네덜란드 장비 업체 ASML가 4억 달러에 달하는 차세대 EUV 노광 장비를 출시하여 8나노 미만의 회로를 구현할 수 있게 되었습니다. 이 장비는 더욱 작고 집적도 높은 칩을 요구하는 AI 산업의 폭발적인 수요를 충족시키며, 칩 밀도 향상 정체를 막는 데 핵심적인 역할을 합니다. 이로 인해 ASML과 TSMC가 중심이 되는 반도체 시장의 독점적 구조는 미중 패권 경쟁 등 글로벌 지정학적 중요성을 더하고 있습니다.
번역된 본문
요스 벤숍(Jos Benschop)은 자신의 최신 기계 정상에 오르기 위해 사다리를 타고 있습니다. 꽤 힘든 오름길입니다. 이 거대한 장치는 2층 버스 크기로, 수천 개의 구불구불한 튜브, 알록달록한 케이블, 가압 탱크로 뒤덮인 150톤 이상의 반짝이는 정밀 가공 알루미늄 덩어리입니다. 아래에서 올려다보면 미래지향적인 V8 엔진처럼 보입니다. 벤숍과 함께 꼭대기에 오르니, 발밑에서는 방진복을 입은 기술자들이 분주하게 움직이는 모습을 약 4.5미터 높이에서 내려다보게 되었습니다. 그는 이 거대한 장비를 가리키며 200세방미터 이상의 부피를 자랑하는 “몇 개의 거울을 원자 수준의 정밀도로 고정하는 메카트로닉스 장치”라고 설명합니다. 키가 크고 덥수룩한 수염을 기른 66세의 벤숍은 엔지니어들과 함께 이 장비를 설계하는 데 10년 넘게 매달려 왔지만, 때로는 이 장비를 보며 감탄하곤 합니다. 벤숍은 반도체 산업의 핵심 축인 네덜란드 기업 ASML의 기술 담당 임원(Executive Vice President of Technology)입니다. 스마트폰이나 인공지능(AI)을 구동하는 강력한 칩을 만들려면, 우리가 서 있는 것과 같은 노광(lithography) 장비가 필요합니다. 노광은 실리콘 웨이퍼에 빛을 쏘아 웨이퍼에서 잘라낼 마이크로칩의 트랜지스터, 배선 및 기타 부품의 패턴을 새기는 기술이자 과학입니다. 반도체 분야는 사실상 두 거대 기업에 의해 통제됩니다. 노광 장비를 제작하는 ASML과 반도체 생산 거인인 TSMC입니다. 9년 전, ASML은 칩 패턴을 형성하는 새롭고 대담한 방식을 사용하는 기계 판매를 시작했습니다. 이 기계들은 초자외선(EUV, extreme-ultraviolet light)을 사용합니다. 초당 수만 번씩 작은 주석 용융 방울에 레이저를 쏘아 가시광선 스펙트럼을 벗어난 복사선을 생성하는 방식입니다. 16년이라는 연구개발(R&D) 기간과 약 100억 달러가 투자된 결과물인 이 초기 기계들은 13나노미터 해상도의 트랜지스터를 구현할 수 있었습니다. 이 새로운 기계는 더 나은 성능을 보여줍니다. 해상도가 단 8나노미터로, 약 40개의 실리콘 원자 너비에 불과합니다. 이제 이 장비들은 반도체 공장, 즉 팹(fab)으로 배송되고 있으며 그 가격은 감히 4억 달러에 달합니다. 그럼에도 칩 제조사들은 기꺼이 돈을 지불할 것입니다. 매년 새롭고 향상된 칩을 생산하기 위해 치열한 경쟁을 벌이고 있기 때문입니다. 이는 더 작은 부품을 만들고 그것들을 더 조밀하게 포장(packing)할 수 있는 기계를 손에 넣는 것을 의미하며, 더 빠르고 에너지 효율이 높은 칩을 만들기 위한 오랜 레시피의 일부입니다. 수년 동안 ASML의 도구들은 무어의 법칙(Moore's Law)을 유지하는 데 결정적인 역할을 해왔습니다. 이 회사의 첨단 chipmaking 기술이 없었다면 칩 밀도와 더 많은 계산을 수행하는 능력은 정체되었을 가능성이 매우 높습니다. AI 산업은 더 조밀한 칩에 대한 새롭고 끔찍한 수요를 창출했습니다. OpenAI, Anthropic 같은 기업들이 새롭고 더 강력한 모델을 훈련하고 배포하기 위해 서버 팜을 세우기 위해 혈안이 되어 있으며, 이에는 새롭고 더 강력한 하드웨어가 필수적으로 요구됩니다. ASML의 최신 장비는 AI 열풍을 적어도 향후 10년 동안은 지속시키는 데 도움이 될 것이라고 약속합니다. ASML의 최고기술책임자(CTO)인 마르코 피터스(Marco Pieters)는 “고객들이 점점 더 작은 특징(features)을 구현하게 해주며, 이는 오늘날 우리가 AI에서 보는 놀라운 일들에 대한 공간을 열어준다”며, “우리는 빙산의 일각만 보았다고 생각한다”고 말했습니다. 반도체 산업에서 부르는 끊임없는 ‘축소(shrink)’를 향한 추진력 덕분에 ASML은 막강한 지배력을 갖게 되었습니다. 이 회사는 전 세계 모든 노광 장비의 약 90%를 생산합니다. 칩을 만든다면 ASML은 피할 수 없는 존재입니다. 하지만 이러한 독점적 지위는 일부 사람들과 정부를 불안하게 만듭니다. 반도체 분야는 사실상 두 거대 기업에 의해 통제됩니다. 노광 장비를 만드는 ASML, 그리고 ASML의 기계를 사용하여 대부분의 마이크로칩을 제조하는 대만의 반도체 생산 거인 TSMC입니다. 이러한 복점(duopoly)은 매우 강력하여 지정학적 영향을 미칩니다. 미국 정부는 중국의 발전을 막기 위해 네덜란드 정부에 압력을 가하고 있습니다.
Jos Benschop is climbing a ladder to get to the top of his newest machine. It’s a bit of a schlep. The contraption is the size of a double-decker bus—more than 150 tons of gleaming precision-milled aluminum covered in thousands of snaking tubes, colored cables, and pressurized tanks. From the ground, it looks like a futuristic V8 engine. When I reach the top with Benschop we’re looking down from about 15 feet in the air, with bunny-suited technicians scurrying around below. It’s more than 200 cubic meters of tech—“mechatronic devices that hold a few mirrors in a position with atomic precision,” he says, gesturing at the gargantuan apparatus. Benschop, a tall and grizzled 66-year-old, has spent over a decade working with his engineers to design this thing, but even so, he’ll sometimes look at it and go: Oh my God. Benschop is the executive vice president of technology for ASML, a Dutch company that is the linchpin of the microchip industry. If you want to make powerful chips to power phones or AI, a lithography machine like the one we’re standing