10 ms·

Japan on edge of EUV lithography chip-making revolution

183 points by ksec 2y ago

SMAAART 2y ago
Ouch! Time to liquidate my ASML position!
- jensC 2y ago
  Maybe it is a good idea to wait and see how the market envolves. I guess ASML has a few more years to be the leader.
m3kw9 2y ago
Anyone that wants to short ASML out the door on Monday, please reconsider. It will take 10-15 years to make a machine like ASMLs from end to end.
- evrimoztamur 2y ago
  Also consider that this article is from 7 Aug, with Canon in particular showing good post-crisis recovery.
graycat 2y ago
Recall that early on in such chip making IBM skipped blue, UV, EUV and built a cyclotron to generate X-rays.
phonon 2y ago
This has already been debunked. "As it turns out, however, EUV monopolist ASML and its optics suppliers Zeiss have already considered similar setups. “Zeiss has several designs available with similar/better performance than the Shintake design,” an ASML spokesperson told Bits&Chips. So far, these haven’t generated chipmakers’ interest due to the reduced resolution and smaller field size of the design. Should this change in the future, “we will explore whether one of Zeiss’ systems makes sense.”" https://bits-chips.nl/article/despite-superior-efficiency-japanese-four-mirror-euv-setup-unlikely-to-make-waves/ https://bits-chips.nl/article/despite-superior-efficiency-ja...
roenxi 2y ago
Will this attempt work out commercially? Maybe, maybe not. But more interesting here is the strategic situation beyond the currently understood tech. The US has made it clear that it sees semiconductors as a vector to attack power centres in Asia. Today it is China. Democracies are notoriously fickle, tomorrow it could be India, Japan, Korea or anyone really. There is a strategic need here to break the remaining European monopolies on equipment supply. For China the need is urgent but for all the Asian powers the need is real. Given the manufacturing powerhouse that the collective Asia represents, I expect they'll figure all these details out and become technologically independent at least on paper. They've had more than a century of experience in dealing with the west, the risks of the status quo are too obvious once the US is overtly exploiting it.
- corimaith 2y ago
  >The US has made it clear that it sees semiconductors as a vector to attack power centres in Asia. Today it is China. Democracies are notoriously fickle, tomorrow it could be India, Japan, Korea or anyone really. Sorry but this sounds more like propaganda. China also sees supply chains "as a vector to attack power centres in Asia", that's applicable to anyone and anywhere. I'm not sure why Asia is a singled out here, sounds like one to trying to construe a racist motive when there is none. The aformentioned India, Japan & Korea aren't worried about USA, their primary concerns are China and their neighbours. China's explicit objective to control the entire supply chain places them at a direct conflict of interest with those countries. They've already tried sanctioning Korea and Japan over petty issues like Fukushima water waste. Trying to appeal to some vague "Asian" solidarity as opposed to the existing OECD and actual shared norms sounds more like an attempt to divide allies rather than actually caring about those countries' interests.
  - lmz 2y ago
    > They've already tried sanctioning Korea and Japan over petty issues like Fukushima water waste. Well China wasn't the only one with concerns, but probably the only one with the balls to sanction: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/world/asia/korea-japan-fukushima.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/world/asia/korea-japan-fu... - and why shouldn't they?
ksec 2y ago
A few points in terms of context. 1. The original paper in Japanese claim to use only 4 mirrors to achieve the same results. Although this story only mentions >the EUV equipment’s optical system is greatly simplified 1. Japan isn't new to lithography. Both Canon and Nikon are in the market as well and eventually gave on EUV research and focuses on DUV. 2. Power consumption is reduced by a factor of ten is extremely important as modern EUV, and future High-NA EUV are insanely power hungry, with 30%+ of the raw cost of chip manufacturing goes to energy usage alone. And this isn't just TSMC but also NAND and DRAM maker as well. 3. ASML has something similar in the work as well. Although not to any extreme as factor of 10. But then they also dont need these sort of claim to get funding as the one here does.
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  with 30%+ of the raw cost of chip manufacturing goes to energy usage alone Is the marginal cost of production at all relevant compared to the upfront capital outlay?
  - epoxia 2y ago
    You can get a loan to spread out payments, reducing operating costs would be similar to reducing those payments. It also impacts viability and resale in second hand markets.
    - bradleyjg 2y ago
      Sure, but the question is the scale. Is debt service 10x operating costs? 2x? 50x? .5x? Those imply very different sorts of business.
      - epoxia 2y ago
        The graphic from the OIST in the link makes reference to both the reduced power needed and reduced capital costs, less mirrors & cheaper EUV light source. Also, less power -> less heat -> less cooling. I scoured for some other info as well: A single chip would go through a photo-lithography tool about 80 times. A photo-lithography tool can work on approx. 125 wafers per hour (5 FOUPS). A wafer contains ~230 chips. Current EUV light source requires a 20kw carbon laser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9CGRZwD-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9CGRZwD-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw
mangecoeur 2y ago
