ASML Built a Machine That Shrinks Transistors 40% Further. TSMC and Samsung Just Said "Not Yet."
One Dutch company makes the only machine on Earth capable of printing an advanced chip. It just shipped a better one β for roughly $400 million a unit. Intel bought in immediately. TSMC and Samsung, who together make almost every advanced chip that isn't Intel's, both said no.
Open the aperture, shrink the pattern
Drag the slider to change the scanner's numerical aperture (NA) β how wide its lens opens. Each bar below is one printable line in a fixed 260-nanometer slice of chip pattern. Simplified model: minimum half-pitch β k1 Γ Ξ» / NA, using EUV wavelength Ξ» = 13.5nm and k1 = 0.3 (a typical value with modern resolution-enhancement techniques). Price is a straight-line estimate between publicly reported ranges for standard EUV (~$150-200M) and High-NA EUV (~$350-400M) β illustrative, not an official price list.
This is today's mainstream tool β the one TSMC and Samsung plan to keep using into the 2027-2029 window.
The plain version
Every advanced chip on Earth β the processor in your phone, the accelerator training an AI model β is printed by a beam of light so precise it starts with a laser vaporizing droplets of molten tin into plasma. Only one company builds the machine that does this printing: ASML, a Dutch firm that has held an absolute monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for more than a decade, ever since its two rivals, Nikon and Canon, gave up trying to compete. No ASML scanner, no modern chip. It's arguably the single most concentrated chokepoint in all of technology.
This year ASML rolled out its next machine, called High-NA EUV. Think of a camera lens: open it wider and it captures finer detail. High-NA works the same way β a larger, heavier lens inside the scanner lets it print features roughly 40% smaller than today's tool, which is what chipmakers need to keep shrinking transistors toward 2 nanometers and beyond. The catch: it costs somewhere around $350-400 million per unit, more than double a standard EUV machine, and its optics alone weigh about seven times as much.
Intel didn't hesitate β it installed the industry's first High-NA machine at its Oregon site in December. TSMC and Samsung, who between them make almost every advanced chip that isn't Intel's, both said not yet. TSMC has ruled it out before 2029; Samsung is holding off until around 2027. Their bet: squeezing more out of cheaper, existing tools beats paying triple for a machine before its economics are proven. It's a rare moment where a company with total control over a technology can't simply dictate what its biggest customers buy next.
The expert version
EUV lithography patterns wafers with 13.5nm-wavelength light, generated by firing a high-power CO2 laser at tin droplets to create a plasma that emits in the extreme ultraviolet. Because no material transmits 13.5nm light without heavy absorption, the beam is steered entirely by reflection, through a chain of multilayer molybdenum-silicon mirrors (supplied by Zeiss) onto the wafer inside a vacuum chamber. ASML is the sole commercial supplier of EUV scanners β Nikon and Canon exited EUV development over a decade ago β leaving ASML with 100% of the EUV market and roughly 83-94% of the broader lithography equipment market, depending on the measure.
Resolution in projection lithography follows the Rayleigh criterion: minimum half-pitch β k1 Γ Ξ» / NA, where NA is the numerical aperture of the projection optics and k1 is a process-dependent constant, commonly modeled around 0.3 with modern resolution-enhancement techniques. Today's standard EUV scanners run NA 0.33, resolving roughly 12-13nm half-pitch features. ASML's High-NA system (the Twinscan EXE series) raises NA to 0.55 β a substantially larger, heavier lens assembly, with the projection optics alone roughly seven times the mass of the standard system β pushing resolvable half-pitch to roughly 8nm in a single exposure, reducing the multi-patterning passes otherwise needed at the smallest layers. List price runs roughly $350-400 million per tool versus roughly $150-200 million for standard EUV.
Intel installed the first commercial High-NA unit (Twinscan EXE:5200B) at its Oregon site in December 2025 and is positioning it for its most advanced nodes. TSMC has stated it has no plans to adopt High-NA before 2029, judging that extending multi-patterning on existing 0.33 NA tools remains more cost-effective through its 1.4nm-class (A14) node. Samsung has signed purchase agreements but is deferring deployment to roughly 2027, reportedly targeting its 1nm-class process. ASML has said it expects the first High-NA-fabricated memory and logic chips within months despite the delays β the tool functions as designed; the holdup is purely capex-per-transistor economics at the leading foundries.