What is a chip making tool?

WASHINGTON: Sophisticated and expensive machinery used to make semiconductors, more widely-known as “chip-making tools”, are in the news again, amid talks where the United States will urge Japanese and Dutch officials to crack down on shipments of the prized equipment to China.

Below is more information about these machines.

WHAT ARE CHIP-MAKING TOOLS?

A single chip factory can contain 1,000 or more tools, each tuned to a different step in the process. One critical chipmaking step, called lithography, involves tools that can be the size of double-decker buses, weighing more than 200 tonnes. They produce beams of focused light that create the microscopic circuitry on computer chips used in everything from phones and laptops to cars and AI.