They mention validation in software which suggests a hardware implementation is a way off with a lot of practical issues that might crop up on the way. So best of luck to them but i wouldn’t expect to see hit the market for quite a while - saying they are “on the edge of euv chip making” is very optimistic.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  By far the easiest path for this technology to be used in practice would be to license it to ASML. The older and cheaper models of the ASML EUV sources would be good enough for this system that needs a much smaller power for the EUV sources. The European partners of ASML are the only companies that could manufacture at this time the optical system. Nevertheless, it is likely that the patent owners would prefer to license it to Nikon, to create competition for ASML. Nikon should be able to make the optical system, but this could need a few years of development, unless Nikon already has a secret internal research project for making EUV mirrors. The most difficult problem remains the EUV source, even if a much simpler source than the current sources is good enough. It seems very unlikely that ASML would be willing to sell EUV sources separately to Nikon, providing components for competing systems. The only deal that seems possible would be if ASML accepted to sell some of their older models of EUV sources to Nikon, in exchange for receiving licenses for this new improved kind of EUV optical system, which will then be incorporated in all new EUV systems, regardless if they are made by ASML or Nikon. This would reduce the dependence on ASML and its partners, but ASML would still completely control the market of EUV sources, even if not also the market of complete lithography systems, like it does now.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > It seems very unlikely that ASML would be willing to sell EUV sources separately to Nikon Nikon's out of the EUVL game and doesn't plan on returning. They're reiterated this in just about every quarterly prospectus for years now. They're migrating to licensing whatever EUVL IP they had to other players. They've pivoted heavily to FPD Lithography (LCD, OLED, and potentially PV fabrication) - better margins, less political headache.
cherryteastain 2y ago
Canon and Nikon are also working on alternatives such as nanoimprint lithography [1]. Chinese universities and companies are working on particle accelerator based EUV sources [2]. Question is, will they be able to actually commercialize it before ASML manages to get improved versions of their current litho machines out the door? Commercialization of a technology like this can easily take 5-10 years, and ASML aren't twiddling their thumbs. Once the incumbent has a technology that is, say, 80-90% as good as the challenger, the big players will always choose them to minimize risks. [1] https://semiengineering.com/nanoimprint-finds-its-footing-in-photonics/ https://semiengineering.com/nanoimprint-finds-its-footing-in... [2] https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-to-build-huge-particle-accelerator-for-litho-2023-09/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-to-bui...
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Question is, will they be able to actually commercialize it before ASML manages to get improved versions of their current litho machines out the door Canon and Nikon don't need to be bleeding edge. Majority of the chip fabrication market is 20nm, 28nm, and 40nm along with analog chips (60nm+). The sub-20nm chips will become more common as more and more fabs get turned on and EUV eventually gets commoditized, but the RoI isn't there yet for most electronics aside from high margins consumer electronics like GPUs, high end cellphones, etc. > Chinese universities and companies are working on particle accelerator based EUV sources Both the Chinese (SMIC) and the Japanese (OIST) attempts don't have great yield rates (the OIST project above is barely 50% of ASML's and SMIC's is reported to be similar). Both will crack it eventually, but the order book for ASML's High NA EUV (3nm and below) is entirely Intel, Samsung, and the American fabs for TSMC for the next 3-4 years so by the time a competitor is ASML comparable, a significant subset of high end US and SK fabs will have transitioned to 3nm.
  - EvgeniyZh 2y ago
    Canon and Nikon have these already, and yet their market share is pretty small
  - Panzer04 2y ago
alephnerd 2y ago
The actual paper [0] The yield rate is unimpressive (100 wafers/hr) compared to existing ASML EUV lithography machines (170-200/hr) or even DUV lithography (300/hr). [0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.11717 https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.11717
- adrian_b 2y ago
  The yield rate by itself is not very relevant. It also matters which are the energy and materials consumption, the occupied floor area and the acquisition and maintenance prices associated with that yield. When all those are small enough, it may be worthwhile to replace a big and expensive fast machine with many smaller and cheaper slow machines.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Fair point! That said, 10% reduction in power is decent along with the reduction in mirrors, but it would still take some effort for an attempt like this to be cost competitive compared to licensing from ASML.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      As another poster has already said, the power is reduced 10 times, not by 10%. At such a power reduction, it should be possible to use a much smaller and cheaper EUV source, allowing the use of multiple lithography systems, or increase a lot the throughput achievable with the current EUV sources. I hope that they have modeled correctly the losses in the mirrors. Here the incidence angle of the EUV light on the mirrors is much closer to a right angle than in the ASML system. It is likely that this increases the absorption in the mirror in comparison with a mirror on which the light falls at an angle far from perpendicular, as used by ASML. EDIT: Unfortunately this paper might be a hoax. I have read the 2013 paper that they give as reference [2] and as the basis of the claim for the 10 times reduction in power losses. There the losses in the mirror are given only for incidence angles no greater than 21 degrees, very far from a perpendicular incidence. Moreover the data imply that at higher incidence angles the losses increase a lot. Therefore the system with 4 mirrors at high incidence angles will have much higher losses than a system with 10 mirrors at low incidence angles, unless better mirror materials were discovered in the future. So ASML must have analyzed this simple system and dismissed it as impossible to make with the known materials.
codewiz 2y ago
"This was made possible by carefully rethinking the aberration correction theory of optics." Can someone explain how they carefully rethought the theory to reduce the number of mirrors from more than 6 to just 2 (or 4)?
- DarkSucker 2y ago
  The new design design uses on axis mirrors to image the photomask onto the wafer, and on axis mirror systems are far easier to design and fabricate compared to zig zag (off axis) systems. I've never designed an EUV system, and I guess that Shintake's team had to solve some materials or optical coating technology issues that allowed them to consider the simpler on axis design. Having worked on zig zag and on axis designs in the IR and VIS range, I can say that Shintake's design will be much (orders of magnitude?) easier to align and assemble.
edgineer 2y ago
>7nm and smaller Ugh. The process naming which has nothing to do with size anymore still confuses people.

