Benschop is the executive vice president of technology for ASML, a Dutch company that is the linchpin of the microchip industry. If you want to make powerful chips to power phones or AI, a lithography machine like the one we\u2019re standing on is what you need to create increasingly tiny circuitry. Lithography is the art and science of shining light on a silicon wafer to pattern out the transistors, wiring, and other components of the microchips that will be cut from it.<\/p>\n
\nThe chipmaking field is essentially controlled by only two big players: ASML, which creates the lithography machines, and TSMC, the chipmaking giant.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Nine years ago, ASML began selling machines that use a daring new way of patterning chip features. These machines employ extreme-ultraviolet light, or EUV\u2014radiation well outside the visible spectrum that they produce by shooting lasers at tiny molten drops of tin, tens of thousands of times a second. Those first machines\u2014the result of an R&D moonshot that lasted 16 years and cost about $10 billion\u2014can craft transistor features with a resolution of 13 nanometers. This new machine can do even better: It has a resolution of just eight nanometers, the width of about 40 silicon atoms. The devices are now shipping to chipmaking factories, or fabs, at an eye-watering price: $400 million each.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\nBut chipmakers will fork that cash over, because they are in a desperate race to produce new and improved chips every year. That means getting their mitts on machines that can make ever smaller components and cram them together ever more densely\u2014part of a long-standing recipe for creating faster and more energy-\u00adefficient chips. <\/p>\n
For years now, ASML\u2019s tools have been critical to keeping Moore\u2019s Law alive. Without the company\u2019s advanced chipmaking technology it is very possible that chip density\u2014and the ability to perform ever more calculations\u2014would have plateaued. <\/p>\n
The AI industry has produced new and ravenous demand for denser chips, as firms like OpenAI and Anthropic scramble to erect server farms that train and deploy new, ever-more-powerful models, which require new, ever-more-powerful hardware. ASML\u2019s latest machine promises to help keep the AI party raging for at least another decade. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe can allow customers to go to smaller and smaller features, and that opens up the space for whatever we see now today in AI, which is absolutely mind-blowing,\u201d Marco Pieters, ASML\u2019s CTO, told me. \u201cI think we\u2019ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.\u201d <\/p>\n
Its relentless push for \u201cshrink\u201d\u2014as they call it in the chipmaking industry\u2014has made ASML a dominant force: The company produces about 90% of all chip-\u00adlithography tools worldwide. If you make chips, ASML is unavoidable.<\/p>\n
But that monopoly position makes some people, and governments, uneasy. The chipmaking field is essentially controlled by only two big players: ASML, which creates the lithography machines, and TSMC, the chipmaking giant in Taiwan, which uses ASML\u2019s machines to craft the vast majority of all microchips. This duopoly is so powerful that it has geopolitical implications. In an effort to prevent China from developing advanced AI, the US government pressured the Dutch government to impose an embargo in 2019: ASML isn\u2019t allowed to sell high-end machines to any Chinese firm. Geopolitically, \u201cchips are the new oil,\u201d says Marc Hijink, the author of Focus: The ASML Way<\/em>. Being deprived of them can be as disastrous as being deprived of oil. And in that metaphor, you might say, ASML is the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
James Proud, the cofounder and CEO of the lithography startup Substrate, says the situation is not ideal. The US is \u201cdangerously reliant\u201d<\/a> on a supply chain that\u2019s overseas and increasingly pricey, Substrate says on its website. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge concentration in a small number of players,\u201d Proud says. \u201cAnd the supply chain is just very expensive.\u201d <\/p>\n
Which is why, after two decades of ASML\u2019s dominance, would-be competitors are now gunning for its territory. China is hungrily pouring billions into trying to replicate ASML\u2019s tech. And startups like Substrate are trying to get in the game as well, setting their sights on creating lithography machines that are cheaper, smaller, and even more capable than ASML\u2019s behemoths. Will any of them succeed? The near future clearly belongs to ASML, but as its engineers well know, you can unseat a giant with the right trick of the light.<\/p>\n
