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Translated from Dutch to English:

ASML shows new showpiece for the first time: 'Most complicated device ever made'

Veldhoven - More expensive, bigger, heavier and much more complicated. ASML is launching a new generation of chip machines. The first has already been delivered and is being assembled in the factory of the American chip manufacturer Intel.

There is also one in Veldhoven, completely complete. Four meters high, four meters wide and fourteen meters long and it weighs as much as 25 elephants. Apart from those directly involved, only King Willem-Alexander and the President of South Korea have seen it in real life. “It is as big as a small ship,” describes an ASML team leader from behind his face mask during a tour for journalists. The machine is in a cleanroom, because the smallest speck of dirt can throw a spanner in the works. Everyone is dressed as if they are going to have surgery.
EUV

Price tag: around €350 million each, about twice as expensive as its predecessor. “Customers can test and build some things here, without having a machine themselves,” says the team leader next to the enormous colossus. “Then they can start producing chips more quickly as soon as their own machine is delivered.” The lion's share of new orders at ASML is now won by the sale of EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) chip machines. The Dutch company is the only one in the world that can make them. The so-called High-NA-EUV chip machine is a new variant. This allows manufacturers to make even better chips in terms of quality. And with less energy consumption. If they have this machine in-house, chip makers also have to go through fewer production steps, according to ASML. That also saves money.

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Tech giants such as Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung mainly make their chips with ASML machines. These then end up in our computers and smartphones. ASML expects that the first chips made by this machine will be in our products from 2026.
The HighNA-EUV chip machines are the most advanced that ASML currently sells.
© ASML

The HighNA-EUV chip machines are the most advanced that ASML currently sells.

ASML delivered the first High-NA machine to Intel at the end of last year. It is still being assembled and 250 technicians are working on it. The fact that the entire process will probably take six months shows how complex the chip machine is. At ASML it is said that it is the most complicated device that man has ever produced. Nobody knows how everything works. Employees are experts in a (small) part of the whole.

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Time pressure

What is it like to work on such a hugely expensive machine? “You get used to it very quickly,” says the team leader, who walks confidently past the machine. “The employees are more concerned with the enormous time pressure under which they have to do their work.” The work continues in shifts 24 hours a day. ASML has more than a year's worth of work underway. The faster chip machines can be assembled, the better it is for the customer because time is money. “Of course things sometimes go wrong. It remains a human job,” said the team leader. “With such expensive machines, errors can be very expensive and run into millions of euros. You have to learn to deal with that.”

The chip machine manufacturer is quite secretive about who buys the machines and in what quantities. “That's what our customers want,” CEO Peter Wennink said recently at the presentation of his company's annual figures. “They think that High-NA is so strategically important for their future that they do not want to make the competition wiser. We have announced that we have received several orders.” A few quarters ago there were already more than ten. “A few more have now been added.” Wennink is satisfied with the interest in the latest generation of chip machines. “It will provide great support to our figures in 2025 and 2026.