Exclusive have a look at the making of High NA, ASML’s new $400 million chipmaking colossus

Behind extremely secured doorways in a large lab within the Netherlands, there is a device that is remodeling how microchips are made. ASML spent just about a decade growing High NA, which stands for prime numerical aperture. With a ticket of greater than $400 million, it is the international’s maximum complicated and costly chipmaking device. 

CNBC went to the Netherlands for a excursion of the lab in April. Before that, High NA had by no means been filmed, even via ASML’s personal group.

Inside the lab, High NA qualification group lead Assia Haddou gave CNBC an unique, up-close have a look at the High NA machines, which she stated are “bigger than a double-decker bus.” 

The device is made up of 4 modules, manufactured in Connecticut, California, Germany and the Netherlands, then assembled within the Veldhoven, Netherlands, lab for trying out and approval, prior to being disassembled once more to send out. Haddou stated it takes seven partly loaded Boeing 747s, or a minimum of 25 vans, to get one machine to a buyer.

The international’s first business set up of High NA came about at Intel‘s Oregon chip fabrication plant, or fab, in 2024. Only 5 of the colossal machines have ever been shipped. 

They’re now being ramped as much as make thousands and thousands of chips at the manufacturing facility flooring of the few corporations that may have the funds for them: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung and Intel. 

High NA is the newest technology of ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet, or EUV, machines. ASML is the unique maker of EUV, the one lithography units on this planet able to projecting the smallest blueprints that make up probably the most complicated microchips. Chip designs from giants like Nvidia, Apple and AMD cannot be manufactured with out EUV.

ASML advised CNBC that High NA will in the end be utilized by all its EUV shoppers. That comprises different complicated chipmakers like Micron, SK Hynix and Rapidus.

“This company has that market completely cornered,” stated Daniel Newman of The Futurum Group.

CNBC requested CEO Christophe Fouquet what is preventing ASML from atmosphere the cost of its machines even upper. He defined that as machines advance, they make it less expensive to supply the chips themselves. 

“Moore’s law says that we need to continue to drive costs down,” Fouquet stated. “There is a belief that if you drive costs down, you create more opportunity, so we need to be part of this game.”

Two primary shoppers have showed that High NA has proven giant enhancements over ASML’s earlier EUV machines. At a convention in February, Intel stated it had used High NA to make about 30,000 wafers up to now, and that the device used to be about two times as dependable as its predecessors. At that very same convention, Samsung stated High NA may cut back its cycle time via 60%, which means its chips can entire extra operations in keeping with 2nd.

‘An excessively dangerous funding’

High NA can power chip costs down as a result of those enhancements in velocity and function. High NA additionally improves yield, which means extra of the chips on each and every wafer are usable.

That’s as a result of it could actually venture chip designs at the next answer. High NA makes use of the similar procedure as EUV machines however with a bigger lens opening that permits for projection of smaller chip design in fewer steps.

“High NA means two things. First and foremost, shrink. So there’s more devices on a single wafer,” stated Jos Benschop, ASML’s govt vice chairman of generation. “Secondly, by avoiding multiple patterning, you can make them faster and you can make them with higher yield.”

Benschop joined ASML in 1997, two years after it was a publicly traded corporate. Benschop then helped power the verdict to move all in on EUV. The generation took greater than 20 years to increase.

“We barely made it. I think sometimes people forget that,” Fouquet stated. “It’s been a very risky investment because when we started, there was no guarantee the technology would work.”

By 2018, ASML proved the viability of EUV and primary chipmakers began striking giant orders for the machines. The thought, which appeared unimaginable to many 20 years in the past, used to be to create massive quantities of tiny rays of maximum ultraviolet mild, projecting it thru mask with more and more small chip designs, onto wafers of silicon handled with photoresist chemical substances. 

To create the EUV mild, ASML shoots molten tin out of a nozzle at 50,000 droplets in keeping with 2nd, taking pictures each and every drop with a formidable laser that creates a plasma that is warmer than the solar. Those tiny explosions are what emit photons of the EUV mild, with a wavelength of simply 13.5 nanometers.

About the width of 5 DNA strands, EUV is so small that it is absorbed via all recognized components, so the entire procedure has to occur in a vacuum. The EUV mild bounces off mirrors that purpose it thru a lens, just like how a digicam works. To resolve for EUV getting absorbed via mirrors, German optics corporate Zeiss made explicit mirrors only for ASML which are the flattest artifical surfaces on this planet. 

ASML’s older technology DUV machines use much less actual rays of deep ultraviolet mild with a wavelength of 193 nanometers. ASML nonetheless makes the machines — competing in opposition to Nikon and Canon in Japan on DUV — however it’s the handiest corporate on this planet that is succeeded at EUV lithography.

