The 1,000th CMP System: What the Number Represents
Hwatsing Technology, a Beijing-based semiconductor equipment manufacturer, has announced the shipment of its 1,000th chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) system — a milestone that would have seemed improbable five years ago and that carries significant implications for China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency drive. According to Digitimes, the achievement reflects both the technical maturation of Hwatsing’s product line and the accelerating pace of domestic equipment adoption driven by US export controls.
CMP systems are used to smooth and planarize the surface of silicon wafers between successive layers of circuit deposition — a process that must be performed with extreme precision at every stage of advanced chip manufacturing. The machines are among the more technically demanding pieces of equipment in the semiconductor fab, and until recently, the market was dominated almost entirely by Applied Materials and Ebara. Hwatsing’s ability to ship 1,000 systems represents a genuine displacement of foreign suppliers in a critical equipment category.
How US Export Controls Created the Market for Domestic CMP Equipment
The growth of Hwatsing’s CMP business is inseparable from the trajectory of US export controls. As restrictions on advanced semiconductor equipment tightened from 2019 onward, Chinese foundries faced a choice: pay a premium for foreign equipment where it remained available, or accelerate qualification of domestic alternatives. SMIC, Hua Hong, and other Chinese fabs chose the latter, providing Hwatsing and its domestic competitors with the customer base and revenue needed to iterate rapidly on their products.
The 1,000-unit milestone reflects the cumulative effect of this policy-driven demand shift. Each system shipped represents a foreign supplier that did not win the contract, a qualification process that a domestic tool successfully completed, and a step toward the closed-loop domestic supply chain that Beijing has been building since the first round of US chip restrictions. The YMTC and CXMT Are Scaling Fast as they expand their advanced memory production, creating sustained demand for exactly the kind of domestic equipment that Hwatsing supplies.
Technical Progress: Closing the Gap with Applied Materials
Hwatsing’s CMP systems are not yet equivalent to the most advanced offerings from Applied Materials in terms of throughput, uniformity, and compatibility with the most cutting-edge process nodes. But the gap has narrowed considerably, and for the process nodes that represent the bulk of Chinese semiconductor production, meaning 28nm and above, with increasing capability at 14nm, Hwatsing’s tools are now considered qualified and reliable by major domestic fabs.
The company has also made progress on the software and consumables side of the CMP ecosystem, developing proprietary slurries and polishing pads that are optimized for its hardware. This vertical integration reduces the risk of supply chain disruption and gives Hwatsing greater control over the performance characteristics of its systems — an important advantage in a market where reliability and consistency are as important as peak performance.
The Broader Significance for China’s Semiconductor Equipment Ecosystem
The Hwatsing milestone is one data point in a broader story of rapid progress across China’s semiconductor equipment sector. Companies like AMEC (etching), Naura (deposition and etching), and ACM Research (cleaning and plating) have all achieved significant scale and technical capability in their respective equipment categories over the past five years. The cumulative effect is a domestic equipment ecosystem that, while still incomplete and uneven, is far more capable than it was when US restrictions first began to bite.
For China’s long-term semiconductor ambitions, the development of a domestic equipment industry is arguably more important than any individual chip design breakthrough. Equipment is the foundation on which all chip manufacturing capability rests, and a self-sufficient equipment sector means that future generations of Chinese chips can be developed and manufactured without reliance on foreign suppliers subject to US export control pressure. Hwatsing’s 1,000th system is a concrete marker of how far that foundation has been built.
The Next Frontier: Advanced Node Equipment Remains Out of Reach
Despite the progress that Hwatsing and its peers have made in mature-node equipment, the most advanced process nodes — below 7nm — remain largely beyond the reach of China’s domestic equipment industry. The key bottleneck is extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which is manufactured exclusively by ASML and is subject to strict Dutch and US export controls. Without EUV, Chinese foundries cannot manufacture chips at the leading edge, regardless of how capable their CMP, etching, and deposition equipment becomes.
This gap is well understood in Beijing, and significant resources are being directed toward closing it. However, the physics and engineering challenges of EUV lithography are formidable, and most analysts believe it will take at least 5 to 10 years before a domestic EUV alternative becomes viable. In the meantime, milestones like Hwatsing’s 1,000th CMP system represent genuine progress within the constraints of what is currently achievable, and each step forward in mature-node equipment frees up resources and attention for the harder problems ahead.