The sleek white boxes may be the size of small rooms, but they are the key to achieving precision on a microscopic scale. These boxes produce the world’s most advanced microchips, which feature millions or even billions of tiny transistors coexisting in only a few square centimeters of space, about the size of a fingernail.
These intricate lithography machines are made by ASML Holding, based in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. Its systems, each valued at over $150 million, use particular types of ultraviolet light to craft ultrasmall circuitry on small pieces of silicon to produce high-performance microchips.
The machines are now at the center of the China-U.S. technology conflict. In 2019, the Donald Trump administration lobbied the Dutch Government to block shipments of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems—machines vital
