The company behind the machines that make pretty much all our computer chips reckons it has worked out how to increase production capacity by 50%

If you haven’t heard of ASML, it’s the company that makes the machines upon which modern computing currently depends. Without ASML, well, computer chips would be very different. And now ASML is claiming a breakthrough in one of the key bottlenecks for manufacturing cutting-edge silicon thanks to a big boost in light production.

ASML currently has a stranglehold on what’s known as the EUV lithography market. It is, indeed, ASML’s machines that everyone from TSMC to Intel uses to make chips. Long story cut preposterously short, computer chips are made by shining light through patterned masks onto wafers of silicon. Add a few chemicals and the result is an etching in the pattern of the chips in question.

Of course the key here is making the details as small and accurate as possible. And that’s largely a function of the wavelength of “light” being used. The shorter the wavelength, the smaller the details that can be etched onto wafer and in turn the more features, such as transistors, can be crammed into a chip of a given size.

But therein lies the problem. Creating and directing sufficient quantities of exactly the right light is a surprisingly hard task. ASML’s latest machines use EUV or extreme ultra-violet light. And it’s incredibly difficult produce in quantity.

Another problem is directing the light. Visible light can be bounced around with mirrors incurring relatively small losses along the way. That’s much harder with EUV, and that means the original source needs to be even more powerful.

ASML’s solution, currently, is a truly bananas setup that involves drops of flying molten tin being zapped multiple times by very powerful lasers. When you look into the details, you quickly understand why it’s so hard for other companies to enter the market and take on ASML. The complexity is preposterous.

Anywho, Reuters is reporting that ASML has made a breakthrough in its EUV production technology to boost EUV output from the 600 W of its current machines to fully 1,000 W. That major step, ASML reckons, will translate into an increase of chip output of around 50%.

In simple terms, the increased EUV power will mean that wafers can be processed more quickly. The yields per wafer, or the number of working chips that can be extracted from each silicon wafer, don’t improve. But ASML’s machines will be able to crank out more wafers and that means more chips. ASML reckons the new more powerful EUV source will mean its machines will be able to process 330 wafers per hour, up from 220 today.

Given the capacity constraints currently blighting the computing industry, this is obviously very good news. The bad news is that the technology will take a while to come on stream. ASML expects the 330 wafers per hour target will be possible by 2030.

So, just like the expected increase in memory production, we’re years away from seeing the benefits of this new ASML tech. But who knows, maybe if the AI bubble bursts in a couple of years, that will coincide with oodles of new production capacity for both logic chips and memory and the massive glut that ensues will see PC components being virtually given away?

Oh, OK, almost certainly not. But it’s a pleasing fiction, all the same.