The big question of how small chips can get

Inside a “clean room” within ASML’s sprawling campus in the Dutch town of Veldhoven, dozens of men and women in hazmat-style suits are breathing air that is 10,000-times more purified than in an operating theatre. They are working on the first prototype of the chip toolmaker’s newest product: the latest generation of extreme ultraviolet photolithography machines that will be used to “print” transistors almost as small as the diameter of a human chromosome on to sheets of silicon to make a semiconductor. This EUV machine is due to ship to Intel this year at a cost of more than €350mn. Without ASML’s lithography machines, products as ubiquitous as Apple’s iPhones or as sophisticated as the Nvidia chips that power ChatGPT would be impossible. Only three companies in the world — Intel, Samsung and TSMC — are capable of manufacturing the advanced processors that make these products possible; all rely on ASML’s cutting-edge equipment to do so. The innovations achieved by ASML have ensured th

Inside a “clean room” within ASML’s sprawling campus in the Dutch town of Veldhoven, dozens of men and women in hazmat-style suits are breathing air that is 10,000-times more purified than in an operating theatre. They are working on the first prototype of the chip toolmaker’s newest product: the latest generation of extreme ultraviolet photolithography machines that will be used to “print” transistors almost as small as the diameter of a human chromosome on to sheets of silicon to make a semiconductor. This EUV machine is due to ship to Intel this year at a cost of more than €350mn. Without A