Whether it will be in a smartphone remains to be seen, but somewhere in the coming months, we will come across the first consumer products that are equipped with chips from one of ASML’s EUV chip machines. The first generation of chips based on EUV lithography is currently still mainly used for research and development purposes, but mass production for consumer products is really on the way. Later this year, ASML says.
“Yes, and then, of course, you immediately think of a smartphone, the omnipresent device that already almost always incorporates chips from one of our machines”, says CEO Peter Wennink. “But there is a good chance that it will be another industry that will first make use of these new chips, such as the server market or the gaming industry – both sectors where high-power computing is decisive.” According to Wennink, this has everything to do with the increase in applications around Artificial Intelligence and encrypting. “Think of the Nvidia‘s of this world, that’s where I expect to see the first real use of the EUV-power. The smartphone actually follows these developments, it’s the second line of development.”
Wennink says he cannot indicate when exactly the first ‘EUV chips’ will come on the market. He doesn’t want to be more exact than “somewhere in the course of 2019”, and sooner the second half of the year than in the first. This has everything to do with the time needed for the further development of the chips themselves, Wennink says. “Everything that is being done now is still in R&D, especially in development. The first high volume manufacturing will take place in the second half of this year – and that is only the phase in which the market is really being sought. You don’t want to bring alpha products to the consumer.”
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