Haven't China also claimed a lot of impossible tasks like Cold Fusion, cure for cancer, and breaking most modern encryptions?
Might want to remain skeptical for now.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Cut off a nation as big and determined as China and they will just become more self sufficient.
Nations can't be determined.
Anyway. Yes, but there's nuance, China is not heaven on earth.
when discussing when China could catch up to the US in the semiconductor race.
BS. Untied states are not competitive at all for a long time. They should say China is catching up with Taiwan.
And it's not a race, there's no finish line, improvements have been happening for 50 years now and can continue for decades.
That's just the imperialists telling on themselves. They don't consider what is Taiwan's as Taiwan's, but as being made exclusively for the US' benefit.
Who are the imperialists?
US.
Yep. The rest of us switched to metric a long time ago.
If you were wondering what the hell EUV (Extreme Ultra-Violet) stood for:
https://waferscope.com/duv-vs-euv-whats-the-real-difference-in-chipmaking/
This table from the link sums it up pretty well:
Using shorter and shorter wavelengths of light to etch chips with a higher density of transistors.
I wonder what the next generation will be called...EUV-2TM (EUV-2 THE MAX) or SEUV (Super EUV) perhaps?
I assume they will move from UV to X-rays.
We're getting close! EUV is currently ~13nm, and soft xrays start at ~10nm (but go all the way down to ~0.01nm for hard xrays.)
Sadly there a lots of challenges in transitioning to smaller wavelengths. For example, to get the EUV light in the existing process, we're already resorting to, essentially, exploding tiny droplets of liquid tin using lasers.
XXXUV
With added sexual excitement to keep things interesting?
What happens to Taiwan when China is competitive on chips?
I could see them deciding to invade, Taiwan destroys their fabs, and then China gets a monopoly but also sanctions.
The west ultimately ends up unable to build chips and China has a global monopoly.
Have Intel and Samsung stopped making chips recently?
Taiwan being invaded would make the current component shortages look like nothing in comparison. TSMC fabricates the vast majority of high-end chips used by basically every computer and smartphone. They have a two-thirds market share while the next biggest player, Samsung, has around 10%, and Intel barely registers. If you want high-yield nanometer-scale precision manufacturing, TSMC is practically your only real choice.
China's not going to invade anything, popular support for peaceful reunification is higher than ever and the US is giving Taiwan and the rest of the world new reasons to distance themselves from us all the time. All China has to do is sit back and watch as we voluntarily shit the bed, they'll get Taiwan and probably more with no sanctions or bloodshed.
What are you talking about?
checks instance name
Yeah that tracks. No, support for Taiwanese unification with China is not gaining support. Look at the posturing China is doing with its military. Look at the steps Japan is starting to take to prepare for this possibility.
Not all . ml people are crazy cases. Its not guilty by association. I joined ML early in its life with the Reddit exodus because it was the developer instance and I thought this would have more programming and tech people on this instance.
If China invades Taiwan then that's WW3
Why? Trump won't do anything. What other countries have protection treaties?
Okay but Japan had a major breakthrough the other day that made this technique obsolete for the majority of components.
I mean if every headline about massive breakthroughs was the full truth all our appliances would be powered by tiny nuclear power plants and we would fly around with our jetpack. Cancer would be but a distant memory and world hunger a non issue because vertical farms would be literally in every home.
so, no jetpacks?
Average East-Asian news cycle:
China: “We are preventing the export of rare earth minerals to strengthen our country.”
US: “We are imposing tariffs to strengthen our economy.”
Japan: “22-year-old undergraduate turns a leaf into a battery.”
What was the Japanese breakthrough? Got a link?
Found it! Nano Imprint Lithography (NIL).
Thanks. Oh yes, I heard about this technology (but not the latest update) from a youtube video. It’s completely insane!
Insanely good or Insanely stupid?
This seems about right. Progress was originally supposed to be 5-10 years. I'm not too sure on how effective these prototypes are. My guess is that their progress of EUV sources is quite far now, but that they'll still need to have greater progress in regards to domestically created collector & debris mitigation systems, projection optics, mask blanks and other things.
Edit Addendum: Note, article agrees with the timeline of 5 years behind for China. Since their EUV source(presumably) works differently from ASML's LPP EUV(many think China is going LDP route for EUV source), research may still go up to 10 years, as they will likely need to account for this when researching the other components in a full scanner. Alot of significant modifications or straight up new shit will have to be made. And even then, it'll need to be commerically viable to compete with the West.
And even then, it'll need to be commerically viable to compete with the West.
Well, unless they invaded Taiwan...
If Taiwan gets invaded they'll just blow their chip fabs, they've said as much multiple times and presumably have a plan in place to do it at a moment's notice. If that's what China is after I don't know that an invasion is going to work even if they succeed. It could deny future chip production to other countries though.
they’ll just blow their chip fabs
The US has said they will blow them up "for them". TSMC is supportive of US puppetted militarist fascism in Taiwan, but has backfired a bit from Trump. Tarriffs on Taiwan, and more restrictions on Chinese operations. TSMC definitely wants to avoid war even if it likes politicians that hype up weapons gifts, but also independently subsidizes it.
War is going to depend on US dictated decoupling, that black market can't get around. The fascists will have a hard time trusting US backing for the island, as Trump has been softer on China than Taiwan so far this year.
Yeah, that's what I mean
Doesn't matter if China's chips are economically viable if they're the only ones making advanced chips...
I mean, it kinda still does, but even if they did eventually invade, it wouldn't necessarily make China the only game in town. There are already other fabrication plants going up around the globe, an invasion would definitely accelerate their development.
China seems to be closest though, if they reach viable modern CPUs first...
But realistically, I think China made a deal with the West to hold off on Taiwan until we have at least one modern chip fab working in the US and Europe
Did anyone think they would not?
Given enough time it's inevitable any determined organization could make it.
Given enough time and an enormous budget it’s inevitable any determined organization could make it.
This kind of milestone isn't reachable by most countries in the world mostly because of the price tag attached to it
“China has reportedly built” Ok I’m gonna stop you right there. China reports it’s built a lot of stuff. It almost never actually builds anything.
Delusional, pure cope
Long time ago that was true.
Still doesnt mean that they built this well enough yet, but they are building alot of things that actually works right now.
China has made massive breakthroughs. In chips, SMIC/Huawei are advancing impressively in terms of products, but it is unclear how good yields/costs are, even if they are shipping commercial products.
Still, this PR does give hints that this is Garage hacked EUV with cannibalized parts they cannot make yet, and 4 year time scale is far out enough. There was PR of EUV breakthrough this spring too, and don't recall if this claim is additional advancement over that.
Oops, wrong thread, h/t snoons.
wrong post :)