In ten years, ASML’s Applications business line has become a highly valued asset. It has grown into a multi-billion dollar business, employing more than 3,000 people, with software accounting for the majority of the revenue. Having been along for the whole ride, Maurice du Mée shares the scaling challenges.
ASML’s wafer scanner has long ceased to be a stand-alone system. It’s part of the so-called “holistic lithographic control loop,” which runs from the machine writing the chips, through the equipment measuring the written patterns and the platform analyzing the measurement data and calculating the required adjustments, back to the scanner, which then adopts the corrections. “We help our customers find additional nanometers outside of the machine and correct for them,” says Maurice du Mée, vice president of Development & Engineering (D&E) responsible for metrology and patterning control at ASML’s Applications business line.
“Apps,” as Du Mée colloquially calls the business line, encompasses ASML’s metrology and inspection equipment, both the homegrown Yieldstars and the HMI e-beam systems acquired in 2016. The lion’s share of the portfolio, however, consists of software, including the simulation applications developed by the Silicon Valley office, formerly Brion, and the Virtual Computational Platform (VCP) made in Veldhoven. “Today, Apps is a multi-billion dollar business and a big chunk of it comes from software.”
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