Huawei Tests Brute-Force Method for Making More Advanced Chips

Huawei Technologies Co. and a secretive chipmaking partner in China have filed patents for a low-tech but potentially effective way to make advanced semiconductors, raising the prospect that China could improve chip production techniques despite US efforts to halt its progress.

The companies are developing technologies that involve self-aligned quadruple patterning, or SAQP, and should reduce their reliance on high-end lithography, according to patent filings to the Chinese intellectual property authority. That may allow them to produce advanced chips without ASML Holding NV’s state-of-the-art extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. Netherlands-based ASML, the sole provider of EUV machines, cannot sell ...