chrispeng In April last year, SMIC ordered an EUV lithography machine from the Dutch company ASML to study advanced processes of 7nm and below. Costing more than 120 million euros (about 1 billion yuan), it is expected to be delivered by the end of this year and officially installed in 2020. According to Nikkei news, ASML will delay shipments to Chinese wafer foundry company SMIC because of concerns from the U.S. government.
After the news was fermented, SMIC’s share price suffered a setback, with a drop of more than 6% today.
Both ASML and SMIC denied this.
On the afternoon of November 7, ASML exclusively responded to the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” that the delivery schedule reported by the Nikkei is only its media speculation, and ASML has never commented or confirmed it, and will directly characterize the speculation as a fact. As a news headline and stated in the text, protest.
The relevant person in charge of ASML emphasized: “In fact, in our third quarter financial report, we have explained the relevant situation. According to the Wassenaar Arrangement, ASML needs to obtain an export license from the Dutch government to export EUV to China. ). The export license expired this year, ASML has re-applied before the expiration, and is currently waiting for the approval of the Dutch government. Therefore, it is wrong to say that “ASML decided to delay/terminate shipments”, ASML is acting in accordance with regulations , and serve our global customers equally.”
As for when the license can be obtained, the relevant person in charge of ASML said that it is currently in a normal process state and has not yet grasped the exact time.
SMIC also responded just now: “Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) is still in the paper work stage, and no related activities have been carried out. The company’s advanced technology research and development is progressing smoothly. At present, the connection between research and development and production is normal, and customer and equipment import is operating normally. .”
ASML is the only supplier of EUV lithography machines in the world and is the chip equipment manufacturer with the highest market value in the world. ASML’s annual revenue is about 8.3 billion euros (about 9.2 billion US dollars). Of those, 16 percent came from U.S. companies such as Intel and Micron, and 19 percent came from China. It is understood that TSMC and Samsung have introduced EUV equipment for mass production of the most advanced products in 2019, and Apple expects that the new iPhones that will be sold in the second half of 2020 are expected to be equipped with CPUs using this technology.
SMIC is my country’s largest semiconductor manufacturing company. This year, the 14nm process has achieved mass production. It is chasing the platform of UMC’s 14nm process technology. If it fails to get the most advanced lithography equipment on time, it may affect the schedule of catching up with TSMC.
At present, TSMC and TSMC will take over 18 of ASML’s 30 EUV lithography machines this year, but the mass-produced 7nm process is still based on the DUV (deep ultraviolet) process, and the mass production of 7nm EUV was only started in March this year. And Samsung put into production 7nm EUV on a small scale last year.
However, industry sources revealed that this batch of equipment is still expected to be shipped by the end of 2019, and the installation will be completed by the end of 2020.
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