They are different lithography technologies to create semiconductors. In some cases, elements of their technology can be used in parts of traditional DUV/EUV lithography for etching. Here are some links to recent breakthroughs by China in these fields.
An addendum on this: the equipment in question are fairly standard industrial products with no particularly high capital intensity and no particularly long product cycles and EDA is software and China has a ton of MechEs and EEs
Indexing on any of these technologies is meaningless without assessing commercial and industrial viability. For example, direct write technologies aren’t meaningful as a substitute to the industry’s standard approach to lithography because of scaling limitations. There are a lot of ways to carve nanoscale features onto semiconductor materials. There are fewer ways that can do so at large enough scales to replace exposure based lithography, and fewer still that are immediately ready for commercial application. Can I carve 5nm or below features on a piece of silicon is a different question from can I carve 5nm or below features at a speed, scale, and cost viable enough to make hundreds of millions of chips for industry demand.
@foofy Sir to clarify double patterning means 14nm is a possibility?
In the semi industry nobody takes a new approach unless the progress stops totally. Just look at how many technologies were invented to replace DRAM cells. Non of them were pursued by the companies.
only 14/16 nm finfet and below use double patterning
No, EBL, LDW and NIL are all just for mask-making and *very* small-volume IC
@BoraTas Sir, if restricted or sanction then may become an early adopter? I see Huawei Photonic chip as an example and I think China as a market can able to support it with gov't intervention and support.