Semiconductor scaling is expected to continue to hp32nm and beyond, accompanied by explosive data volume expansion. Required minimum feature size at hp 32nm will be less than 50nm on the mask, according to ITRS2007(1). EBM 7000 is a newly designed mask writer for the hp32 nm node with an improved electron optical column providing the beam resolution (10 nm measured in situ) and beam current density (200 A/cm2) necessary for cost effective mask production at hp32nm node. In this paper we report on column improvements, the in situ beam blur measurement method and writing results from EBM 7000. Written patterns show dose margin (CD change [nm] / 1 % dose change) of .94 nm /1 % dose for line/space arrays using chemically amplified resist PRL009 and our standard processing. Using a simple model to relate the measured beam intensity distribution to the measured dose margin, we infer an effective total blur of 30 nm, dominated by a contribution of 28 nm from the resist exposure and development process. Further evidence of the dominance of the process contribution is the measured improvement in dose margin to .64 nm/% dose obtained by modifying our standard process. Even larger process improvements will be needed for successful fabrication of hp22nm masks.