ASML CEO says China is 10 to 15 years behind in chipmaking capabilities

ASML
(Image credit: ASML)

Although advancements that SMIC and Huawei have made in the semiconductor sector in recent years are pretty impressive, the companies are 10 to 15 years behind industry giants like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung, said Christophe Fouquet, chief executive of toolmaker ASML. It's well known that even with the best-in-class DUV tools, Chinese fab SMIC will be unable to match TSMC's process technologies cost-effectively. This is because Chinese companies cannot access leading-edge EUV lithography tools.

"By banning the export of EUV, China will lag 10 to 15 years behind the West," said Christophe Fouquet in an interview with NRC (machine translated). "That really has an effect."

Having understood that EUV tools are not coming to China, Huawei and its partners have explored extreme ultraviolet lithography themselves with the aim of building their own lithography chipmaking tools and ecosystem, which will take 10 – 15 years at best. For reference, it has taken over 20 years for ASML and its partners from foundational work to complete commercial machines to build the EUV ecosystem. Keeping in mind that many of the technologies developed in the early/mid-1990s are openly known, Chinese companies will not have to develop everything from scratch. However, by the time the Chinese semiconductor industry develops Low-NA EUV tools, the Western chip industry will have High-NA EUV lithography and even Hyper-NA EUV equipment.

TOPICS
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • LearnToloveTheBomb
    And US once stated Soviet union was 10-15 years behind in developing a hydrogen bomb, I think it took Sakharov a couple of years to catch up and then supercede with the largest hydrogen bomb ever created. Considering that China is offering three times the salaries I would give it about 5 years.
    Reply
  • WhteTrash
    It was only 2 years ago when the médias claimed that China would be stuck with their 30 nm chips forever.

    This article will also age like milk.
    Reply
  • awake283
    10-15 years?? Yea right. More like 5 imo. Chinese are no idiots and they probably have spies embedded that leak a lot of the blueprints and plans. 10-15 years is actually insulting almost in its stupidity. I wish I could remind myself to check this story in a decade.
    Reply