Pretty ballsy deal to keep pace with Moore’s Law. Intel may just have kicked 450mm and EUV into overdrive! Nikon, the main competitor to ASML for chip lithography equipment, is not going to like this. The deal could eventually help reduce chip production costs by up to 40%. But it does come at a price. Don’t know about its ultimate demise but this is pretty much what the slow-down in Moore’s Law looks like. The economy of scale of making things smaller is diminishing and advanced technology nodes are delivering less while costing increasingly more to develop. And, as seen by this deal, suppliers like ASML are not going to eat a big chunk of the costs like they did in the 200-to-300nm conversion. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Not convinced that EUV will be ready, as predicted, by 2015. Too many delays already, but maybe this cash infusion will indeed accelerate development.
