Huawei to use China fabs\'s 7 nm node to overcome US sanctions...

[Jan Panteltje]

Huawei to Use China Fab\'s 7nm Node to Overcome U.S. Sanctions
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huawei-rumored-to-use-smics-nodes-overcome-us-ban-and-produce-5g-smartphones

US shoots itself in the foot again...

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 9:05:45 PM UTC+10, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Huawei to Use China Fab\'s 7nm Node to Overcome U.S. Sanctions
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huawei-rumored-to-use-smics-nodes-overcome-us-ban-and-produce-5g-smartphones

US shoots itself in the foot again...

It\'s not exactly the US that is the principal player here. The Netherlands ASML lithography machines are widely seen as essential to getting very high resolution lithography in high volume.

Electron beam microfabricators have been able to write very narrow lines directly onto silicon for decades now, but the writing rate is way too slow for mass production.

They do write the masks that the ASML machines used to do the lithography.

It\'s not purely Dutch technology - the hard UV light source that ASML uses is droplets of molten tin hit hard by high power lasers, and the scheme that finds the droplets so that the lasers can hit them was worked out by Phil Hobbs - Phil\'s latest book contains a bit of gloat about about it.

ASML tried to improve it, but screwed up. It\'s not easy to get that kind of cutting edge technology to work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney