Inside America’s Race To Build The Next Generation Of AI Chips

[soAsian]

CNBC Marathon investigates the intricate, high-stakes world of semiconductor manufacturing from the Dutch labs powering AI chip breakthroughs to the billion-dollar fabs reshaping U.S. industry.In a highly secured lab in the Netherlands, ASML spent a decade developing a $400 million machine that’s transforming how microchips are made.

High NA is the latest generation of EUV, the only machines in the world that can etch nanoscopic blueprints on advanced chips for giants like Intel, TSMC and Samsung. The size of a double-decker bus, only five of these machines have been shipped so far. It’s unclear how Trump’s tariffs will impact the complex global supply chain for the lithography machines.

But without them, no advanced chips can be made by the likes of Nvidia, Apple and AMD. No filming of High NA has ever been allowed until CNBC went to the Netherlands for this exclusive first look.Texas Instruments is building a $60 billion U.S. manufacturing megaproject where Apple vows to make "critical foundation semiconductors" for iPhones and other devices. CNBC went to Sherman, Texas, for an exclusive first look inside the newest fab of seven TI's building in Utah and Texas to provide U.S.-made chips to customers like Nvidia and Ford. TI shares have suffered amid tariff concerns, and it's lost analog market share for several years, but top leaders are confident about the huge spend.

iPhone Air was the big star unveiled by Apple in early September but inside was another hardware set launched that day: three new custom Apple microchips. Apple’s A19 Pro SoC prioritizes AI workloads with neural accelerators added to the GPU cores. Replacing Broadcom and Qualcomm parts is the N1 and C1X, Apple’s first iPhone networking chip and second-generation iPhone modem. CNBC sat down with three Apple executives for the first U.S. interviews about its move to control all core iPhone chips.

 

[Jert]

Certainly ASML and Dutch engineers should be extremely proud of their achievements in commercializing EUV and making it viable for production use.
But it's worth pointing out that they should not forget the heavy investments and huge early R&D efforts by US gov labs and IBM and Intel with their best and dedicated technical talents solving many of the fundamental problems before handing it over to ASML. Without such US technical contributions and billions dollars upfront spending by American labs and companies, EUV would likely continue as a pipe dream. With their own hard work, ASML and TSMC turn out to be the biggest benificiaries, by far.