ASML: the giant machine behind the world's tiniest chips

Company Explainer · Sunday, October 11, 2026 · 6:15 PM ET

Your phone, laptop and many other devices depend on tiny computer chips. Making those chips takes some extraordinary machinery. And one Dutch company, ASML, builds a machine that does something especially unusual: it fires powerful lasers at tiny drops of molten metal to create light.

A Machine That Arrived in 250 Crates

In April 2024, Intel finished installing a remarkable machine at its chipmaking facility in Oregon. Getting it there was no small task. According to Intel, the machine arrived in more than 250 crates, packed into 43 shipping containers. Multiple cargo planes carried the shipment to Seattle. Then 20 trucks transported everything to the factory in Oregon. Once assembled, the machine weighed more than 150 metric tons.

It was called the TWINSCAN EXE:5000, and it was made by a Dutch company named ASML. All those crates, trucks and tons of equipment were needed for one very specific job: putting incredibly tiny patterns onto silicon. These shipping figures come from Intel's account of this particular installation. Other ASML machines may have different transport requirements. (Source: Intel's April 2024 announcement)

Why would anyone need such a massive machine to make something so small? To answer that, we need to understand what ASML actually does.

Meet ASML

ASML is based in Veldhoven, a town in the Netherlands. It doesn't make computer chips. Instead, it builds machines that help other companies manufacture them. One of those machines is called a lithography system. The name sounds complicated, but the basic idea is familiar.

Think about printing a picture onto paper. A printer takes a digital design and puts it onto a physical surface. A lithography machine does something similar, except the surface is silicon and the patterns are unbelievably small. These patterns eventually become part of the electrical circuits inside computer chips. ASML is especially important because it is currently the only commercial supplier of machines that use a technology called extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV.

That position is described in ASML's industry reporting. It doesn't mean the company makes every part of its machines itself. In fact, some of the most important components come from other specialist manufacturers. (Source: ASML's 2025 Annual Report)

But before getting into EUV, there's a more basic question. How do you actually make a computer chip?

Building a Chip Is Like Building a Tiny City

Imagine looking down at a city from an airplane. You might see buildings, roads, bridges and electrical connections. Everything has to fit together for the city to work. A computer chip is different, of course, but the idea of building many connected structures is useful. A chip contains tiny electronic switches called transistors. These switches help control the flow of electricity. Modern processors can contain billions of them.

The switches need connections, just as buildings need roads and power lines. But a chip isn't made by simply carving everything into one piece of silicon. Instead, manufacturers build it in many stages.

They start with a wafer, a thin, round disc of silicon. One wafer can eventually be divided into many individual chips. The wafer travels through a factory, where different machines perform different jobs. First, a machine might add a very thin layer of material. This is called deposition. Next, another machine covers the surface with a special light-sensitive coating called photoresist.

Think of photoresist as a coating that changes when light touches it. Now comes lithography. A machine shines a carefully controlled pattern of light onto the coating. The light changes the chemical properties of selected areas. Afterward, a chemical process called development removes certain parts of the coating.

Another machine can then remove selected material underneath. That step is called etching. Throughout the process, other machines measure the wafer and check for mistakes. This is called metrology and inspection. Then the wafer goes through more steps. Another layer is added. Another pattern is transferred. More material is removed or changed.

This is a simplified picture. Not every chip follows exactly the same sequence. ASML explains these manufacturing steps in its educational materials. (Source: ASML, How Microchips Are Made; ASML, Semiconductor Manufacturing Steps)

Here's the important part. ASML's lithography machines don't build the entire chip. They transfer the patterns that tell other machines where to work. And making those patterns small enough is one of the hardest jobs in the factory.

Why the Light Matters

You probably know that a camera uses light to capture an image. Lithography also uses light, but in a different way. It uses light to transfer a pattern onto a surface. There's a catch. Light travels in waves. The distance between one wave peak and the next is called its wavelength.

For lithography, shorter wavelengths generally make it possible to print finer details. Older advanced lithography machines use a type of light called deep ultraviolet, or DUV. These machines commonly use light with a wavelength of 193 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

To put that in perspective, one millimeter contains one million nanometers. Engineers have found clever ways to print details smaller than the light's wavelength. Sometimes they divide one complicated pattern into several separate steps. That works, but it makes manufacturing more complicated. EUV uses a much shorter wavelength: just 13.5 nanometers.

That gives manufacturers another way to produce extremely fine patterns. The trouble is that EUV light is remarkably difficult to create and control. (Source: ASML, Lithography Principles)

And this is where the story gets particularly interesting.

The Machine That Fires Lasers at Molten Tin

Most of us think of a light source as something simple. You switch on a lamp. Light comes out. An EUV machine doesn't have that luxury. Instead, it has to create its own unusual kind of light.

Inside the machine's light-source system, tiny droplets of molten tin travel through a chamber with almost all the air removed. A powerful laser aims at those droplets. In ASML's documented design, the laser hits each droplet twice. The first pulse changes the droplet's shape.