\nMaking chips is, oddly, a bit like silk-screening a T-shirt. To print a pattern on a silicon wafer, you start with a pattern on a reticle\u2014a mask that carries the design. Shining a light on the reticle transfers that pattern to the wafer. The light interacts with a layer of chemicals on the wafer, fixing the pattern in place. <\/p>\n
The size of a chip\u2019s features is partly set by the wavelength of light the machine uses: The smaller the wavelength, the teensier the circuitry you can create. You can stretch the capabilities of a wavelength somewhat; increasing what\u2019s known as the numerical aperture, which usually means swapping in a bigger lens, can further focus the light and thus lay down patterns for smaller and smaller components. Eventually, though, this trick hits its limit, and you need to find a new form of light with a smaller wavelength. <\/p>\n
So the history of chipmaking has been a two-step dance. The industry finds a good source of light, eventually increases the numerical aperture, and then finally accepts the need for a smaller wavelength, starting the two-step all over again. Up to the early 1990s, chipmakers used visible light, with a wavelength of about 400 nanometers. By the mid-\u201990s they\u2019d upgraded to deep ultraviolet, ultimately getting it down to a 193-nanometer wavelength. By the late \u201990s they saw the end of the line approaching for deep ultraviolet. But what would come next?<\/p>\n
All the options were troublesome. They could shift to x-rays, with a teensy one-\u00adnanometer wavelength, but they were devilishly hard to focus. Beams of electrons and ions were equally precise; but they worked like dot-matrix printers, transferring a pattern point by point, which was far too slow. (The chip industry wants a machine to crank out hundreds of wafers per hour.) <\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very engineering-heavy company: Let\u2019s send thousands of engineers and just have them mow down these problems.<\/em> That\u2019s what they did, and it worked.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n
Jeff Koch, analyst, SemiAnalysis<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Around 2001, ASML, then a smaller player in the lithography world, placed its bet on another option: EUV, with a wavelength just shy of the x-ray range. Nikon and Canon were working on it as well, but they dropped out\u2014while ASML kept going. The idea was full of unknowns. Nobody knew how to reliably generate that type of light, nor how to focus it; EUV is absorbed by regular glass lenses. It\u2019s even absorbed by air. ASML figured it would take six full years to wade through this R&D nightmare. <\/p>\n
In reality it took those 16 years and about $10 billion in research, but it worked. The machine, which works in a vacuum, creates EUV light by vaporizing molten tin and using mirrors to direct it. Zeiss, a historic German optics company, had to invent new techniques for polishing and inspecting the mirrors, using an ion beam to knock off minute imperfections. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey sort of ignored the buzz of, like, Hey, this is never gonna work<\/em>, and they just beat their heads against these huge engineering problems,\u201d says Jeff Koch, who used to work for ASML and is now an analyst for the chip-industry research firm SemiAnalysis. \u201cIt\u2019s a very engineering-\u00adheavy company: Let\u2019s send thousands of engineers and just have them mow down these problems<\/em>. That\u2019s what they did, and it worked.\u201d <\/p>\n
When the first EUV machines went on the market in 2017, they cost well over $100 million apiece. Some observers wondered whether the demand would really be there from the major chipmaking firms\u2014TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. In the years chipmakers were waiting for EUV to happen, the lithography industry had developed clever ways to improve on old-fashioned deep ultraviolet light. (If you put a layer of water on top of the wafer, for example, the light could focus more narrowly.) Maybe EUV wouldn\u2019t be much needed for a while?<\/p>\n
But ASML lucked out. Only a few years after EUV debuted, OpenAI released GPT-3 and then ChatGPT. Artificial intelligence burst into the mainstream. Instantly, firms like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic were hungry for increasingly high-end chips as they built massive server farms to train and deploy large language models. EUV made it easier and faster to crank out AI-tailored chip designs. Nvidia began producing elite GPUs\u2014processors perfectly suited for AI training\u2014that cost $40,000 a pop; the big companies couldn\u2019t get enough. The AI wars were on, and EUV was in demand. In 2025, ASML says, it sold nearly 50 EUV machines to companies and pulled in nearly $40 billion in revenue. As of press time, the company\u2019s market cap was over half a trillion dollars. <\/p>\n
