Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.

This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.

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© Michel de Heer | ASML

These days, when you're buying an x86 CPU, you're buying Intel or AMD. (Probably AMD, actually, as even used Ryzen 5000 chips are a good deal right now.) That just wasn't the case in the mid-1990s, though. There used to be more players in the CPU market, and we had all the freedom of choice we could've ever asked for.

Intel’s rumored Razor Lake mobile CPUs could introduce bLLC for much larger cache pools, while an early manufacturing claim has already shifted from TSMC N2X to the less clearly defined N2P V2.

Intel may be preparing a cheaper Panther Lake chip for gaming handhelds, with an 8-core CPU and four Xe3 GPU cores reportedly targeting budget buyers.

Intel's Arc G3 Extreme delivers class-leading handheld gaming performance, strong efficiency, and a major leap over the company's previous-generation mobile graphics.

MIT researchers have discovered TONTOU, a new Spectre-style attack that can bypass defenses on recent Intel and AMD CPUs by exploiting a tiny timing window.