It's hard to imagine that under the hood of our smartphones, computers, tablets, and even cars, those humble chips are actually controlling the technological pulse of the entire world. Especially the "crown jewel" in chip manufacturing - lithography machine.
This device uses sophisticated optical technology to etch circuits onto silicon wafers to produce a wide variety of chips that have become a key driver of the modern industrial and technological revolution. The United States is the "big brother" of the semiconductor industry, and as early as the middle of the 20th century, it mastered a large number of core technologies and patents, so that the order and discourse power of the entire industry are firmly in their hands. Whether it is Intel, AMD, or rising stars Qualcomm and NVIDIA, American chip companies have led the industry for a long time.
With transistor technology, Intel pioneered a new era of personal computers and became the world's largest chip manufacturer. Subsequently, Qualcomm firmly occupied the global mobile phone chip market with Snapdragon processors, accounting for almost more than 60% of the Chinese market.
Mastering advanced integrated circuit technology and design patents, Qualcomm, Intel and other American companies have "reaped profits" in the chip industry, making countries around the world highly dependent on their chip products.
However, dependency does not mean that one company is dominant. Huawei's Kirin chip was born, with high performance and power consumption advantages, breaking Qualcomm's monopoly in the field of mobile phone chips, especially the release of Kirin 980 and Kirin 9000, which made Qualcomm feel great pressure. Qualcomm's global market share has plummeted from 60% to less than 30%.
In the face of such rapid momentum, the U.S. government quickly took measures to try to curb Huawei's development through export restrictions, entity lists, and other means. This has deprived Huawei of the opportunity to cooperate with TSMC and is in trouble in advanced chip manufacturing. Due to the lack of key lithography equipment in domestic chip manufacturing enterprises, it is impossible to complete the mass production of advanced process chips, which makes Huawei suffer greatly and fall into the dilemma of having no cores available.
SMIC, a domestic company, has the potential to produce 14nm or even 7nm chips, but because it cannot buy EUV lithography machines from ASML in the Netherlands, it can only rely on deep ultraviolet (DUV) technology to produce chips with mature processes. The challenges faced by domestic chip manufacturers are obvious, and it is difficult to completely replace external supply chains such as TSMC in a short period of time.
This situation has made domestic science and technology enterprises and universities see a fact clearly: only with their own core technology can they occupy the initiative in global competition. Therefore, many domestic research institutions have invested heavily in research and development around the clock. Harbin Institute of Technology has taken the lead in conquering laser interferometer and extreme ultraviolet light source technology, which provides valuable technical reserves for the research and development of domestic lithography machines.
Shanghai Microelectronics has also made a breakthrough in 28-nanometer lithography machines, and is expected to launch domestic immersion lithography machines within a year. These technological advances have provided more confidence in the manufacture of domestic chips.
In April this year, Guangzhou Industrial Investment and Yuehai Integration announced the successful delivery of China's first advanced packaging lithography machine, which will provide a boost for the future of artificial intelligence and large chip manufacturing. Although these lithography machines are mainly used in the packaging process, their position in the chip industry chain should not be underestimated. This delivery gives China's coastal chip industry chain a stronger production capacity.
In contrast to the ongoing progress made domestically, ASML is facing uncertainties from the global economy and geopolitics. In the first quarter of this year, ASML's sales revenue fell by 26.9% quarter-on-quarter, and its net profit decreased by 40.23%. Although its lithography machines still maintain exports to the Chinese mainland market, it cannot provide advanced models. ASML not only relies on the demand of the Chinese market to support shipments, but also continues to be subject to export controls in Europe and the United States, and the uncertainty of the future is obvious.
We can see that the competition in the global chip field is intensifying, especially in the key technology of lithography machine. Although U.S. companies still have the right to speak and can maintain their leading edge through the monopoly of technology and patents, domestic technology companies are gradually rising in independent innovation, and the trend of making breakthroughs in lithography machine technology is becoming more and more obvious.
However, it remains to be seen whether the technological blockade can be broken through relentless research and development. In this competition, domestic enterprises should continue to steadily promote independent research and development, and at the same time increase investment and technology accumulation. In this way, we can occupy a place in the future chip industry pattern.