Nobel Prize in Physics was officially awarded on October 4. The three winners were scientists who contributed to quantum technology. They finally proved that Einstein was wrong.
And on the same day that the Nobel Prize was awarded, lithography machine giant ASML ushered in bad news.
European high-performance computing joint venture announced on October 4 that it will deploy the first quantum computing network in six European countries and will be put into use in the second half of 2023.
On the same day, quantum technology experienced a climax. So what impact will it have on ASML?
We know that ASML is the overlord of the field of lithography machines. Most of the chips are now manufactured by lithography machines. Therefore, if ASML wants to continue to dominate the lithography machine market, in addition to ensuring continuous technological leadership, another major premise is that chip manufacturing requires lithography machines.
Yes, the manufacturing of quantum chip does not require a lithography machine. Although
is called chips, the principles of traditional digital chips and quantum chips are different, just like the situation when mechanical calculators developed into digital calculators.
We cannot use the equipment that manufactures mechanical calculators to make digital calculators. In fact, we can understand the lithography machine first, and we can understand it better. Although many people are already familiar with
lithography machine, I believe many friends do not know what lithography machine is used for.
Simply put, a lithography machine is a special "copier". The function of the lithography machine is to "copier" the circuit diagram on the mask plate to photoresist in a certain proportion.
After subsequent development, the etching machine finally "engrave" the circuit on the wafer to complete the circuit manufacturing.
. The manufacturing of quantum chips will not use mask version, nor will it use photoresist. From a principle point of view, traditional digital chips use unidirectional conductivity of PN junctions, while quantum chips use qubit . The core algorithm behind it is the superposition state, while memory chip also needs to use quantum entanglement.
In fact, long before this incident, the Netherlands had already invested heavily in the research and development of light quantum chips, which shows that even the Netherlands has no illusions about the future of ASML.
However, the situation afterwards will be even worse.
For ordinary people, we may already feel that the chips are already overperformance and are cheap. It seems that there is no need to develop quantum chips, but it is not.
The reason why
is slow in many scientific research projects is often the result of insufficient computing power of traditional computers.
In addition, the computing power of quantum computer is millions or even billions of times that of classic computers. Jack Ma once said that a quantum computer in the future can replace millions of servers, which will save a lot of costs.
The server field is actually the field of high-performance computing chips. At present, chips in the consumer market are showing a downward trend, but server chips are growing against the trend, which once again shows that the demand for computing power has not been commercially satisfied.
But if quantum chips go commercially, high-performance chips will be quickly replaced by quantum chips, and ASML's EUV lithography machine market space will decline significantly.
In fact, just recently, the chief technology officer of ASML has made pessimistic predictions, indicating that the current lithography technology may have reached its end.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this that quantum technology has begun to be valued by the world. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to scientists who contributed to quantum technology. Europe also announced a major plan for quantum computing on the same day. We believe that all this is not accidental.
So what do you think about this? Comments are welcome to discuss together.
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