Analyst firm raises alarm about EUV chipmaking tools — each consumes as much power as a small city, fabs to consume 54,000 Gigawatts by 2030
Are power grids ready?
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is vital for modern process technologies and semiconductor manufacturing for years to come. However, at 1,400 kilowatts per EUV tool — enough to power a small city — EUV lithography systems have become a substantial consumer of power that impacts the environment. TechInsights believes that the power consumption of all fabs equipped with EUV tools will exceed 54,000 gigawatts (GW) of power per year by 2030, which is more than what many countries, like Singapore or Greece, consume per year.
Current Low-NA EUV scanners require up to 1,170 kW, and next-gen High-NA tools are projected to need as much as 1,400 kW per unit (according to TechInsights). The number of these machines installed at fabs operated by Intel, Micron, Samsung, SK hynix, and, of course, TSMC, increases every year.
TechInsights believes that by 2030, the number of fabs with EUV scanners will increase from 31 today to 59, and the number of tools in operation will approximately double. As a result, all the installed EUV systems will consume 6,100 GW/year of power, which suggests that hundreds of the machines will be operational by then.
6,100 GW/year — power consumption comparable to Luxemburg's — is not a lot. However, each advanced chip takes over 4,000 steps to make, and there are hundreds of tools in a fab. EUV equipment accounts for approximately 11% of the total electricity use in a fab, with other tools, HVAC, facility systems, and cooling equipment making up the rest. As a result, the power consumption of all fabs equipped with low-NA and high-NA EUV tools is estimated to increase to 54,000 GW/year.
To put the number into context, 54,000 gigawatts a year of power is around five times more than Meta's data centers consumed in 2023. It is also more than Singapore, Greece, or Romania consume annually and more than 19 times the power consumed by the Las Vegas Strip per year. However, while this is a substantial amount of power, it is only 0.21% of the global power consumption in 2021 (25,343,000 GW/year), a rather small share.
It is fairly easy to deduce that if 59 leading-edge semiconductor production facilities with EUV tools consume 54,000 GW/year, each one will consume 915 GW/year, comparable to the power consumption of the most advanced data centers.
As the number of EUV-equipped fabs is projected to almost double by 2030 and power consumption will more than double as well, power infrastructure will face significant challenges as even today, companies like AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are struggling to find places where to build their megawatt and gigawatt-scale datacenters as power grids must be able to handle them.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Nowadays, chipmakers like Intel tend to consume only sustainable green energy, but their power consumption is limited for now. With the rising power demand for AI data centers, AWS, Microsoft, and Oracle plan to use nuclear power plants to feed their data centers. Perhaps chipmakers will have to consider using nuclear power in a few years as well. However, it remains to be seen whether power grids will be ready to power AI data centers, advanced fabs, households, and other industries in just six years.
"To ensure a sustainable future, the industry will need to invest in energy-efficient technologies, explore renewable energy sources, and collaborate with policymakers to address the challenges of power infrastructure," TechInsights concludes. "By doing so, they will be able to extend the power of semiconductors while minimizing their environmental impact."
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
US govt says Cisco gear often targeted in China's Salt Typhoon attacks on 8 telecommunications providers — issues Cisco-specific advice to patch networks to fend off attacks
Weak demand prevents Amazon from deploying AMD's Instinct AI accelerators in the cloud — the company plans to strengthen its portfolio with Nvidia Blackwell GPUs
-
rluker5 Easy to fix. Put constraints on AI and crypto. There will be a lot less energy spent on fabbing and unproductive compute tasks.Reply -
Zarraya The question I have is the 1.4MW the instantaneous power or sustained? From what I know of how these machines work (using lasers to vaporize droplets of tin to produce UV light) that number seems to be instant. If so then the actual energy use of the whole machine is wayyyy less. Watts are energy over time after all.Reply -
bit_user The use of units, in this article, is incredibly confusing. Are these peak figures, average figures, and stuff like "54,000 GW/year" doesn't even make sense! Should that have been "54,000 GW hours per year"?Reply
Joules are a unit of energy (equal to consuming 1 Watt of power for one second). Unless you're talking about peak or average power consumption, you really should be using Joules.
@PaulAlcorn , can you please help? -
pug_s
https://www.oist.jp/news-center/news/2024/7/29/innovative-euv-lithography-technology-dramatically-increases-energy-efficiency-and-reduces-capitalZarraya said:The question I have is the 1.4MW the instantaneous power or sustained? From what I know of how these machines work (using lasers to vaporize droplets of tin to produce UV light) that number seems to be instant. If so then the actual energy use of the whole machine is wayyyy less. Watts are energy over time after all.
Here's an article about it. Many of these EUV machines needs more mirrors in order to focus the EUV light in a ever smaller target. Every time it bounces off from 1 mirror, it loses 40% of its power and they have to add more power to compensate.
In the article they are talking about the use of 2 mirrors instead of the regular 10 mirrors used here, but it has never been in use yet.
Meanwhile, China
are trying to use other ways generate this EUV light instead of hitting tin like euv "cannon" ssmb (steady-state microbunching) -
Dntknwitall Doc would be happy. I wonder what year they will be going to? Back in time or Back to the Future?Reply -
cp0x
And each machine is not using the electricity of a "small city". Each one is just using the equivalent of 1000 hair driers, which is like 5 houses worth of electricity in the US south when the air conditioners are on :tearsofjoy:.bit_user said:The use of units, in this article, is incredibly confusing. Are these peak figures, average figures, and stuff like "54,000 GW/year" doesn't even make sense! Should that have been "54,000 GW hours per year"?
Joules are a unit of energy (equal to consuming 1 Watt of power for one second). Unless you're talking about peak or average power consumption, you really should be using Joules. -
hotaru251 Just make it a global law that should businesses want to do this high power usage stuff they are required to put downpayment fund to begin construction of a nuclear power plant to fund their needs.Reply
Gov's around world need to be proactive before its too late. a few business shouldnt use up so much power it impacts normal citizens around em.
Force the business to fund expanding grid or they are banned from doing what they want. -
QChronoD Even if their numbers are correct and they do use 0.21% of the global power produced, I have a feeling that they generate more than 0.21% of the global GDP and are well worth the energy expenditure.Reply
Edit: Quick AI search:
AI Overview
According to recent data, the global semiconductor industry, which includes semiconductor fabs, represents roughly 0.6%of nominal global GDP. This means that the total revenue generated by the semiconductor industry is approximately 0.6% of the total global economic output.
Key points to consider:
Growth trend:This percentage has been steadily increasing over time, with some projections indicating it could reach around 0.65% by 2030.
Source:Information is typically sourced from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). -
frogr
average summer daily demand for South Central USA is ~2kW or 48 kWh per day.cp0x said:And each machine is not using the electricity of a "small city". Each one is just using the equivalent of 1000 hair driers, which is like 5 houses worth of electricity in the US south when the air conditioners are on :tearsofjoy:.
https://www.solar.com/learn/how-many-kwh-per-day-is-normal/Therefore 1,400 kW -> 700 homes