Despite TSMC's Cost Concerns, ASML Expects First Chips from High NA EUV in Months

(CNA, Antwerp, May 19, Comprehensive Foreign Report) The CEO of the world's top semiconductor production equipment manufacturer, ASML, Christophe Fouquet, said today that he expects the first products manufactured using its new generation High-NA (Numerical Aperture) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine to be released within a few months. Reuters reported that ASML's largest customer, TSMC, had just stated in April that the High-NA EUV exposure tool is too expensive. The machine can cost up to $400 million (approximately NT$12.66 billion) each. However, Fouquet said today at a conference hosted by the microelectronics research center (imec) in Belgium that the High-NA EUV exposure tool will reduce the patterning costs of the most advanced chips, for both logic and memory. He added, "In the next few months, we will see the first few products being exposed (manufactured) on a High-NA system, whether for memory or logic applications."