Intel Passes One Million High-NA EUV Wafers, Ahead of Rivals
TL;DR
- Intel Foundry and ASML said at SPIE Photomask that Intel has run over one million wafers through High-NA EUV tools to date.
- That total exceeds all other High-NA users combined; ASML in April said the shipped fleet had processed over 500,000 wafers at over 80% availability.
- High-NA is already producing select layers of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake), and Intel is pushing a jump from 6-inch to 6x12-inch photomasks.
At the SPIE Photomask Technology + Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography conference this week, Intel Foundry and ASML said more than one million wafers have been processed on High-NA EUV tools at Intel to date, split between early tool certification, R&D, and volume production on select layers of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, code-named Panther Lake, Tom's Hardware reported. ASML itself said in April that all High-NA scanners shipped by then had processed over 500,000 wafers at over 80% availability, which puts Intel's fleet past the entire rest of the customer base combined.
Intel now runs two ASML Twinscan EXE:5000 systems plus at least one of the newer EXE:5200B, which is spec'd for 175 wafers per hour at a 50 mJ/cm² dose and 0.7 nm overlay accuracy. The joint statement says "throughput and availability are meeting Intel Foundry's expectations," without breaking out figures per layer or per node. It lands against a run of Intel news in our tracker that has leaned heavily on roadmap slippage rather than tool wins, including Diamond Rapids Xeon 7 sliding to 2027 last month.
"Intel Foundry has been one of the key leaders of the industry's adoption of High NA, from installing the first commercial EXE system in 2024, to qualifying the latest generation of tools, to shipping the first high-volume logic product manufactured with High NA," ASML President and CEO Christophe Fouquet said. Naga Chandrasekaran of Intel Foundry pitched customers directly: "The companies building the increasingly complex AI products of the future need manufacturing innovations that are production-ready and easy to use."
The two companies also pushed on a longer-horizon lever: moving the industry off today's 6-inch photomasks to a 6x12-inch format that would let scanners image bigger die per exposure. Intel says it has championed the large mask format initiative for more than three years, and getting there needs mask shops, EDA vendors, materials firms and automation suppliers all to move together.
Originally reported by tomshardware.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Intel Passes One Million High-NA EUV Wafers Processed, More Than Rest of Industry Combined