China's largest chipmaker, SMIC, is conducting trials of an immersion deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography scanner made by Shanghai Yuliangsheng Technology, a step toward building a local wafer fabrication equipment industry and reducing dependence on Western suppliers. The project, codenamed "Mount Everest", is tied through investors and collaborators to SiCarrier. It is reportedly assembled mostly from domestic parts, while a handful of components still come from abroad. SMIC is likely at an early testing stage, achieving first light or initial patterning rather than running the scanner inside a full production flow. The U.S. Commerce Department added Yuliangsheng to its entity list in late 2024, which gives the effort strategic urgency and helps explain the push to localize the remaining supply chain and qualify the machine for factory use.

The Yuliangsheng system is described as an immersion DUV scanner aimed at 28 nm class processes and similar in capability to older Twinscan designs from around 2008. In theory, chipmakers can push such tools toward 7 nm or even 5 nm technologies by using multi-step patterning, but that route increases process complexity, reduces yields, and requires much tighter overlay control and process stability. All of SMIC's current 7 nm and 5 nm nodes are manufactured using quad-patterning, which requires the scanner to perform as many as four laser shots to embed its print onto silicon, all to achieve a more modern node. SMIC is also expected to continue relying on ASML equipment for its most advanced products, while domestic tools mature. The company plans to begin integrating qualified local DUV machines into production lines as soon as 2027. Even if the current trials succeed, closing the technological gap to the world's leading lithography vendors and achieving competitive sub-10 nm yields will take several more years of redesign, qualification, and scaling.