The fact that world powers are engaged in a technological arms race is now pretty common knowledge. AI capabilities are starting to serve as national and international litmus tests for soft and hard power, but these capabilities depend on the physical hardware underneath them. And while China has been lagging behind the West in this regard, it has very quickly been playing catch-up.
It’s not all as simple as east vs west, however, as much of China’s hardware is still, in fact, bought from the Western company ASML. The Financial Times reports that, “according to a person with knowledge of the matter”, [Chinese memory makers] CXMT and YMTC have managed to stock up on enough DUV machines from western machine-maker ASML to support their next three years of expansion plans.
This is despite the push—not just from the Chinese government but also from companies such as Huawei, as the FT also reports—to back domestic production and eliminate foreign tech from China. Domestic alternatives are still said to be a few years behind ASML machines’ productivity levels.
Deep ultraviolet (DUV) machines aren’t the latest and greatest ones—extreme ultraviolet (EUV) ones are—but they’re still what a lot of chipmakers, even in the West, still use. It’s recently been confirmed that Samsung and TSMC will be moving to high numerical aperture (high-NA) EUV production by 2028 and 2030, respectively, and these two already use low-NA EUV, but the older DUV tech is still very widely used for chip production even by these companies.
There’s been a rumour for some time that China has its hands on an EUV machine, and there have even been concerns that the country might have its hands on one made by ASML despite the newer tech being banned for sale and export to China, though the Dutch machine maker denies this.
At any rate, even without EUV capabilities, China can still play a mighty quick catch-up with DUV. CXMT and YMTC having three years’ worth of machines for their planned chipmaking expansion will certainly help. China is reportedly making its own DUV machines, but buying some ready-made from ASML will do the job.
The former company has been quickly and steadily increasing its market share of late, and while its memory is still almost solely ending up in domestic products, that’s not guaranteed to always be the case. Plus, Chinese customers keeping away from Western memory still puts competitive pressure on Western memory makers and manufacturers.
CXMT’s memory has even started to adorn RAM kits that match our preferred specs for gaming PCs here in the West, which gives us a particularly concrete idea of how far the Chinese memory industry has come. And with plans for ever-more fabrication plants, it’s all to play for.