Hamish Low projects China will not achieve domestic 7nm DUV lithography until the mid-2030s and EUV until the late 2030s

When China can produce indigenous lithography machines is essential to the outlook for US-China competition on AI, yet despite its importance this question has attracted surprisingly few rigorous forecasts.

A new piece out today that I have coauthored with Joshua Turner and @romeovdean of @AI_Futures_ looks to take a first step to rectifying this. We use the experience of ASML developing lithography tools to develop base rates for when China will do the same. Doing so gives a baseline expectation of the late 2030s for extreme ultraviolet lithography, and the mid-2030s for deep ultraviolet immersion lithography.

In reality China’s indigenization experience will differ substantially from ASML’s development. Due, for instance, to substantial state support, poaching ASML employees or deploying increasingly advanced AI systems into R&D. The piece sets out these various arguments for why China’s efforts may move faster or slower than the baseline set by ASML, as well as placing where the current most advanced Chinese efforts at SMEE and Yuliangsheng sit.

It finishes with a set of research questions that would help us build better forecasts of China's indigenization process, as well as ones for how China's indigenization relates to larger strategic outlooks for the US-China compute gap.