An obscure Japanese firm is behind the iPhone evolution

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, used 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 chip in the batch unusable.