KrF lithography is very cost effective down to 90 nm. At that point you can still make relatively sophisticated chips including video drivers for large capacitive touchscreens. I believe that mastering the DUV processes (KrF and ArF) are the most important #1 steps for the Chinse semiconductor industry to grow and be able to feed the electronics industry completely independently. EUV is a luxury, IMO, because it is only used for a few layers on leading edge mobile chips which, while important, are not 100% necessary. And mastering DUV already provides a huge customer base for both the fabs and the equipment producers, allowing them more capital to reinvest.
There are tons of chips from i.e. Texas Instruments, Infineon, Microchip, etc. that are built on very old processes like 180 nm yet are still extremely useful, such as microcontrollers, power management, display driver, etc. Some of them have proprietary architectures but many are RISC or ARM compatible.
Citation needed, plz provide numbers in 200 mm or 300 mm equivalent?
