Russia is vigorously developing semiconductors, and ASML is worried that the industrial pattern may change.
In the global semiconductor industry, the United States has always maintained an absolute dominant position, and the upstream EDA software, chip architecture, lithography core devices and other chains of the semiconductor industry are almost all controlled by the United States, and the development of the semiconductor industry in any country depends on the face of the United States.
China is like this, once Huawei covets the powerful Kirin chip by the United States, it does not hesitate to use the power of the whole country to sanction Huawei, just to restrict China and other major countries from surpassing the United States in the semiconductor industry, China is still like this, not to mention Russia.
After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the world's major semiconductor giants have cut supplies to Russia under the order of the United States.
Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, TSMC, Samsung, and almost all other semiconductor manufacturers have stopped their operations in Russia.
However, as a former superpower, Russia's confidence - after all, the United States wants to kill it directly - is obviously impossible, and Russia has long planned to counter by mobilizing the power of the whole country to develop the local semiconductor industry.
As early as last year, Russia's Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology said that it had received support from the Ministry of Trade and Industry and would use the funds to develop maskless X-ray lithography technology, which is completely different from ASML's development path, claiming to be able to reach the EUV level.
At the same time, Russia has a huge wafer substitution program, which is expected to invest 319 trillion rubles.
The basic wafer manufacturing is expected to invest 460 billion rubles, and the wafer design will cost about 114 trillion rubles, improving market demand will cost 128 trillion rubles, and the training of personnel in the semiconductor industry will cost 309 billion rubles.
I believe that with such a large investment of funds, Russia will be able to find its own advantages in the field of semiconductors and gradually get rid of its dependence on American technology in the future.
At the moment, there is some good news for the Russian semiconductor industry.
According to Russia**, the Russian side will provide credit support of about 10 billion rubles for two major projects in the field of microelectronics in Belarus. The funds will be used to finance integrated circuits, including a full set of process assembly in the field of integral lithography equipment and precision instrumentation in the field of planar lithography equipment.
The Belarusian side revealed that the two countries have signed an agreement on the creation of a joint center for the development and production of photomasks, which will facilitate joint development work between the two countries and reduce the dependence of Belarusian and Russian consumers on imported products.
It is worth mentioning that Planar is the largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Eastern Europe, with more than 50 years of semiconductor equipment R&D and manufacturing history, the company's products cover masking, lithography and other related equipment, playing an extremely important role in the semiconductor industry.
It is precisely because of this backbone that the Russian Academy of Sciences has dared to say that the lithography equipment developed in Russia will come out in 2028, when the 7-nanometer chips produced can beat similar products of ASML.
As soon as the news came out, some foreign media said that ASML was going to start worrying, so does Russia really have a chance to threaten ASML?
In the eyes of the outside world, Russia is still very strong, and there are two main reasons.
First of all, Russia got rid of the American technological program many years ago, replacing digital circuits with analog circuits, solving the problem of the shortage of chips for scientific and technological development;Secondly, Russia has adhered to the traditional semiconductor industry for many years, laying the foundation for related industries.
It is based on these two reasons that Russia has a great tendency to break the blockade in the field of semiconductors, not to mention that Russia is not afraid of the United States in the field of semiconductors, after all, Russia has always regarded people's livelihood electronic products as the pillar of economic development.
As a result, the U.S. has no chance of dragging Russia down with semiconductor-related sanctions, and Russia has the ability to force the unaffected environment to keep up with technological breakthroughs in an effort to break the U.S. technological blockade as quickly as possible.
Do you think Russia has a chance to succeed in the field of semiconductors?