ทำไมจีนถึงก๊อปปี้เครื่องผลิตชิป EUV ไม่ได้? กับความลับฝังลึกของวิศวกรยุโรป | Geek Story EP683

·23 min·2 clips

Why can't China, the world's factory with unlimited funds, reverse engineer the EUV lithography machine that powers all modern technology?

The episode opens by framing semiconductors as the "21st century crude oil" and introduces EUV lithography as the foundational machine for modern technology. It poses the central question: why can't China, with vast financial and engineering resources, reverse engineer this machine? The host describes the EUV's immense scale, costing up to $380 million and weighing 1.5 tons, produced solely by ASML in the Netherlands. The narrative then delves into the technical history, explaining how chipmakers moved from Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) to EUV as transistor sizes shrank below 10nm, facing the diffraction limit. The core of the episode details the physics of EUV: generating 13.5nm light by shooting tin droplets at high speed and hitting them with precise lasers to create plasma over 220,000°C. It emphasizes the need for extreme precision, comparing it to hitting a coin on the moon with a laser pointer. The discussion covers the machine's complex optics, requiring mirrors polished to atomic-level smoothness. A key point is that reverse engineering fails because hardware alone doesn't reveal the tacit knowledge accumulated over decades. The episode outlines ASML's global supply chain, including specialized components from companies like Trumpf (Germany), Zeiss (Germany), and VDL Group (Netherlands), which are exclusively tied to ASML. It examines China's efforts through its "Big Fund" and companies like SMIC, which relies on older DUV machines and multi-patterning, leading to low yields and high costs. Production comparisons show TSMC making 100,000 chips monthly with EUV versus SMIC's 3,000. The episode concludes that China faces not just technical barriers but a time deficit, trying to compress 40 years of global R&D and tacit knowledge. The failure to copy EUV is protected by both legal controls and the machine's inherent complexity.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Geek Forever’s Podcast