Intel Foundry and ASML used this week’s SPIE Photomask Technology and EUV Lithography conference to put a number on High-NA EUV’s march into production: one million wafers processed and counting. The total spans tool certification, development runs and paid manufacturing output across the EXE machines Intel operates.
The scanners are patterning selected layers of a subset of Core Ultra Series 3 processors, code-named Panther Lake, which stands as the first high-volume logic product shipped using the technology. Overlay, throughput and availability are meeting expectations, Intel says, and High-NA layers on its 18A process perform at or above layers printed with conventional 0.33-aperture EUV systems.
The catch is field size. High-NA optics expose less area per shot than older scanners, so Intel offers customers two near-term routes: floor-planning designs to fit inside today’s 6-inch masks, or using the company’s reticle-stitching capability with process design kit support.
Looking further out, Intel is pushing the industry’s move to a larger 6-by-12-inch mask format and says it has spent more than three years aligning equipment, design and materials suppliers around it. ASML chief executive Christophe Fouquet credited Intel with installing the first commercial EXE system in 2024 and delivering the first High-NA volume product.
The milestone signals that lithography’s hardest transition is shifting from proving the optics work to building a repeatable manufacturing system around them, which is the step that decides whether High-NA economics hold up in the AI era.
