Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines are huge, about the size of a school bus. And they are expensive, too. Only one company, Dutch firm ASML, makes the machines which are used to etch circuitry patterns on silicon wafers. As chips get smaller and carry billions of transistors, these patterns have to be thinner than human hair and that’s where the EUV machines come in.
Intel’s purchase of ASML’s Twinscan EXE:5000 High-NA EUV machine was delivered to the company in 250 separate crates that Tom’s Hardware says weighed in at 330,000 pounds. While the unit has been installed at Intel’s fab, it will take six months of work from 250 ASML and Intel engineers to completely install the High-NA EUV machine. And it could take several weeks or months to calibrate the machine which prints at an 8nm resolution compared to the 13nm resolution that current Low-NA EUV machines print at.