Japanese experts warn that selling lithography machines may be regulated by the United States, what is the impact on SMIC?
At present, the trilateral alliance of the United States, Japan and the Netherlands has imposed restrictions on China's semiconductors"Secret Protocol"It has not yet been announced, and everyone knows that there were previous reports that there may be a supply cut on DUV lithography machines.
As a mature semiconductor chip manufacturing equipment, the impact of DUV lithography machine is naturally not small, but now a new news has broken through the currently known preventive measures.
According to the new information, there are Japanese experts who claim"Lithography machines are sold to China or regulated by the United States"。
This message is not 100% accurate, but it at least symbolizes a possibility, and if it is true, then the impact could be even more severe.
How important is after-sales service for lithography equipment?
It is important to know that the lithography machine, as a modern giant industrial equipment, will inevitably have some problems, and these problems need to be reviewed and maintained by professionals, and the importance of after-sales assembly and safety service review is reflected.
After all, the DUV lithography machine is a foreign product, and the domestic market is not very familiar with imported semiconductor manufacturing equipment, so the maintenance of semiconductor equipment such as lithography machines can only be reviewed by professionals from the top suppliers.
If the after-sales supervision mechanism is controlled by the United States, this means that the United States will be able to control the dispatch of professionals to China for after-sales service, which means that even if the lithography equipment can be shipped to China on time, it will face many problems.
Due to the complexity of the assembly process of the DUV lithography machine, we all know that the number of parts of the EUV lithography machine is more than 100,000, but in fact the number of parts of the DUV lithography machine is more than tens of thousands.
Without aftermarket assembly services, DUV lithography machines might just be a bunch"Scrap", completely lost its original value.
In addition, and most importantly, since there are not many additional orders involving the number of equipment, according to data released by ASML, the annual growth rate of semiconductor equipment revenue to the Chinese market** will be as high as 25% in 2023.
The amount involved will be as high as 2.2 billion euros, worth about 2.3 billion US dollars, and based on the known value of a DUV lithography machine reaching 20 million US dollars, the 2.3 billion US dollar amount will involve more than 100 semiconductor equipment.
What impact does this have on SMIC?
Naturally, these more than 100 pieces of equipment, regardless of whether they belong to DUV lithography machines or not, as long as there is a loss of after-sales service, it means that these 2.2 billion euros are a bunch bought"Scrap"will be returned.
It is worth mentioning that the 2.2 billion euros is not all, and before this additional investment in imported equipment, an order of 1.1 billion US dollars was signed, which is equivalent to more than 50 semiconductor equipment being involved again.
If there is a problem with the after-sales service of these more than 150 semiconductor equipment, ASML will not be able to provide assembly and repair personnel to dispatch in the event that SMIC's production capacity is severely affected.
It is likely that these 150 semiconductor equipment will be used in SMIC's four new fabs, which are currently in production at SMIC in Beijing and SMIC in Shenzhen.
Although the impact is only on production capacity in the short term, in the long term, the problem of failure may gradually appear, and perhaps the production line will appear"Total paralysis"Possibly.
On the other hand, SMIC Lingang and SMIC Xiqing are still under construction, and the DUV lithography machines that will arrive later will not be able to set up production lines, which will have a significant impact on SMIC's production capacity and even waste the original factory construction funds.
How to get through this?
Previously, it was reported that Shanghai Microelectronics' 28-nanometer lithography equipment was in the research and development stage, and now there is new news, and the 28-nanometer lithography machine has passed the technical verification.
At present, the most important thing is to speed up the implementation of this set of lithography equipment, and at the same time accelerate the implementation of the national 28-nanometer lithography ecological equipment, so as to achieve a self-sufficient strategic deployment.
Whereas, the United States, Japan and the Netherlands have now reached an alliance"Secret Covenant", China can only seize the opportunity to produce self-produced semiconductor equipment, and only the results of self-sufficiency can be avoided"Stuck neck"Possibly.