on is what you need to create increasingly tiny circuitry. Lithography is the art and science of shining light on a silicon wafer to pattern out the transistors, wiring, and other components of the microchips that will be cut from it. The chipmaking field is essentially controlled by only two big players: ASML, which creates the lithography machines, and TSMC, the chipmaking giant. Nine years ago, ASML began selling machines that use a daring new way of patterning chip features. These machines employ extreme-ultraviolet light, or EUV—radiation well outside the visible spectrum that they produce by shooting lasers at tiny molten drops of tin, tens of thousands of times a second. Those first machines—the result of an R&D moonshot that lasted 16 years and cost about $10 billion—can craft transistor features with a resolution of 13 nanometers. This new machine can do even better: It has a resolution of just eight nanometers, the width of about 40 silicon atoms. The devices are now shipping to chipmaking factories, or fabs, at an eye-watering price: $400 million each. But chipmakers will fork that cash over, because they are in a desperate race to produce new and improved chips every year. That means getting their mitts on machines that can make ever smaller components and cram them together ever more densely—part of a long-standing recipe for creating faster and more energy-efficient chips. For years now, ASML’s tools have been critical to keeping Moore’s Law alive. Without the company’s advanced chipmaking technology it is very possible that chip density—and the ability to perform ever more calculations—would have plateaued. The AI industry has produced new and ravenous demand for denser chips, as firms like OpenAI and Anthropic scramble to erect server farms that train and deploy new, ever-more-powerful models, which require new, ever-more-powerful hardware. ASML’s latest machine promises to help keep the AI party raging for at least another decade. “We can allow customers to go to smaller and smaller features, and that opens up the space for whatever we see now today in AI, which is absolutely mind-blowing,” Marco Pieters, ASML’s CTO, told me. “I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.” Its relentless push for “shrink”—as they call it in the chipmaking industry—has made ASML a dominant force: The company produces about 90% of all chip-lithography tools worldwide. If you make chips, ASML is unavoidable. But that monopoly position makes some people, and governments, uneasy. The chipmaking field is essentially controlled by only two big players: ASML, which creates the lithography machines, and TSMC, the chipmaking giant in Taiwan, which uses ASML’s machines to craft the vast majority of all microchips. This duopoly is so powerful that it has geopolitical implications. In an effort to prevent China from developing advanced AI, the US government pressured the Dutch government to impose an embargo in 2019: ASML isn’t allowed to sell high-end machines to any Chinese firm. Geopolitically, “chips are the new oil,” says Marc Hijink, the author of Focus: The ASML Way . Being deprived of them can be as disastrous as being deprived of oil. And in that metaphor, you might say, ASML is the Strait of Hormuz. James Proud, the cofounder and CEO of the lithography startup Substrate, says the situation is not ideal. The US is “dangerously reliant” on a supply chain that’s overseas and increasingly pricey, Substrate