ASML ships another high NA EUV lithography machine to mystery client

Dutch semiconductor toolmaker ASML has shipped its second-ever high numerical aperture (NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine to an undisclosed customer. ASML's High NA EUV chipmaking machine is intended to make future nodes even more dense than what's possible with current EUV tools, which are considered Low NA. …

[cyberdemon]

Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

Couldn't be NVDA, could it? Quite possible they are wanting their own fab independent of TSMC for er, geopolitical resilience reasons?

[DS999]

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

No one, including Nvidia, is ever going to enter the fab business. Even Intel doesn't have the scale to operate their own fabs anymore and have been forced to become a foundry.

The list of suspects is down to two, with TSMC being more likely than Samsung. The NAND/DRAM fabs are just starting to use EUV now, they won't use high NA EUV for at least a decade, if ever, so it isn't any of them. There is no one else out there who would have any more use for a high NA EUV scanner than you or me do.

[David Newall]

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

The 10 to 20 orders that they claim on their books are for whom?

[Chris Evans]

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

The 10 to 20 machines ordered probably comes from just one or two customer.

[DS999]

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

A fab running wafers using EUV needs one EUV scanner PER LINE, and the big players (that's all that's left for leading edge processes) have multiple fabs running the latest process.

Probably most of the current high NA EUV order book is for Intel, they are being more aggressive than others about adopting it. Many industry experts like Semianalysis believe that high NA EUV won't be cost effective for a while due to the tradeoffs it requires, but maybe Intel found a way around that or is willing to accept higher cost so they can claim process leadership.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

That Japanese highly sponsored sort of start up that is planning or hoping to go from old tech to state of the art nanometer scale tech in a few years?

[DS999]

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

Japan isn't investing enough in them to build even one state of the art foundry, so it isn't clear exactly what that effort is about.

[Richard Tobin]

Who wants to make their own chips?

Apple?

[cb7]

Re: Who wants to make their own chips?

Tesla?

Google?

Amazon?

[user555]

Three was an IBM linked announcement from last year, of a private/public partnership at a NY State research facility, posted on Anand indicating a likely candidate - https://research.ibm.com/blog/high-na-euv-lithography-albany