183 points by ksec 2y ago

SMAAART 2y ago

Ouch! Time to liquidate my ASML position!

jensC 2y ago
Maybe it is a good idea to wait and see how the market envolves. I guess ASML has a few more years to be the leader.

m3kw9 2y ago

Anyone that wants to short ASML out the door on Monday, please reconsider. It will take 10-15 years to make a machine like ASMLs from end to end.

evrimoztamur 2y ago
Also consider that this article is from 7 Aug, with Canon in particular showing good post-crisis recovery.

graycat 2y ago

Recall that early on in such chip making IBM skipped blue, UV, EUV and built a cyclotron to generate X-rays.

phonon 2y ago

This has already been debunked. "As it turns out, however, EUV monopolist ASML and its optics suppliers Zeiss have already considered similar setups. “Zeiss has several designs available with similar/better performance than the Shintake design,” an ASML spokesperson told Bits&Chips. So far, these haven’t generated chipmakers’ interest due to the reduced resolution and smaller field size of the design. Should this change in the future, “we will explore whether one of Zeiss’ systems makes sense.”" https://bits-chips.nl/article/despite-superior-efficiency-japanese-four-mirror-euv-setup-unlikely-to-make-waves/ https://bits-chips.nl/article/despite-superior-efficiency-ja...

roenxi 2y ago

Will this attempt work out commercially? Maybe, maybe not. But more interesting here is the strategic situation beyond the currently understood tech. The US has made it clear that it sees semiconductors as a vector to attack power centres in Asia. Today it is China. Democracies are notoriously fickle, tomorrow it could be India, Japan, Korea or anyone really. There is a strategic need here to break the remaining European monopolies on equipment supply. For China the need is urgent but for all the Asian powers the need is real. Given the manufacturing powerhouse that the collective Asia represents, I expect they'll figure all these details out and become technologically independent at least on paper. They've had more than a century of experience in dealing with the west, the risks of the status quo are too obvious once the US is overtly exploiting it.