says on its website. “There’s a huge concentration in a small number of players,” Proud says. “And the supply chain is just very expensive.” Which is why, after two decades of ASML’s dominance, would-be competitors are now gunning for its territory. China is hungrily pouring billions into trying to replicate ASML’s tech. And startups like Substrate are trying to get in the game as well, setting their sights on creating lithography machines that are cheaper, smaller, and even more capable than ASML’s behemoths. Will any of them succeed? The near future clearly belongs to ASML, but as its engineers well know, you can unseat a giant with the right trick of the light. Making chips is, oddly, a bit like silk-screening a T-shirt. To print a pattern on a silicon wafer, you start with a pattern on a reticle—a mask that carries the design. Shining a light on the reticle transfers that pattern to the wafer. The light interacts with a layer of chemicals on the wafer, fixing the pattern in place. The size of a chip’s features is partly set by the wavelength of light the machine uses: The smaller the wavelength, the teensier the circuitry you can create. You can stretch the capabilities of a wavelength somewhat; increasing what’s known as the numerical aperture, which usually means swapping in a bigger lens, can further focus the light and thus lay down patterns for smaller and smaller components. Eventually, though, this trick hits its limit, and you need to find a new form of light with a smaller wavelength. So the history of chipmaking has been a two-step dance. The industry finds a good source of light, eventually increases the numerical aperture, and then finally accepts the need for a smaller wavelength, starting the two-step all over again. Up to the early 1990s, chipmakers used visible light, with a wavelength of about 400 nanometers. By the mid-’90s they’d upgraded to deep ultraviolet, ultimately getting it down to a 193-nanometer wavelength. By the late ’90s they saw the end of the line approaching for deep ultraviolet. But what would come next? All the options were troublesome. They could shift to x-rays, with a teensy one-nanometer wavelength, but they were devilishly hard to focus. Beams of electrons and ions were equally precise; but they worked like dot-matrix printers, transferring a pattern point by point, which was far too slow. (The chip industry wants a machine to crank out hundreds of wafers per hour.) “It’s a very engineering-heavy company: Let’s send thousands of engineers and just have them mow down these problems. That’s what they did, and it worked.” Jeff Koch, analyst, SemiAnalysis Around 2001, ASML, then a smaller player in the lithography world, placed its bet on another option: EUV, with a wavelength just shy of the x-ray range. Nikon and Canon were working on it as well, but they dropped out—while ASML kept going. The idea was full of unknowns. Nobody knew how to reliably generate that type of light, nor how to focus it; EUV is absorbed by regular glass lenses. It’s even absorbed by air. ASML figured it would take six full years to wade through this R&D nightmare. In reality it took those 16 years and about $10 billion in research, but it worked. The machine, which works in a vacuum, creates EUV light by vaporizing molten tin and using mirrors to direct it. Zeiss, a historic German optics company, had to invent new techniques for polishing and inspecting the mirrors, using an ion beam to k