Chinese company reportedly building its own DUV chipmaking machines, and that's a really big deal

PC Gamer ^ | 7 28 2026 | By Jacob Ridley

[dennisw]

Meanwhile, the US still hopes to block ASML from selling and servicing similar machines in China.

A Chinese state-backed company has begun mass producing deep ultraviolet lithography machines, reports The Information. That's a big step towards China's semiconductor biz standing on its own two feet.

It takes a complicated lithographic machine to produce a modern chip, and there are two main types: EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) and DUV (Deep Ultraviolet Lithography). It's the older of the two, DUV, that a Chinese company is said to have figured out. These sorts of immersion machines are still used for modern computer chips, and today most are made by Dutch company ASML, which took over from the Japanese companies that dominated prior.

Citing people familiar with the matter, The Information says the Chinese DUV machines are set to be delivered to customers this year. Customers including, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., Hua Hong Semiconductor, and ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). Yeah, that same CXMT everyone is talking about due to surging memory costs.

While this does challenge ASML for the sale of DUV machines in China, the machines are said to be lagging behind in performance and reliability.

This news comes at a time when a plan to restrict sales of DUV machines to China was recently proposed in US Congress. The plan effectively blocks sales and servicing of DUV machines in China. Sales of EUV machines to China have already been blocked by the US since 2019. DUV machines allow chipmakers with fabs located in the country to make chips down to 7 nm, in reference to the loosely defined process node, using clever tricks like multi-patterning. That's loosely equivalent to the Ryzen 5000-series—so pretty darn modern. Smaller process nodes are more reliant on newer EUV machines.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy
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[dennisw]

ASML Holding NV shares down 5%

Its one thing to make these machines. Its another matter to get a high rate of successful wafers. Not have to bin 50% of your output. iirc-— TSMC has to reject only 3% of advanced node wafers that chips are etched onto.

[pierrem15]

No other country in the world can compete with China's mercantilist state-directed and funded industrial enterprises. It may very well improve ASMC's tech, but probably half or more is stolen and we simply cannot tolerate this kind of unfair competition unless we all want to be slaves of the Great Khan in Beijing.

The only solution is to unwind trade with China. Make China support its own enterprises with its domestic market.

[central_va]

mercantilist state-directed and funded industrial enterprises

I. E. Fascism

[packrat35]

Yep, this is a press release. When details come out that they can’t get the chips in a useable state most of the time...

[dennisw]

At low nanometers it is extremely difficult to get low rejection rates. ASML machines get installed. Then fine tuning their production can take 2-3 years.

The Chinese have zillions of engineers but will still spend ages figuring out/fine tuning elite chip production. I figure they can churn out 14nm chips these days.
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Yes. China can manufacture 14 nm at very high volume today, and it has become one of the country’s manufacturing sweet spots.

Roughly speaking:

28 nm – Massive production. This is the workhorse node for automotive, industrial, power management, IoT, microcontrollers, and many consumer chips. Chinese fabs produce huge quantities.

14 nm – Also a mature, high-volume process, especially at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). This node is used for smartphone SoCs, networking chips, AI accelerators, SSD controllers, and many other products.

7 nm – China has demonstrated production, with SMIC manufacturing chips such as the processor used in Huawei phones. However, production is more limited, more expensive, and has lower yields because it relies on multiple-patterning techniques rather than the latest EUV lithography.

5 nm and below – China is still behind the leading edge. These nodes are dominated by foundries such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics, which use EUV lithography extensively.

If you think in terms of manufacturing efficiency:

[sauropod]

Sure is.

[Bobalu]

It’s like a magical art..

Everything seems to interfere with turning out a good chip.
If you slouch the yield may drop...lol

<3nm is a hard slog

[dennisw]

Its all about the yield. It one thing for the Chinese to be at 5nm..... but what is the yield? If 50% of wafers must be binned then they will lose money

With the RAM shortage Dell HP Acer Lenovo are trying out a new Chinese company CXMT. To see what quality their ram for laptops etc are.

[Bobalu]

I need some ram right now, can hardly bring myself to order it as the price is so high.

Thinking of grabbing one of the new MINISFORUM MS-S1 MAX 128GB units but they are hovering around 4k right now..whew..
Just to run some local AI models...