TSMC was slow to decide on the high-NA EUV machine but is now fully into using the machine,
Before chip foundries could start producing chips using process nodes under 7nm, the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine had to be invented. The machine etches circuitry patterns thinner than human hair on silicon wafers which allows billions of transistors to be shoehorned inside a single chipset. For example, each A17 Pro application processor inside the iPhone 15 Pro models carries 19 billion transistors.
The lower the process node, the smaller are the transistors used with a chip meaning that the transistor count can be higher. Typically the higher the transistor count, the more powerful and energy-efficient a chip is. There is one company in the world, Dutch firm ASML, that makes EUV machines and it has been promoting and selling the next-gen device.
