News ASML ships groundbreaking new chipmaking tool to Intel — High-NA lithography tool needed for next-gen process nodes could cost ~$400 million

[Admin]

Intel is gearing up to be high-NA EUV lithography champ with orders for six additional Twinscan EXE machines.

ASML ships groundbreaking new chipmaking tool to Intel — High-NA lithography tool needed for next-gen process nodes could cost ~$400 million : Read more

 

[rtoaht]

It’s amazing how so many people in tech forums don’t believe that Intel will regain the process technology leadership. The same company that kept the process leadership for many decades until recently.

Most people know about their 10nm execution issues and forget or don’t know that TSMC had similar issues during FinFET transition and more recently with 3nm.

Time will tell what will happen in the future, but I wouldn’t just casually count them out. They might very well retake the leadership in a year or so.

 

[thestryker]

It's going to be interesting to see how Intel approaches High-NA and I'm hoping someone gets to do some interviews or they do some media pieces on it. I'm assuming that with the pilot EXE:5000 they're going to be predominantly putting it through its paces on existing nodes before moving on to ones beyond 18A.

The main question I have is whether or not the EXE:5200s get installed early enough to be leveraged to optimize existing nodes or if they'll be used for what's next. If Intel wasn't trying to make IFS a real player I'd say future node, but these machines have the potential to limit multipatterning and have increased throughput.

 

[Rob1C]

While Intel may receive their machine first, for research, it is IBM and partners that will be making production chips first with their soon-to-arrive machine (same one):

New York state, IBM, Micron and others partner on cutting-edge $10B chip research lab - SiliconANGLE

New York state, IBM, Micron and others partner on cutting-edge $10B chip research lab - SiliconANGLE

siliconangle.com

https://research.ibm.com/blog/high-na-euv-lithography-albany

Introducing the world’s first 2 nm node chip

IBM Research’s second-generation nanosheet technology has paved a path to the 2 nm node, produced on a 300 mm wafer.

research.ibm.com

 

[thestryker]

While Intel may receive their machine first, for research, it is IBM and partners that will be making production chips first with their soon-to-arrive machine (same one):

New York state, IBM, Micron and others partner on cutting-edge $10B chip research lab - SiliconANGLE

New York state, IBM, Micron and others partner on cutting-edge $10B chip research lab - SiliconANGLE

siliconangle.com

https://research.ibm.com/blog/high-na-euv-lithography-albany

Introducing the world’s first 2 nm node chip

IBM Research’s second-generation nanosheet technology has paved a path to the 2 nm node, produced on a 300 mm wafer.

research.ibm.com

That says they're breaking ground 2024 and they're getting EXE:5200 which won't be shipping until some time next year (for the first batch which IBM may or may not be part of). The one being cited in this article is the pilot High-NA machine which is the EXE:5000 and Intel will have it installed and operating (unless something goes very wrong) well before anyone else has anything shipping.

Now IBM's acquisition of a High-NA machine is probably the most important for the industry as a whole given how good their node research has been. Many leading edge nodes were either designed by or use research done by IBM.