SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung’s vice chairman of the board of directors, Jay Y. Lee, discussed cooperation on high-end chip equipment with ASML Chief Executive Peter Wennink, Samsung said on Wednesday.
Lee and executives at the Dutch multinational discussed the supply of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment, “essential in implementing processes for producing next-generation semiconductors,” Samsung said.
ASML EUV machines are critical to advanced chip manufacturing and cost up to $160 million each. The limited number produced so far has created a bottleneck for chipmakers like Samsung, TSMC and Intel, which plan to spend more than $100 billion over the next few years to build semiconductor chip factories.
Samsung is estimated to have produced 18 ASML EUV machines this year, up from an estimated 15 last year and 8 in 2020, said Lee Jae-yun, an analyst at Yuanta Securities.
Samsung, which uses the EUV process in its third-party chip manufacturing and DRAM memory chip manufacturing, declined to comment on specific plans for future EUV adoption.
Samsung said on an earnings call in January that it would “expand its high-performance product offering and increase the application of its industry-leading EUV technology” to memory chips.
The company also said its investments in outsourced chip manufacturing were focused on capacity expansions for advanced 5-nanometer EUV processes at its Pyeongtaek, South Korea plant.
(By Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang)
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