\nASML\u2019s new machines have no shortage of potential customers. But there is one in particular, with deep pockets, that can\u2019t buy them for any amount of money: China. <\/p>\n
The US wants to hobble China\u2019s ability to create cutting-edge AI chips\u2014or any advanced chips, for that matter. So when ASML began selling its original EUV machines, in 2017, the Trump administration successfully pressured the Dutch government to forbid the company from selling them to any Chinese firms. The US had also imposed export controls on China\u2019s telecom giant Huawei, banning US firms from using its 4G and 5G equipment.<\/p>\n
This one-two punch incensed the Chinese government and stirred it to action. China is now pouring billions into catching up and trying to develop its own EUV chip-patterning technology. A Reuters report<\/a> last winter found that a government skunkworks employing former ASML staffers had cobbled together a machine so huge it filled the entire floor of a lab. It\u2019s unclear how well it works. The experiment may well be making some chips, says Hijink, but he doubts it can do so at an industrial scale.<\/p>\n
\nA mirror is installed in an optical system for the high-NA machine.<\/figcaption> COURTESY OF ZEISS<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nOfficially, the government denied it was pushing to develop EUV tech. An editorial in the Global Times<\/em>\u2014a newspaper closely allied with the Chinese government\u2014pooh-poohed the report, claiming that China was still happy to work with the West to get access to chips. \u201cOur goal has never been to build a self-\u00adsufficient \u2018technology island\u2019 in isolation,\u201d it stated, \u201cbut rather, on the basis of achieving autonomy and control over key technologies, to integrate more deeply and equally into the global innovation network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Experts say the reality is in the middle. China definitely craves a domestic ability to make high-end chips. And unlike ASML, it doesn\u2019t need its EUV machinery to be efficient and profitable, cranking out about 200 wafers an hour. Any<\/em> output would help wean it off reliance on the West. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey would be very happy to have a tool that does one wafer per hour and it costs them a fortune to run,\u201d Koch says. \u201cThey would build a fab with a thousand of those and be super happy with it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Still, producing and managing EUV light well is a feat that might take years, some told me. In the meantime, the Chinese will lean hard on deep-ultraviolet lithography, developed in the \u201990s, making the most of an alternative but slower approach known as multi-\u00adpatterning, says David Lin, senior advisor for tech leadership at the Special Competitive Studies Project, a think tank that focuses on security and technology. \u201cThey\u2019re going to push DUV to the absolute limits,\u201d Lin says.<\/p>\n
The AI race is also pushing China to devise ever cleverer ways of developing LLMs that don\u2019t rely on the fastest AI chips. In the US, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are fighting over who can buy the biggest piles of hot Nvidia chips. Since China can\u2019t compete that way, it is innovating not in hardware but in software\u2014building lighter-\u00adweight LLMs like DeepSeek. <\/p>\n
\nAs China rumbles into action, ASML has remained laser focused on shrink. To go even smaller, Benschop and his engineers decided, they wouldn\u2019t shift to a new form of light. They\u2019d do the second part of the two-step: They\u2019d raise the numerical aperture of the machine by more than half (for those keeping track of the specific numbers, it would be a switch from an NA of 0.33 to an NA of 0.55). That would let them cut the size of the transistors by close to half and nearly triple their density on a chip. <\/p>\n
This would also be an easier climb. Without the need to develop an entirely new source of light, the new machine\u2014based on high-numerical-aperture EUV, or \u201chigh NA\u201d\u2014would be evolutionary, not revolutionary.<\/p>\n
Still, building the new system did present a few gnarly challenges. In an EUV machine, the way you transfer an image onto a wafer is by shining light at the microchip pattern on the reticle and then using an optical system to take the reflected light and demagnify that pattern, shrinking it down to the size you want on the wafer. The light hits only part of the reticle at any given time, so you quickly move the reticle back and forth to expose every part of the pattern to the light.<\/p>\n
