There is but one company in the world that builds the $200 million school bus-sized EUV machines that are used to etch circuitry patterns thinner than human hair onto a silicon wafer. That company is ASML, a Dutch outfit that took in nearly $26 billion in revenue last year. EUV machines are necessary to manufacture chips under 7nm because you need to etch extremely fine lines to accommodate the billions of transistors that are packed into cutting-edge chips.
Canon says that with improvements to mask technology, NIL will eventually be able to help create 2nm chips. Currently, the technology can etch circuit patterns with a minimum linewidth of 14 nm which equates to 5nm production. Canon says that NIL is expected to support a minimum linewidth of 10 nm which equates to building chips using a 2nm process node. NIL can reduce the amount of power used to manufacture a chip since it doesn't require a lightsource with a special wavelength.
But there is a problem here that the U.S. will have to address quickly. ASML does not ship its EUV machines to China due to U.S. sanctions, but it is possible that since NIL doesn't use cutting-edge optics or mirrors like EUV does, Canon might be able to ship the technology to China giving foundries like SMIC the ability to produce 5nm and eventually 3nm and 2nm chips.when Huawei unveiled the Mate 60 Pro powered by a 7nm Kirin 9000s chip that supports 5G.