corimaith 2y ago
>The US has made it clear that it sees semiconductors as a vector to attack power centres in Asia. Today it is China. Democracies are notoriously fickle, tomorrow it could be India, Japan, Korea or anyone really. Sorry but this sounds more like propaganda. China also sees supply chains "as a vector to attack power centres in Asia", that's applicable to anyone and anywhere. I'm not sure why Asia is a singled out here, sounds like one to trying to construe a racist motive when there is none. The aformentioned India, Japan & Korea aren't worried about USA, their primary concerns are China and their neighbours. China's explicit objective to control the entire supply chain places them at a direct conflict of interest with those countries. They've already tried sanctioning Korea and Japan over petty issues like Fukushima water waste. Trying to appeal to some vague "Asian" solidarity as opposed to the existing OECD and actual shared norms sounds more like an attempt to divide allies rather than actually caring about those countries' interests.
- lmz 2y ago
  > They've already tried sanctioning Korea and Japan over petty issues like Fukushima water waste. Well China wasn't the only one with concerns, but probably the only one with the balls to sanction: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/world/asia/korea-japan-fukushima.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/world/asia/korea-japan-fu... - and why shouldn't they?

ksec 2y ago

A few points in terms of context. 1. The original paper in Japanese claim to use only 4 mirrors to achieve the same results. Although this story only mentions >the EUV equipment’s optical system is greatly simplified 1. Japan isn't new to lithography. Both Canon and Nikon are in the market as well and eventually gave on EUV research and focuses on DUV. 2. Power consumption is reduced by a factor of ten is extremely important as modern EUV, and future High-NA EUV are insanely power hungry, with 30%+ of the raw cost of chip manufacturing goes to energy usage alone. And this isn't just TSMC but also NAND and DRAM maker as well. 3. ASML has something similar in the work as well. Although not to any extreme as factor of 10. But then they also dont need these sort of claim to get funding as the one here does.

bradleyjg 2y ago
with 30%+ of the raw cost of chip manufacturing goes to energy usage alone Is the marginal cost of production at all relevant compared to the upfront capital outlay?
- epoxia 2y ago
  You can get a loan to spread out payments, reducing operating costs would be similar to reducing those payments. It also impacts viability and resale in second hand markets.
  - bradleyjg 2y ago
    Sure, but the question is the scale. Is debt service 10x operating costs? 2x? 50x? .5x? Those imply very different sorts of business.
    - epoxia 2y ago
      The graphic from the OIST in the link makes reference to both the reduced power needed and reduced capital costs, less mirrors & cheaper EUV light source. Also, less power -> less heat -> less cooling. I scoured for some other info as well: A single chip would go through a photo-lithography tool about 80 times. A photo-lithography tool can work on approx. 125 wafers per hour (5 FOUPS). A wafer contains ~230 chips. Current EUV light source requires a 20kw carbon laser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9CGRZwD-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9CGRZwD-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw

mangecoeur 2y ago

They mention validation in software which suggests a hardware implementation is a way off with a lot of practical issues that might crop up on the way. So best of luck to them but i wouldn’t expect to see hit the market for quite a while - saying they are “on the edge of euv chip making” is very optimistic.

adrian_b 2y ago
By far the easiest path for this technology to be used in practice would be to license it to ASML. The older and cheaper models of the ASML EUV sources would be good enough for this system that needs a much smaller power for the EUV sources. The European partners of ASML are the only companies that could manufacture at this time the optical system. Nevertheless, it is likely that the patent owners would prefer to license it to Nikon, to create competition for ASML. Nikon should be able to make the optical system, but this could need a few years of development, unless Nikon already has a secret internal research project for making EUV mirrors. The most difficult problem remains the EUV source, even if a much simpler source than the current sources is good enough. It seems very unlikely that ASML would be willing to sell EUV sources separately to Nikon, providing components for competing systems. The only deal that seems possible would be if ASML accepted to sell some of their older models of EUV sources to Nikon, in exchange for receiving licenses for this new improved kind of EUV optical system, which will then be incorporated in all new EUV systems, regardless if they are made by ASML or Nikon. This would reduce the dependence on ASML and its partners, but ASML would still completely control the market of EUV sources, even if not also the market of complete lithography systems, like it does now.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > It seems very unlikely that ASML would be willing to sell EUV sources separately to Nikon Nikon's out of the EUVL game and doesn't plan on returning. They're reiterated this in just about every quarterly prospectus for years now. They're migrating to licensing whatever EUVL IP they had to other players. They've pivoted heavily to FPD Lithography (LCD, OLED, and potentially PV fabrication) - better margins, less political headache.

