Dutch chip manufacturing tool manufacturer ASML has said that it intends to collaborate with its main clients to create its most sophisticated tools for creating the kind of massive data centre chips created by Nvidia and other companies, according to a report.
ASML is collaborating with key chipmakers such as TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix in order to expand its sophisticated High NA EUV lithography methods from 6-inch to 12-inch masks and enable the mass manufacture of big AI and data-centre chips by 2033, Reuters reported.
ASML produces lithography equipment, which prints chips onto silicon wafers by passing light through a mask that has the chip's pattern on it.
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Companies like Nvidia, Google, and others create semiconductors up to 800 square millimetres in size using the company's widely utilised extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment.
Although ASML's next "High NA" EUV tools can print chips with even finer details, their ability to print larger chips is still limited due to their use of a smaller mask.
While ASML's newest equipment is currently being used by Intel for its laptop chips, ASML announced this week that it intends to increase the mask size so that its newest tools can produce chips as large as the largest data centre chips available today.
The new High NA machines, which are already being employed for production at Intel but are not yet being used for high-volume work at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing or Samsung Electronics, will be more widely used for high-volume production if they switch to larger masks.
In a separate statement, SK Hynix stated that it is considering joining the consortium for the launch of 12-inch masks and that it plans to adopt High-NA EUV techniques to DRAM mass production by 2028.
Samsung intends to include High NA EUV into DRAM memory chip high-volume manufacturing by 2028, while TSMC announced this week that it intends to adopt ASML's High NA technology in advanced-node high-volume production starting in 2030.
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By 2031, ASML intends to demonstrate a prototype line including the larger masks, and by 2033, the new technology will be prepared for large-scale production.
"If we're going to pull it off as an industry, then you'll actually see that the productivity of those systems will go up by 40%," Marco Pieters, ASML's chief technology officer, told Reuters.
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