TSMC declines ASML high‑NA step

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said last week it will skip ASML’s newest High-NA chipmaking machines through 2029, and a Taiwan court on Monday handed down prison terms in a related trade-secrets case. (bloomberg.com) (reuters.com) At TSMC’s April 22 North America Technology Symposium in Santa Clara, the company introduced A13, an A14 shrink, and said it plans volume production in the second half of 2028. TSMC also added N2U, a tuned 2-nanometer family variant aimed at 2027. (pr.tsmc.com) (tomshardware.com) Deputy co-chief operating officer Kevin Zhang told reporters TSMC has no current plan to put ASML’s High-NA extreme ultraviolet systems into chip production before 2029. Bloomberg reported each machine costs more than €350 million, or about $410 million. (bloomberg.com) High-NA is the sharper version of extreme ultraviolet lithography, the light-based process used to print tiny circuit patterns onto silicon wafers. TSMC’s decision means it believes its next nodes can still advance with today’s 0.33-NA EUV tools, plus packaging and process tweaks. (bloomberg.com) (tomshardware.com) That matters for ASML because TSMC is its biggest customer in leading-edge logic, and High-NA had been one of the clearest paths to a richer tool mix later this decade. Morningstar, citing Dow Jones, said ASML lost nearly $17 billion in market value after TSMC’s stance became public. (morningstar.com) (bloomberg.com) Then on April 27, Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced former TSMC engineer Chen Li-ming to 10 years in prison for stealing 2-nanometer process secrets and passing them to Tokyo Electron’s Taiwan unit, according to Reuters and Focus Taiwan. (reuters.com) (focustaiwan.tw) The court also fined Tokyo Electron Taiwan T$150 million, about $5 million, and gave four other defendants prison terms of up to six years. Reuters said the ruling was the first case under Taiwan’s National Security Act involving a corporate entity. (reuters.com) (apnews.com) Tokyo Electron said in a statement reported by Reuters that it “takes this matter very seriously,” apologized to TSMC and said it will decide on a response after reviewing the judgment. The ruling can be appealed. (reuters.com) (focustaiwan.tw) TSMC makes advanced chips for customers including Nvidia and Apple, so both the tool decision and the court ruling land in the same place: the cost and control of the manufacturing steps behind future AI and mobile processors. (reuters.com) (pr.tsmc.com)