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The US Government has successfully prevented SMIC (China Semiconductor) from buying 5nm equipment from the Dutch company ASML. Security concerns are cited as the reason for the embargo
Reports have surfaced that SMIC has 7nm fabrication technology.
Having worked in the semiconductor industry, I expect that SMIC can develop 5nm tech without ASML.
Given SMIC's 7nm production capability: What exactly is the 5nm application that would justify the ASML equipment embargo?
Indeed it seems that despite equipment embargo SMIC has managed to get to smaller and smaller fabrication technology and even mastering 7nm processes. However according to this further reduction using the common UV light sources is getting increasingly difficult. That is because fundamentally a technology change towards an EUV light source is needed to achieve those further reductions.
Developing EUV technology according to this source took ASML 4 decades. Having managed to develop this technology is the reason that ASML today is considered as an industry leader. The former dominant companies Canon and Nikon considered EUV too difficult and stopped its development. According to this a reliable EUV source is difficult to built and also all matter absorbs EUV. So the whole light path has to be kept in vacuum and all optical elements need to be built from defect-free molybdenum/silicon (Mo/Si) multilayers.
In the end SMIC probably won't need 4 decades to build an EUV machine, but I think it is safe to say that it will take some time.
Preventing Chinese companies from building smaller chips apparently seems beneficial for the US as they are probably afraid of all the applications smaller and therefore more powerful chips can bring. On the other hand thereby shielding a company from competition and forcing China to search for creative alternatives might also have downsides.
IBM demonstrated decades ago that they could position individual atoms. The question isn't whether SMIC can produce at 7nm, 5nm or even 2 nm. The real question is whether they can do it in volume, at reasonable prices.
DUV (the old technology) uses 193 nm UV light. To achieve resolutions smaller than that, the most common trick is to just repeatedly use the same mask, shifted over a few nanometers. Initially this was done twice, then three times, and by 14 nm companies were doing 4 shifts. And these 4 shifts needed to be done for every layer on the chip, so it really added up.
Now there's no technical limit to 4 steps. Just like razorblades, you can go to 5 steps, it's just getting a bit silly. SMIC might have even used 7 or 8 steps to achieve 7nm; we can't tell.
Note that in addition to the sheer time it costs, you also have defect risks with this multi-patterning. We don't know how many of those "7nm DUV" chips actually work. This obviously impacts the price; if you have to discard 90% of the dies then the remaining 10% become ten times as expensive.