Going to a higher numerical aperture meant they could have smaller features on the reticle. But this also meant that some of the light would be arriving at the reticle\u2014and reflecting off it\u2014at a steeper angle. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s what caused problems. The pattern on the reticle is three-dimensional, so light arriving at such a steep angle caused shadows\u2014much the way slanted sunlight creates shadows in the Grand Canyon. That stood to diminish the machine\u2019s ability to make clear patterns.<\/p>\n
\nThe new reticle moves with acceleration up to 22 g, much faster than in the company\u2019s original EUV machine. \u201cDon\u2019t try to sit on it, because you\u2019ll pass out.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The solution was to change the pattern on the reticle\u2014along with the way the mirrors took the light and shrank it down to impart the pattern to the wafer. The designs on the reticle would now be twice as long as they were wide\u2014stretched, as it were, in one dimension.<\/p>\n
But this design came with its own problems. The changes to the mirrors meant the area on the wafer exposed during a single scan was half the size it was with the original EUV machines, reducing the system\u2019s speed. And ASML couldn\u2019t tolerate any slowdown: Chipmakers were paying it for machines with massive throughput, about 200 wafers an hour.<\/p>\n
If one part of the system slowed down, another part would have to speed up. The engineers decided the machine should move the reticle faster, which meant making the entire mechanism lighter and dramatically redesigning it. The new reticle moves with acceleration up to 22 g, much faster than in the company\u2019s original EUV machine. \u201cDon\u2019t try to sit on it, because you\u2019ll pass out,\u201d Pieters told me. The wafer stage moves around faster as well, in tandem with the reticle.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, over in Germany, Zeiss\u2019s engineers were busy designing mirrors to accommodate the higher numerical aperture and asymmetric shaping of the light. The new mirrors would be about twice as large as those in the regular EUV machines, and the projection system, which carries light from the reticle to the wafer, weighed fully 12 tons, seven times more than before. Zeiss built a new robot-assisted production line to handle these ponderous new beasts. The company says they\u2019re the smoothest surfaces they\u2019ve ever made. <\/p>\n
At the same time, ASML was working on making its EUV light source even more powerful, to help make the wafer-exposing process go faster. The engineers calculated that they could improve the output of EUV if they hit each tin droplet three times with the laser instead of twice, as they do in the first machine. That meant the already-hectic system of firing tin would need to speed up by 50%. \u201cThe lasers just keep getting bigger,\u201d says Alex Schafgans, the head of engineering at ASML in San Diego, where the EUV light source is built. <\/p>\n
Indeed, the lasers for a single machine now fill an entire room. After Benschop showed me the massive high-NA device, we walked across the hall and entered a chamber filled with hulking six-foot-tall boxes that were part of the laser system. Peering through tiny windows in the sides of the units, we could see the glowing purple plasma used in creating the laser light.<\/p>\n
\nWhen high-NA machines began to roll off the assembly line, one company was waiting hungrily: Intel. The company purchased the very first high-NA machine put up for sale, and in the spring of 2024, 300 ASML engineers showed up in Oregon at one of Intel\u2019s fabs to begin assembling and testing it. <\/p>\n
\u201cASML actually put a giant ribbon around one of the boxes,\u201d says Mark Phillips, an Intel fellow who is director of its hardware and lithography solutions, laughing. His team has been testing the machine to see how well it performs; Phillips wouldn\u2019t give details other than to say he\u2019s \u201cvery pleased at the rapid pace of tool health.\u201d He also wouldn\u2019t give a date for when Intel would start using it to make chips, though observers say that will likely happen next year. The company plans to ease it in, using it for just a few precision components on a chip and then gradually for more and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What\u2019s at stake is a chance to recapture its mojo. Intel was once a silicon powerhouse, designing the most cutting-edge CPUs for computers and servers, and building them in its own fabs. But in the 2010s, the big new markets were mobile-phone chips and GPUs for AI and gaming, and Intel rapidly lost ground. Apple designed its own mobile chips (and had TSMC make them), while Nvidia did the same thing with GPUs. Google began banging out its own TSMC-made AI chips called TPUs in 2015, and soon it was stuffing data centers full of them.<\/p>\n