cherryteastain 2y ago

Canon and Nikon are also working on alternatives such as nanoimprint lithography [1]. Chinese universities and companies are working on particle accelerator based EUV sources [2]. Question is, will they be able to actually commercialize it before ASML manages to get improved versions of their current litho machines out the door? Commercialization of a technology like this can easily take 5-10 years, and ASML aren't twiddling their thumbs. Once the incumbent has a technology that is, say, 80-90% as good as the challenger, the big players will always choose them to minimize risks. [1] https://semiengineering.com/nanoimprint-finds-its-footing-in-photonics/ https://semiengineering.com/nanoimprint-finds-its-footing-in... [2] https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-to-build-huge-particle-accelerator-for-litho-2023-09/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-to-bui...

alephnerd 2y ago
> Question is, will they be able to actually commercialize it before ASML manages to get improved versions of their current litho machines out the door Canon and Nikon don't need to be bleeding edge. Majority of the chip fabrication market is 20nm, 28nm, and 40nm along with analog chips (60nm+). The sub-20nm chips will become more common as more and more fabs get turned on and EUV eventually gets commoditized, but the RoI isn't there yet for most electronics aside from high margins consumer electronics like GPUs, high end cellphones, etc. > Chinese universities and companies are working on particle accelerator based EUV sources Both the Chinese (SMIC) and the Japanese (OIST) attempts don't have great yield rates (the OIST project above is barely 50% of ASML's and SMIC's is reported to be similar). Both will crack it eventually, but the order book for ASML's High NA EUV (3nm and below) is entirely Intel, Samsung, and the American fabs for TSMC for the next 3-4 years so by the time a competitor is ASML comparable, a significant subset of high end US and SK fabs will have transitioned to 3nm.
- EvgeniyZh 2y ago
  Canon and Nikon have these already, and yet their market share is pretty small
- Panzer04 2y ago

alephnerd 2y ago

The actual paper [0] The yield rate is unimpressive (100 wafers/hr) compared to existing ASML EUV lithography machines (170-200/hr) or even DUV lithography (300/hr). [0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.11717 https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.11717

adrian_b 2y ago
The yield rate by itself is not very relevant. It also matters which are the energy and materials consumption, the occupied floor area and the acquisition and maintenance prices associated with that yield. When all those are small enough, it may be worthwhile to replace a big and expensive fast machine with many smaller and cheaper slow machines.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Fair point! That said, 10% reduction in power is decent along with the reduction in mirrors, but it would still take some effort for an attempt like this to be cost competitive compared to licensing from ASML.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    As another poster has already said, the power is reduced 10 times, not by 10%. At such a power reduction, it should be possible to use a much smaller and cheaper EUV source, allowing the use of multiple lithography systems, or increase a lot the throughput achievable with the current EUV sources. I hope that they have modeled correctly the losses in the mirrors. Here the incidence angle of the EUV light on the mirrors is much closer to a right angle than in the ASML system. It is likely that this increases the absorption in the mirror in comparison with a mirror on which the light falls at an angle far from perpendicular, as used by ASML. EDIT: Unfortunately this paper might be a hoax. I have read the 2013 paper that they give as reference [2] and as the basis of the claim for the 10 times reduction in power losses. There the losses in the mirror are given only for incidence angles no greater than 21 degrees, very far from a perpendicular incidence. Moreover the data imply that at higher incidence angles the losses increase a lot. Therefore the system with 4 mirrors at high incidence angles will have much higher losses than a system with 10 mirrors at low incidence angles, unless better mirror materials were discovered in the future. So ASML must have analyzed this simple system and dismissed it as impossible to make with the known materials.

codewiz 2y ago

"This was made possible by carefully rethinking the aberration correction theory of optics." Can someone explain how they carefully rethought the theory to reduce the number of mirrors from more than 6 to just 2 (or 4)?

DarkSucker 2y ago
The new design design uses on axis mirrors to image the photomask onto the wafer, and on axis mirror systems are far easier to design and fabricate compared to zig zag (off axis) systems. I've never designed an EUV system, and I guess that Shintake's team had to solve some materials or optical coating technology issues that allowed them to consider the simpler on axis design. Having worked on zig zag and on axis designs in the IR and VIS range, I can say that Shintake's design will be much (orders of magnitude?) easier to align and assemble.

edgineer 2y ago

>7nm and smaller Ugh. The process naming which has nothing to do with size anymore still confuses people.