The second pulse delivers much more energy. It turns the tin into something called plasma. Plasma is a state of matter in which atoms have become so energized that electrons have separated from them. When the plasma forms, it gives off radiation, including the EUV light needed for chipmaking. A specially designed mirror catches some of that light and directs it into the rest of the machine.

Then the process happens again. According to ASML's 2025 Strategy & Stories report, its latest commercial light sources operate at about 60,000 plasma events per second. The company also reported demonstrating 100,000 events per second in development work.

That higher number is not the established commercial operating rate. It describes development progress. ASML further reported a demonstration of a 1,000-watt EUV light source in April 2025, while acknowledging that additional work would be needed before commercial use. (Source: ASML, 2025 Strategy & Stories)

German manufacturer TRUMPF supplies important laser technology for this process. (Source: TRUMPF, EUV Lithography)

Creating the light is only half the challenge. Now the machine has to get it to the right place.

Why Ordinary Mirrors Won't Work

Imagine shining a flashlight through a window. Most of the light passes through the glass. EUV behaves very differently. Ordinary glass absorbs it. So does air.

That means an EUV machine can't use the usual arrangement of glass lenses found in cameras and many other optical devices. The light must travel through a vacuum, a space from which almost all the air has been removed. And instead of ordinary lenses, the machine uses extremely specialized mirrors. These mirrors contain many thin layers of carefully selected materials. The layers are designed to reflect EUV light.

Even then, some light is lost with every reflection. The mirrors also have to be incredibly smooth. According to ASML, the surfaces of its EUV mirrors are polished to a smoothness of less than an atom's thickness. That's ASML's own description of its mirrors.

(Source: ASML, Lenses and Mirrors)

The mirrors are made with help from ZEISS, a German company specializing in optics. Eventually, the light reaches a special template called a reticle. You can think of the reticle as a master pattern. It contains the circuit design that needs to be transferred onto the wafer.

Unlike many older lithography masks, an EUV reticle reflects light rather than letting it pass through. More mirrors then project a smaller version of the pattern onto the wafer. During exposure, the reticle and wafer move in carefully coordinated ways. The machine also has to make sure the new pattern lines up with the layers already there.

It's a little like printing several transparent pictures on top of one another. If one picture is slightly out of place, the final image won't line up properly. ASML says its machines use extremely precise moving platforms, called stages, along with measurement systems to keep everything aligned. (Source: ASML, Lithography Principles; ZEISS, EUV Lithography)

If EUV Is So Advanced, Why Keep Using DUV? Here's something that might surprise you. Even factories making very advanced chips still use older DUV lithography machines. Why?

Because not every part of a chip needs the finest possible detail.

Think about building a house. You might need a very precise tool to fit a delicate lock. But you wouldn't use that same tool to paint an entire wall. Chipmaking works in a similar way. Some layers need extremely fine patterns. Others don't.

DUV machines can handle many of those less demanding layers. Using EUV everywhere would add cost and complexity without necessarily improving the result. Exactly which technology makes the most economic sense depends on the layer and the manufacturing process. ASML itself describes EUV and advanced DUV equipment as complementary technologies. (Source: ASML, TWINSCAN NXE:3800E)

NXE and EXE: Making the Patterns Even Smaller

ASML has two main generations of EUV machines. The established generation is called NXE. The newer one is EXE, also known as High-NA EUV. NA stands for numerical aperture. It's a way of describing how effectively an optical system can gather and focus light.

A higher numerical aperture generally makes it possible to see or print finer details. ASML's NXE systems use an NA of 0.33. The newer EXE systems increase that to 0.55. Both still use the same 13.5-nanometer light.

The difference is in the optics. According to ASML, its EXE:5200B can achieve an optical resolution of 8 nanometers. The company says High-NA can print features 1.7 times smaller than conventional NXE equipment and potentially allow transistor densities 2.9 times higher. Those are ASML's stated capabilities and potential benefits. They don't mean every chip made using High-NA will contain 2.9 times as many transistors. (Source: ASML, EXE:5200B)

High-NA also creates new problems. According to ASML, the area exposed in one field is only half the size of the corresponding field on conventional NXE equipment. The company has developed faster moving stages to help make up for that difference. (Source: ASML, EXE:5000)

In July 2026, ASML and Intel announced an important manufacturing milestone. They said Intel Foundry was using High-NA equipment to produce selected layers of a subset of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors. The companies also reported matching manufacturing yields for certain layers produced using NXE and EXE equipment. Yield means the proportion of manufactured devices that meet the required standards.

These are claims from ASML and Intel. The announcement doesn't mean every Intel chip or every layer uses High-NA. (Source: ASML and Intel, July 15, 2026 Announcement)

So What Is a 2-Nanometer Chip? You've probably seen companies talk about 3-nanometer or 2-nanometer chips. It sounds as though the number must describe the size of something inside the chip. Years ago, manufacturing names were more closely connected to particular physical measurements.

