iPhones are improving every year, thanks to an obscure Japanese company

International News

After two decades in development, chipmakers are making a costly bet on a technology that will cram even more transistors onto silicon. Their success may hinge on a little-known company in the suburbs of Tokyo.

Lasertec Corp. is the world’s sole maker of equipment that tests glass squares slightly bigger than a CD case that act as a stencil for chip designs. By shining light through the squares, circuits smaller than the width of a few strands of DNA are imprinted onto silicon wafers in a process called lithography. These templates have to be perfect: even a tiny defect can make every single chip in the batch unusable.

Consumers take it for granted that gadgets will keep getting slimmer, more powerful and cheaper, but the chip companies are running out of ways to etch ever smaller circuit patterns onto silicon. After years of setbacks, the industry has settled on extreme ultraviolet lithography, which uses plasma as the light source to draw lines smaller than 7 nanometers. That’s the size seen in Apple Inc.’s A12 Bionic chip, featured in the iPhone XS and XR.

In 2017, Yokohama, Japan-based Lasertec solved the final piece of the puzzle when it created a machine that can test blank EUV masks for internal flaws, giving it a monopoly. The company’s stock has tripled since then.


 Lasertec has already received orders for 4 billion yen ($36 million) machines that test EUV blanks, according to Lasertec President Osamu Okabayashi. The company may see additional sales as soon as this summer, depending on how quickly Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. ramp up mass production, he said. Lasertec shares climbed as much as 6 percent in Tokyo on Tuesday, the biggest intraday gain in 10 days...Read More