\nIntel fellow Mark Phillips briefs members of the media on the high-NA tool at the company\u2019s Fab D1X in Hillsboro, Oregon. Intel was ASML\u2019s first customer for the new EUV machine.<\/figcaption> COURTESY OF INTEL CORPORATION<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo in 2021 Intel announced a moonshot. It would aggressively begin building out a foundry business, one that would go toe to toe with TSMC. Instead of creating Intel chips, the Intel foundry would manufacture designs for customers like makers of mobile phones and AI chips. <\/p>\n
Intel hopes that being the first to wield high-NA technology will give it an edge in the silicon rat race, making it possible to print tiny patterns faster than anyone else. <\/p>\n
It could also make things simpler for customers. Over the years, while waiting for EUV machines to emerge, chip designers used multi-patterning to squeeze more life out of the older forms of light. Every chip is made out of layers, which are laid down to make components like the switches and wiring. If you\u2019re working on one of those layers and need to make features tinier than your machine can normally produce, you can break the pattern for that layer up into several patterns and then expose the wafer to them one at a time. This strategy helped chipmakers keep using older (and cheaper) machines while still creating tinier and tinier components. But multi-patterning is a hassle: It\u2019s more challenging to design the complex overlay of patterns, and much slower to print each chip. Designing a chip is far easier if you know you can do \u201csingle patterning,\u201d blasting each layer in one go. <\/p>\n
Observers say it won\u2019t be easy to build a foundry business that bests TSMC and Samsung on their own terrain. \u201cLeapfrogging is difficult,\u201d Hijink says. But it\u2019s also true that the high-tech world has such a ravening hunger for better chips that Intel could succeed, simply because even TSMC and Samsung can\u2019t fulfill all that need. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s spillover demand, so Intel can survive off that,\u201d Koch says. \u201cIt\u2019s not even scraps now. It\u2019s a meal. It may not be the best foundry, but they can make chips, and there\u2019s only three companies that can do that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
TSMC, for its part, seems to be biding its time when it comes to high NA. \u201cTSMC will deploy high-NA EUV when it is mature and ready to deliver maximum benefit to our customers,\u201d the company wrote to MIT Technology Review<\/em>. Some suspect it won\u2019t use the machines in serious volume until the 2030s. Part of the reason is cost: TSMC is ruthlessly focused on producing chips as cost-effectively as possible, and the high-NA tools are a blistering $400 million each, far more than the previous EUV rigs. And unlike those, the new machines are not a revolutionary leap upward. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is like 30% to 50% better in terms of capability,\u201d says Koch, the analyst and former ASML employee. \u201cThis is probably the first tool that hasn\u2019t obviously made business sense right away for ASML.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that the industry won\u2019t eventually embrace high NA en masse, Koch says. Most companies will need to, if they want to keep going smaller. But TSMC is more likely to push ahead as far as it can go with its existing EUV tools, using onerous multi-patterning to wring as much as it can out of that generation until it absolutely needs to switch. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe industry has only shifted paradigms when it just absolutely cannot extend\u2014even one more little bit\u2014out of what it\u2019s been doing,\u201d Koch says. <\/p>\n
\nChina isn\u2019t the only party looking to upset the current balance of power. The dominance of ASML, and the swelling cost of its tools, is prompting other upstarts too. But instead of trying to replicate ASML\u2019s breakthroughs in EUV, they\u2019re doing an end run\u2014working on lithography tools that use entirely different forms of light. These will be far cheaper, they promise, and just as powerful.<\/p>\n
One is Substrate, a San Francisco\u2013based startup. Founded four years ago, it\u2019s working on a tool that uses x-ray light produced by a particle accelerator. X-rays have a remarkably tiny wavelength, making them a potentially powerful way to create minute features. <\/p>\n
