Hardware

There have also been rumors that a Cymer EUV source was intercepted during transit and reverse-engineered in a covert Chinese lab. But even if individual components were acquired, Tom's Hardware notes that such efforts are unlikely to produce a working system. Without the integrated software and supplier collaboration that make EUV viable, the hardware alone is effectively inert.

"China will never achieve domestic lithography!"

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"China will never make a domestic 90nm node!"

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"China will never achieve 20nm nodes via DUV!"

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"China will never achieve 7nm nor EUV!"

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"China will never get their EUV prototype working!"

Article seems like cope.

Chip manufacturing isn't rocket science...
It's harder.

Yep our everyday smartphones are the result of the biggest technological achievement of humanity yet.
The precision work required to make the modern chips inside those phones is insane. The know how and technologies required to do it surpasses anything else humanity has done.
Just the friggin EUV "lamp" for a high end process is $400 million!!
You can't just assemble that shit like a piece of IKEA furniture, and even knowing the composition of things, doesn't necessarily tell you how to make it so it works.
But China has the resources to make the best minds and technologies available to make it succeed, and eventually they will. Because every development team in the world is working under the same physical laws, so with enough skill and resources, they will succeed because it's already proven to be possible. And that's the advantage the catch up team always has, they don't need to doubt whether it's even possible.

I agree with criticism of not made anything.... Yet.

Validation of advances will come with product availability, instead of press releases. We definitely need more computing related production with western supply chains all pivoting away from "normal computing"