Russia now has its own lithography machine for developing chips. However, the machine, with a 350 nm process, is decades behind current standards.

Vasily Shpak, Minister of Industry and Trade, presents the lithography machine via the Russian news agency TASS. The machine is located in Zelenograd, a suburb of Moscow. Tests are currently being carried out to use the machine to produce chips for the automotive and energy industries.

Russia may be selling this as a technological breakthrough for the country, but in reality it is anything but. A lithography machine is a key component in chip manufacturing. Microchips are created by using light to project patterns onto a wafer, layer by layer, etching components into light-sensitive material.

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The Russian machine can bake chips using the 350nm process. When you know that the most sophisticated machines from market leader ASML can do a 5nm process, Russia is actually showing that its domestic chip industry is at least thirty years behind the West. To illustrate, we haven’t seen a 350nm process since the AMD K6 in 1997.

Moreover, the Russians boast that they will have 14nm chips by 2030. In principle, Russia has the necessary expertise within its own borders. The country’s two largest chipmakers, Angstrem and Mikron (not to be confused with the American Micron), have various processes in their arsenal, from 250nm to 90nm.

Since the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic sanctions, Russia has been left to its own devices. The considerable backlog shows how difficult it is for a country to have to start its own chip production from scratch. China is also left to its own devices, even though this country is apparently doing better than Russia despite being several years behind.