level Extreme Ultra Violet technology to get to next year's state-of-the-art in chip manufacturing. 

The DUV will do....