China can make advanced chips without EUV, but the bill keeps growing
An analysis article published 23 October 2026 reports that export controls keep ASML's most advanced EUV lithography machines out of China, so the country's chip industry relies on DUV lithography with multiple patterning to make advanced chips, at the cost of bigger dies, more defects, lower yields, longer manufacturing times and higher bills. Chris Mack, co-founder and CTO of Fractilia, said industry conventional wisdom held that three exposures on a 193 immersion tool cost about the same as one exposure on an EUV tool, and that at four masks EUV became more cost-effective. Teardowns of Huawei's Mate 60 Pro in 2023 found its Kirin 9000S processor made by SMIC using a second-generation 7nm-class process without EUV; analysis of Huawei's Kirin 9030 found SMIC had pushed its DUV-based process closer to 5nm-class density, though it continued to lag TSMC and Samsung leading processes. A June Morgan Stanley report estimated Chinese DRAM maker CXMT was producing only around one-third as many bits per wafer as Western competitors, with the older process node accounting for only about a third of that shortfall, and said access to lithography is a 'hard ceiling' on Chinese memory development. Micron's 1-alpha generation was developed without EUV, showing how far DUV can be stretched; Micron's newer 1-gamma DRAM process uses EUV, which Micron said achieves more than 30% greater bit density per wafer than its preceding 1-beta generation. Morgan Stanley assumes CXMT remains stuck on its 1-alpha process without EUV, yet raises its share of global DRAM bit supply from 14% in 2026 to 16% in 2028 by building more greenfield capacity, and expects China's AI chip self-sufficiency to rise from 42% in 2025 to 70% by 2030. Mack said he would be hard pressed to believe a three-nanometer or two-nanometer node is economically viable without EUV.
- Related manufacturers
- ASML, SMIC, CXMT, Micron, Huawei, TSMC, Samsung
- Impact score
- 10 / 100, low impact