A human hair is typically about 0.06mm in diameter. The four-nanometre patterns used in the Apple A16 processor, at the heart of the “Pro” models of its iPhones, are hence about 15,000 times thinner. A single A16 chip in an iPhone contains about 16 billion transistors. If each transistor was enlarged to a single grain of sand, then 16 billion of them would occupy 2,000 litres – the size of a large domestic fuel tank.
However it was relatively slow, and competitive 1:1 systems were preferred by the industry at large. A faster prototype was then developed. The solution was a small Dutch company just 10 minutes down the road from Eindhoven. Advanced Semiconductor Materials International was a distributor of various semiconductor tooling products.Its entrepreneurial chief executive, Arthur del Prado, was seeking partnership opportunities but it took a full year to convince the Philips board of directors. In 1984, ASML started as a joint venture between Philips and ASMI, in a temporary shed.
Within a year, ASML produced its PAS 5500 product, groundbreaking in lithographic resolution and productivity. The company turned profitable and, in 1995, launched an IPO on the Euronext in Amsterdam and Nasdaq in New York. Philips sold half of its holding at the IPO, and the remainder of its holding over the next few years.
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