Here's what the machine that will build your next laptop CPU looks like — customers including Intel paid $350 million and waited up to six years to get their hands on it

ASML High NA EUV.

Dutch lithography machine manufacturer ASML recently dethroned Applied Materials to become the world's largest fab tool maker, and its future looks even brighter following the news that it is gearing up production of its new High-NA (numerical aperture) EUV (extreme ultraviolet) machine.

This system, which is around the size of a double decker bus and weighs 150,000 kilograms, is capable of etching lines just 8nm wide on semiconductors. This is a significant reduction from the previous generation, allowing for more transistors to be packed onto a chip, leading to faster processing and higher storage capacity, critical for AI applications.