As far as I know they never got a single machine. So they can’t easily reverse engineer it. They’re struggling already just to copy the previous generation DUV

As far as I know they never got a single machine. So they can’t easily reverse engineer it. They’re struggling already just to copy the previous generation DUV machines, and that’s while having a bunch of machines they can study and copy. A lot of technology you can’t really just copy it. You need the whole supply chain and expert support around it. Like with EUV they’d need someone like Zeiss to make the mirrors. Even the parts holding the mirrors are extremely niche and extremely hard to make. SMIC could copy older TSMC tech because they could buy the same machines and poach engineers from TSMC. That’s just not viable for EUV.