As the company announced with a post on X (Twitter), “Intel Oregon welcomes major components of ASML first shipped High-NA EUV technology to help enable the continued and relentless pursuit of Moore’s Law.” Is this new piece of equipment going to help Intel advance its “5 nodes in 4 years” program? According to SemiAnalysis, double patterning with the “traditional” EUV litho equipment (low numerical aperture) is still a better option – in terms of cost and throughput – than single patterning with the new high numerical aperture litho equipment.
Credit: Intel
Let’s now move to more news, catching up on some of the updates from the last thirty days or so.
Synopsys to reportedly buy Ansys
It looks like the EDA oligopoly is bound to always be restricted to just three big companies. According to a January 5 report from The Wall Street Journal, Synopsys is in advanced talks to acquire Ansys for around $35 billion in a stock-and-cash deal. Reportedly, the two companies are now in exclusive negotiations. Rumors started with a December 22 Reuters exclusive report revealing that Synopsys had submitted an offer to acquire multiphysics simulation specialist Ansys. While the acquisition of Ansys would be a transformative event for Synopsys, there’s no doubt that the company co-founded by Aart de Geus has a long track record of acquiring other EDA players: just take a look at this list.
