Tuesday, September 8th 2026
Intel Foundry Achieves Milestone with One Million High-NA EUV Wafers
Intel has officially processed one million 300 mm silicon wafers using High Numerical Aperture (High NA) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, as confirmed by the company yesterday. Using High-NA in silicon manufacturing presents many challenges due to the additional complexity it introduces, but for Intel, the opposite is true. Initially, Intel installed ASML's TWINSCAN EXE:5000 High-NA EUV systems in 2024 for research and testing of the 14A node. However, since then, Intel has found more useful ways to employ High-NA tools beyond the 14A node, extending their use to the 18A node, which was previously believed to be exclusive to 14A.
For a select subset of "Panther Lake" SKUs, Intel is etching a few layers of silicon using High-NA exposure, instead of solely relying on Low-NA. Furthermore, Intel is offering this High-NA setup to external customers, as it could be beneficial for them as well. In collaboration with ASML, Intel has completed acceptance testing at Intel Foundry for its 14A node to enhance wafer output. This is done using TWINSCAN EXE:5200B, which is ASML's second version of High-NA EUV scanners, following the TWINSCAN EXE:5000 that Intel initially used for its 14A trial runs. Intel previously reported processing over 30,000 wafers in a single quarter, achieving simplified manufacturing by reducing the steps needed for a specific layer from 40 to fewer than 10, resulting in significantly faster cycle times.
Currently, Intel remains the only company actively manufacturing silicon using High-NA EUV lithography. TSMC claims it can maintain a competitive advantage using the existing Low-NA EUV technology, scaling nodes down and introducing improvements with each generation. Samsung Foundry is reportedly delaying the introduction of High-NA EUV until 2030 for its 1 nm node, so we are still a few years away from seeing the entire industry switch to High-NA lithography. Low-NA tools are also half the price of the premier High-NA EUV systems. The most advanced High-NA EUV machine from ASML costs around $400 million, which is an incredibly expensive piece of machinery, even for a modern semiconductor fab.
Source:
Intel
For a select subset of "Panther Lake" SKUs, Intel is etching a few layers of silicon using High-NA exposure, instead of solely relying on Low-NA. Furthermore, Intel is offering this High-NA setup to external customers, as it could be beneficial for them as well. In collaboration with ASML, Intel has completed acceptance testing at Intel Foundry for its 14A node to enhance wafer output. This is done using TWINSCAN EXE:5200B, which is ASML's second version of High-NA EUV scanners, following the TWINSCAN EXE:5000 that Intel initially used for its 14A trial runs. Intel previously reported processing over 30,000 wafers in a single quarter, achieving simplified manufacturing by reducing the steps needed for a specific layer from 40 to fewer than 10, resulting in significantly faster cycle times.
12 Comments on Intel Foundry Achieves Milestone with One Million High-NA EUV Wafers
If It actually was I would like to ask If in your opinion Intel's offering is so great, why don't you say which CPU you own. Is It 285K, 14900KS or X9 388H in a laptop.
I am all ears.
but there is only so much money that can be spent, and we are way past over what can be spent sustainably.
And there is only so much a manufacturer can demand for a product before the market nopes out.
And big tech is tapped out.
When hyperscalers like coreweave and nebius fold big chunks of those orders of ram will vanish.
And as the wider economy cools down demand from automotive will also dwindle.
I hope for ram producers they have used realistic numbers to finance their new build out and not what they are making now