Particle accelerators have historically been enormous, making them difficult to fit into a chipmaking process. Substrate says it has harnessed decades of scientific improvements in particle acceleration to produce a light source that\u2019s smaller and suitable for mass production. <\/p>\n
Last year the company released images showing that it had created fine patterns, which Proud, the CEO, says are only possible now with a high-NA EUV machine. He says Substrate\u2019s goal is to produce chips at scale by 2030. <\/p>\n
But Proud doesn\u2019t intend to sell the tools to TSMC or Intel. Indeed, he doesn\u2019t plan to sell them to anyone. Instead, Substrate wants to create its own fab, building chips using its own tools. <\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe amount of chips we\u2019re going to need is going to be many orders of magnitude larger than even the wildest projections you have now.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n
James Proud, cofounder and CEO, Substrate<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The semiconductor industry, Proud argues, needs new approaches, because it\u2019s become too pricey and too centralized. A single fab today can cost $25 billion to build, up from about $5 billion in the 2010s, the company notes. It\u2019s driving the cost of a single wafer full of advanced chips up toward $100,000, Proud says. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is, I think, a prohibitive cost,\u201d he says. There also isn\u2019t enough capacity in the supply chain: \u201cIt\u2019s relatively slow and hard to flex to the current increase in demands.\u201d He admires ASML\u2019s EUV tooling\u2014it\u2019s \u201cthe apex implementation of that technology\u201d\u2014but new approaches are needed.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s partly for national security reasons. Proud and his team think it\u2019s too dangerous for the US to rely on foreign supplies. But he also predicts the current AI boom will go into overdrive, creating a massive demand for chips that the existing ASML\/TSMC duopoly won\u2019t be able to deliver: \u201cThe amount of chips we\u2019re going to need is going to be many orders of magnitude larger than even the wildest projections you have now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nASML\u2019s machines use lasers and molten tin to generate the EUV light.<\/figcaption> CHRISTOPHER PAYNE<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSubstrate predicts it will be able to produce finished wafers at $10,000 a pop\u2014a tenth of where Proud predicts the rest of the industry is heading. Proud says that\u2019s partly because the company\u2019s system will be vertically integrated, so it will control all parts of the chipmaking process, but also because its lithography tooling will be less complex: \u201cWe\u2019re able to put together in a sort of simpler package.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Substrate is playing its cards close to its chest. Unlike ASML, the company isn\u2019t offering nuanced detail on how it generates light, or on how that then translates into making patterns on a wafer. <\/p>\n
Substrate\u2019s ambitions give some industry observers pause. Hijink, who thinks it is probably \u201cunachievable and impossible\u201d to simultaneously master both a new form of lithography and high-throughput fab techniques, regards the company\u2019s secrecy as a red flag. \u201cThis industry is about open innovation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Koch is more impressed by its ambitions and funding. The type of technology it\u2019s pursuing \u201cis really cool,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting.\u201d But \u201cthere\u2019s a long road between lab-scale demonstration and high volume,\u201d he adds. \u201cIs this like an imminent disruption to ASML? Probably not.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another startup that is aiming to hit the market around the same time as Substrate is Lace Lithography. Based in Norway, it is devising an entirely different approach\u2014one that doesn\u2019t use light at all. Instead, an energized beam of helium atoms is pointed at the pattern on the reticle. When the helium atoms then hit the wafer, the atoms transfer their energy to it, imparting the design to the chip. <\/p>\n
The idea dates back a while. Bodil Holst, the CEO, took it up in 2008, when she was a physicist studying the use of atom beams. MIT professor Henry \u201cHank\u201d Smith, a pioneer in using x-rays for lithography, told her she should explore using atoms as a mechanism for making microchips, because back then he wasn\u2019t sure ASML\u2019s EUV moonshot would work. \u201cEven if it does, we\u2019ll need atoms eventually,\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n
