ASML Holding NV’s new advanced chip machines have a daunting price tag, said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), one of the Dutch company’s biggest clients.
“The cost is very high,” TSMC senior vice president Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, referring to ASML’s latest system known as high-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV).
“I like the high-NA EUV’s capability, but I don’t like the sticker price,” Zhang said.
Photo: Intel Corp via Reuters
ASML’s new chip machine can imprint semiconductors with lines that are just 8 nanometers thick — 1.7 times smaller than the previous generation.
The machines cost 350 million euros (US$378 million) apiece and weigh as much as two Airbus A320s.
ASML is the only company that produces equipment needed to make the most sophisticated semiconductors, and demand for its products is a bellwether for the industry’s health.
Intel Corp has already placed orders for the latest high-NA EUV machine and got the first one shipped to a factory in Oregon in late December last year, but it is not yet clear when TSMC would start buying the equipment.
Zhang said TSMC’s so-called A16 node technology, which is due in late 2026, would not need to use ASML’s high-NA EUV machines and can continue to rely on TSMC’s older EUV equipment.
“I think at this point, our existing EUV capability should be able to support that,” he said.
Using the new ASML technology would depend on where it makes the most economic sense and “the technical balancing we can achieve,” Zhang said.
He declined to comment on when the firm would start ordering high-NA EUV machines from ASML.
Rising costs and technical complexity are making the most advanced chipmaking more difficult. Intel faces particular challenges as it tries to regain its once-unshakable technological edge.
It is also pushing into the foundry market — selling outsourced chip manufacturing — an area where TSMC dominates.
Intel on Monday announced a new general manager for its foundry services, already the third chief of the unit since it was founded in 2021.
Zhang said the costs of running a factory, including construction, tools, electricity and raw materials, “keep going up.”
“It’s a collective challenge for the whole industry,” he said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, yesterday said that small-volume production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips for a key customer is on track to start by the end of this year, dismissing speculation about delays in producing advanced chips. As Alchip is transitioning from 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer process technology to 3 nanometers, investors and shareholders have been closely monitoring whether the company is navigating through such transition smoothly. “We are proceeding well in [building] this generation [of chips]. It appears to me that no revision will be required. We have achieved success in designing
RSS