Today, they're mostly names for generations of manufacturing technology. A 2-nanometer chip doesn't have transistors that all measure exactly 2 nanometers. And it doesn't mean the factory uses light with a 2-nanometer wavelength. In a July 2021 explanation of its manufacturing terminology, Intel discussed how modern process-node names had moved away from directly describing particular transistor dimensions. (Source: Intel, Accelerating Process Innovation)

So a machine using 13.5-nanometer EUV light can help manufacture chips sold under a 2-nanometer process name. The numbers describe different things. How Many of These Machines Does ASML Make? You might expect ASML to produce enormous numbers of EUV machines.

It doesn't. According to ASML's 2025 annual report, the company recognized revenue from 48 EUV systems during 2025. That number needs a little explanation. Revenue recognition is the accounting process of recording a sale when the relevant requirements have been met.

A machine might be manufactured or shipped before the company can recognize the revenue associated with it. So 48 revenue-recognized systems does not necessarily mean 48 machines were physically built or shipped during the year. (Source: ASML, 2025 Annual Report)

For the first quarter of 2026, ASML reported selling 67 new lithography systems and 12 used systems. In the second quarter, it reported 86 new systems and five used systems. Those figures include different kinds of lithography equipment. They are not counts of EUV machines alone. ASML management also said its production capacity for conventional EUV systems was approximately 65 machines in 2026, with a plan to increase capacity by 30% in 2027.

That is a capacity plan, not a confirmed count of machines actually produced or delivered. (Source: ASML, Q2 2026 Results)

How Fast Can One Machine Work? Another important number is how many wafers a machine can expose in an hour. In April 2026, ASML said its NXE:3800E had reached a speed of 230 wafers per hour, up from an earlier figure of 220.

These are ASML-reported equipment achievements. (Source: ASML, April 2026 Transcript)

But there's something important to remember. Exposing 230 wafers doesn't mean finishing 230 wafers. The wafers still need many other manufacturing steps. And one wafer can contain many individual chips.

How many usable chips come out depends on their size, the number that fit on each wafer and how many pass inspection. A fast lithography machine helps a factory work efficiently. It doesn't determine the factory's fini shed-chip output by itself.

ASML Doesn't Build These Machines Alone

There's another part of this story that's easy to overlook. ASML may be the company whose name appears on the finished machine, but it depends on a network of specialist suppliers. ZEISS makes critical mirrors and optical equipment. TRUMPF supplies powerful laser technology.

ASML develops other important systems, including light-source technology, software and precision controls. Other companies provide specialized parts. ASML's job is to bring all these technologies together and make them work as one machine. Consider what that involves.

The laser has to hit the tin droplets at exactly the right moment. The mirrors have to guide the light. The wafer has to move into position. And every new pattern has to line up with the layers underneath.

A problem in one part of the system can affect everything that follows. That's why the ability to integrate all these components matters so much. (Source: ASML, 2025 Strategy & Stories; TRUMPF, EUV Lithography)

Even EUV Has Its Limits

For all its sophistication, EUV isn't perfect.

Some light is lost every time it reflects off a mirror. Contamination has to be controlled. Tiny changes in temperature can affect precision. And at extremely small dimensions, even the behavior of the light-sensitive coating becomes difficult to predict.

Scientists call some of these problems stochastic effects. That simply means random variations. For example, two tiny areas receiving similar exposures may not respond in exactly the same way. Those differences can create defects.

Using more light can help with some problems, but it may also mean spending more time exposing each wafer. Manufacturers have to balance precision, speed and the number of defects. High-NA improves the optical system, but it doesn't make those trade-offs disappear. (Source: ASML, EXE:5000)

Researchers are already thinking about what might come after High-NA. On October 8, 2026, Reuters reported that engineers at ASML and ZEISS said in a paper that another possible generation, called Hyper-NA, might be possible. They suggested it could become operational in roughly ten years. That's a forecast, not a promise or a confirmed product schedule. (Source: Reuters, October 8, 2026)

The Part of Chipmaking We Rarely See

Most of us encounter computer chips only after they're finished. They're inside our phones, computers, cars and countless other products. We rarely think about the equipment needed to manufacture them. But before a processor can do anything useful, someone has to build its tiny circuits.

That means adding materials, transferring patterns, removing selected regions and checking the results, over and over. ASML handles one particularly demanding part of that work. Its EUV machines create an unusual kind of light, guide it through specially designed mirrors and use it to transfer microscopic patterns onto silicon. The process is complicated. The equipment is enormous. And the job it performs is only one step in making a finished chip.

The company doesn't make the chips we use every day. It builds some of the machines that make those chips possible. And sometimes, making something incredibly small requires building something remarkably large.

One more thing for the week ahead: ASML reports its third-quarter results before the market opens on Wednesday, October 14 (MarketBeat, Saxo, Newsquawk). See our week-ahead story for everything else on the calendar.

Educational information only. Not personal investment advice.