The Dutch corporate started growing the $400 million High NA machines round 2016. High NA machines paintings the similar as DUV, with the similar EUV mild supply. But there may be one key distinction.

High NA stands for prime numerical aperture – which means it has a bigger lens opening, expanding the perspective at which the sunshine is captured via the mirrors. More mild coming in from steeper angles permits High NA machines to switch more and more small designs onto the wafer in a single step. By comparability, decrease NA machines require a couple of projections of EUV mild, thru a couple of mask.

“When the number increases, it gets very complex process-wise and the yield goes down,” Fouquet stated. 

Resolution improves as NA will increase, bringing down the will for a couple of mask and exposures, saving money and time. The value of the High NA device, then again, is going up.

“The bigger the mirror you have to use and therefore the bigger the system,” Fouquet stated.

These machines additionally absorb an enormous quantity of energy.

“If we don’t improve the power efficiency of our AI chips over time, the training of the models could consume the entire worldwide energy and that could happen around 2035,” Fouquet stated. That’s why ASML has diminished the facility wanted in keeping with wafer publicity via greater than 60% since 2018, he stated.

China, price lists and U.S. enlargement

ASML is understood for its groundbreaking EUV machines, however its older DUV machines nonetheless made up 60% of commercial in 2024. ASML offered 44 EUV machines ultimate yr, with a ticket beginning at $220 million. DUV machines are some distance less expensive, starting from $5 million to $90 million, however ASML offered 374 of the legacy machines in 2024.

China is a big purchaser of the ones DUV techniques, making up 49% of ASML’s trade in the second one quarter of 2024. Fouquet advised CNBC this top in gross sales to China got here as a result of a “huge backlog” in orders that ASML wasn’t ready to fill till ultimate yr. He stated trade in China will have to be again to the “historical normal” of between 20% and 25% in 2025.

U.S. export controls save you ASML from promoting EUV to China. It’s a ban that began below the primary Trump management. Newman of The Futurum Group stated it is a “real long shot” that China may increase its personal EUV machines, as an alternative making units like smartphones the usage of probably the most complicated chips imaginable with DUV. 

U.S. fear over complicated tech making its strategy to China has speeded up amid the generative synthetic intelligence race. That increase has additionally despatched chip shares hovering, together with ASML’s, which hit an all-time prime in July.

ASML’s proportion value has declined greater than 30% since, because the chip trade faces key uncertainties comparable to President Donald Trump‘s price lists.

Benschop advised CNBC that ASML merely does not know the way price lists will have an effect on the corporate. With about 800 international providers, tariff implications for ASML are advanced.

Making a unmarried High NA device calls for many steps of imports and exports. The device’s 4 modules are made within the U.S., Netherlands and Germany, then they are shipped to the Netherlands for meeting and trying out, the place they are disassembled once more for cargo to chip fabs in puts just like the U.S. or Asia.

For years, Asia has made up greater than 80% of ASML’s trade. The U.S. proportion sat round 17% in 2024 however is rising rapid. ASML has 44,000 staff globally, and 8,500 of them are founded within the U.S. throughout 18 places of work.

Many of ASML’s 2024 High NA shipments went to Intel, which is development new fabs in Ohio and Arizona. The U.S.-based chipmaker has struggled lately, however Fouquet stated that Intel stays a “formidable partner” for ASML and that it is “very critical” for U.S. semiconductor independence.

Taiwan-based TSMC is some distance forward of Intel in advancing chip nodes. CNBC not too long ago visited TSMC’s new fab north of Phoenix, which is now in quantity manufacturing. As probably the most complicated chip fab on U.S. soil, the will for High NA there’ll most likely come quickly.

ASML, in the meantime, is development its first U.S. coaching heart in Arizona. Fouquet advised CNBC it’ll open within the “next few months” with a objective of coaching 1,200 other folks on EUV and DUV each and every yr. It’s “a capacity that will not only meet what is needed in the U.S., but will be used also to train even more people worldwide,” he stated.

The Dutch corporate plans to additional building up the numerical aperture on its subsequent device, Hyper NA. 

Fouquet advised CNBC that ASML has some draft optical designs for this subsequent device, and that, “it’s not necessarily a difficult product.” He expects the will for Hyper NA to return “between 2032 and 2035.” He would not speculate on value.

For now, ASML is eager about assembly call for for High NA. It plans to send a minimum of 5 extra techniques this yr and ramping to a manufacturing capability of 20 machines in a couple of years.

Watch the video to look High NA in motion.