The world's most unique super chip manufacturing machine: It weighs as much as two Airbus A320s comb
The price for each of these machines is 350 million USD, which even many large companies cannot afford.
Bloomberg reported that ASML Holding NV group has just introduced its latest line of chip manufacturing machines. This is a 350 million euro ($380 million) device that weighs as much as two Airbus A320s combined.
This device is called High-NA ultraviolet. Intel Corporation ordered the machine, and the first machine was delivered to Intel's factory in Oregon in late December. The company plans to begin chip production using the High-NA machine in late 2025.
The machine can print slices on semiconductors 8 nanometers thick, 1.7 times smaller than the previous generation. The thinner the lines, the more transistors can be fitted onto a chip. And the more transistors on a chip, the higher the processing speed and memory. That's why, ASML executives say, the new machine will prove essential for AI, a technology known for its intense technological processing requirements.
AI will require "massive amounts of computing power and data storage. I think without ASML, without our technology, it wouldn't be possible," said ASML CEO Peter Wennink said in an interview with Bloomberg last month. "This machine will be a big boost to our business"
ASML is the only company that makes the equipment needed to make the most complex semiconductors, and demand for its products is a barometer of the industry's health. Last quarter, the company received record orders for its flagship ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography press, showing optimism among its biggest customers for the technology, including Intel, Samsung Electronics Co . and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
ASML spokeswoman Monique Mols said the installation of the first 150,000 kg system required 250 containers, 250 engineers and six months to complete. The rise of AI over the past year, fueled by the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, has raised expectations for semiconductor companies across the board. Previously, ASML sold EUV lithography machines for up to 200 million USD.
Today, ASML only sells machines to five chip manufacturers. The three largest companies - TSMC, Samsung and Intel - accounted for nearly 84% of its business in 2021. TSMC said in 2019 it was the first to offer high-volume manufactured chips with EUV and they have been ahead of their competitors ever since, with chip technology at least one step ahead of Samsung and Intel.
ASML dominance is a relatively new phenomenon. A decade ago, the company's EUV research capabilities were dictated by large investments from Intel, Samsung and TSMC.
We didn't have any money," said Wennink, who joined ASML in 1999. "So we went out and found partners, which is really the foundation of how we built the company. ty. So we are forced to become a system architect and a system integrator."
ASML started as a subsidiary of Dutch electronics giant Philips in 1984. They launched the first semiconductor lithographic printer - invented in an American military laboratory in the 1980s. 1950 - from a leaky warehouse next to a Philips office building in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
By 1988, ASML had five offices in the US with 84 employees and a new office in the Netherlands in Veldhoven, which eventually became its headquarters. "As the industry gets ready to jump into the early stages of EUV research, there is no Which American company is willing to rush into an expensive and risky proposition, while ASML does.
ASML is a Dutch company, but it is also a Dutch company that relies heavily on components of America in particular for their machinery"
