Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/SHANGHAI: The United States (US) is working to increase its restrictions on the export of chipmaking equipment to China by securing cooperation with the Japan and Netherlands, forcing Chinese chipmakers to turn to domestic suppliers.
The Shanghai microelectronics equipment (SMEE) is Beijing’s producer of lithography machines used in semiconductor manufacturing, making it China’s potential competitor to the Netherlands’ globe-leading lithography machine maker ASML Holding NV. Nonetheless, it remains well behind ASML and Japanese peers.
Manufacturing of chips
Its website showed that it developed machines efficient in manufacturing chips at the 90-nanometre node standard. That technology was perfected roughly twenty years ago and is sufficient for low-end chips good for some power-management purposes.
Industry sources said that the firm sells the bulk of its lithography machines to chip packaging plants that use them for the much simpler task of wiring chips into final products. SMEE didn’t respond to the request for comment.
SMEE was established in the year 2002 by He Rongming, an ex-vice president at Shanghai Electric Group Co Ltd. Its largest shareholder, owning 32 percent, is the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, which oversees state-owned enterprises.
Naura Technology Group
Founded in the year 2001 and listed in 2010, Naura primarily makes etching equipment in competition with the United States Applied Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp, and Japan’s Tokyo Electron Ltd.