Holst did some experiments to investigate the idea further and partnered with a former PhD student\u2014Adri\u00e0 Salvador Palau, a physicist and expert in machine learning\u2014to found Lace. Like Substrate\u2019s, its tool is completely different from ASML\u2019s massive machinery. The source of the excited atoms \u201clooks a bit like a rocket motor,\u201d says Palau. \u201cIt\u2019s very cool.\u201d While EUV\u2019s wavelength is 13.5 nanometers, the helium atoms offer a precision of 0.1 nanometers. The process also requires far less power, and the machine is intended to be far smaller. Holst tells me the company aims to have machines ready to sell to fabs by 2029 or 2030.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everybody\u2019s really looking forward to something that extends a road map beyond light, beyond EUV,\u201d Palau says. <\/p>\n
ASML is watching these upstarts with curiosity. Benschop says he can\u2019t assess whether Substrate\u2019s technology will work reliably and affordably, because the company hasn\u2019t explained anything about its processes. But he went to a conference where Holst and Palau did a presentation outlining Lace Lithography\u2019s technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m incredibly impressed with how they do it,\u201d he says. The problem, he says, is he doesn\u2019t think the process produces patterns on the wafer that are deep enough to be useful. \u201cI cannot see how they would scale it to a viable volume product,\u201d he told me. <\/p>\n
He suspects ASML\u2019s mastery of EUV will keep it on top for the near future. \u201cSo far, I have not seen a viable alternative,\u201d he says. He thinks there\u2019s \u201cno serious runner-up\u201d when it comes to volume manufacturing of the most advanced chip generations.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that major shifts in chipmaking are slow, says Chris Miller, a professor of international history at Tufts University and the author of Chip War<\/em>, a book about the worldwide struggle for dominance in the industry. \u201cNo doubt we\u2019ll eventually have alternatives [to EUV],\u201d he told me via e-mail. \u201cBut it\u2019s worth noting that lithography transitions have historically taken years, if not decades.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nASML\u2019s executives, too, are pondering their future. Benschop expects high-NA technology to dominate chipmaking into the 2030s. Beyond that? The industry has, indeed, tended to shift to a new form of light every decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou may argue it\u2019s time for the next decade,\u201d he told me after we\u2019d stripped off our bunny suits and he was relaxing with a coffee. <\/p>\n
But ASML\u2019s executives suspect they can continue to squeeze more capabilities out of EUV by increasing the numerical aperture even further on their existing machine. They\u2019re already toying with a design that would take an NA of 0.55 to an NA of 0.75: \u201chyper NA.\u201d It could let them pattern wafers with a resolution of six nanometers. They\u2019re also working on standardizing their various optics into a platform of a single size, so customers could order one machine outfitted for either regular EUV, high NA, or hyper NA. If it\u2019s all in the same-sized unit, it would simplify the costs and logistics of integrating each into a fab. If the company goes through with it, Benschop figures, the hyper-NA tool might hit the market seven or eight years from now and be sold in volume during the second half of the 2030s.<\/p>\n
For now, the ball is in ASML\u2019s court. \u201cWe\u2019re pushing the limits of physics,\u201d Pieters told me. The question now is whether anyone else can push harder. <\/p>\n
Clive Thompson is a science and technology journalist based in New York City. He wrote about the development of ASML\u2019s original EUV machine<\/a> in <\/em>MIT Technology Review\u2019s 2021 issue on computing<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jos Benschop is climbing a ladder to get to the top of his newest machine. It\u2019s a bit of a schlep. The contraption is the size of a double-decker bus\u2014more than 150 tons of gleaming precision-milled aluminum covered in thousands of snaking tubes, colored cables, and pressurized tanks. From the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-6427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mit-feed","tag-mit-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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