China’s answer to ASML runs on Zeiss lenses, Financial Times reports
China’s effort to build its own chipmaking machines finally has a coordinator. It is Huawei. And the flagship machine it is coordinating still runs on German lenses.
Eleanor Olcott and Zijing Wu reported the arrangement for the Financial Times, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. TNW has not independently verified it.
Huawei is investing across the industry that supplies lithography equipment. It is also helping those suppliers get their machines into Chinese fabs, including SMIC. Lithography is the step that prints circuits onto silicon. It is the one part of chipmaking China has never managed to replace.
What the arrangement actually is
Lin Qingyuan, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein, gave the FT the clearest description of it.
“Huawei is playing a project management role in China’s DUV push,” he said. A prototype on its own achieves nothing, he added. The work needs thousands of vendors and customers moving...
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