Latest news with #Boeing747s
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Pittsburgh airport's new cargo facility welcomes first flights with Boeing 747 freighters
Pittsburgh International Airport's newest cargo facility got its first official use with four Boeing 747-400F freighters filling up before heading off to Europe. The 77,000-square-foot facility known as Cargo 4, which can unload and load two wide-body Boeing 747s or three Boeing 767s at the same time, was completed early this year. There aren't any cargo operators or freight forwarders who have set up shop there permanently, but two well-known international companies, Atlas Air and Challenge Group, used Cargo 4 for what was freight from the Northeast going to Europe. That included an Atlas Air flight from Anchorage, Alaska, to Pittsburgh, according to FlightRadar 24, a flight tracking site. Click here to read more from our partners at the Pittsburgh Business Times. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
Business Mayor
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- Business Mayor
Exclusive look at the making of High NA, ASML's new $400 million chipmaking colossus
Behind highly secured doors in a giant lab in the Netherlands, there's a machine that's transforming how microchips are made. ASML spent nearly a decade developing High NA, which stands for high numerical aperture. With a price tag of more than $400 million, it's the world's most advanced and expensive chipmaking machine. CNBC went to the Netherlands for a tour of the lab in April. Before that, High NA had never been filmed, even by ASML's own team. Inside the lab, High NA qualification team lead Assia Haddou gave CNBC an exclusive, up-close look at the High NA machines, which she said are 'bigger than a double-decker bus.' The machine is made up of four modules, manufactured in Connecticut, California, Germany and the Netherlands, then assembled in the Veldhoven, Netherlands, lab for testing and approval, before being disassembled again to ship out. Haddou said it takes seven partially loaded Boeing 747s, or at least 25 trucks, to get one system to a customer. The world's first commercial installation of High NA happened at Intel 's Oregon chip fabrication plant, or fab, in 2024. Only five of the colossal machines have ever been shipped. They're now being ramped up to make millions of chips on the factory floors of the few companies that can afford them: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. , Samsung and Intel. High NA is the latest generation of ASML's Extreme Ultraviolet, or EUV, machines. ASML is the exclusive maker of EUV, the only lithography devices in the world capable of projecting the smallest blueprints that make up the most advanced microchips. Chip designs from giants like Nvidia , Apple and AMD can't be manufactured without EUV. ASML told CNBC that High NA will eventually be used by all its EUV customers. That includes other advanced chipmakers like Micron , SK Hynix and Rapidus. 'This company has that market completely cornered,' said Daniel Newman of The Futurum Group. High NA chipmaking machine in Veldhoven, Netherlands, on April 24, 2025. Magdalena Petrova CNBC asked CEO Christophe Fouquet what's stopping ASML from setting the price of its machines even higher. He explained that as machines advance, they make it cheaper to produce the chips themselves. 'Moore's law says that we need to continue to drive costs down,' Fouquet said. 'There is a belief that if you drive costs down, you create more opportunity, so we need to be part of this game.' Two major customers have confirmed that High NA has shown big improvements over ASML's previous EUV machines. At a conference in February, Intel said it had used High NA to make about 30,000 wafers so far, and that the machine was about twice as reliable as its predecessors. At that same conference, Samsung said High NA could reduce its cycle time by 60%, meaning its chips can complete more operations per second. Read More Silicon Valley Bank: Biden says US banking system is safe 'A very risky investment' High NA can drive chip prices down because of these improvements in speed and performance. High NA also improves yield, meaning more of the chips on each wafer are usable. That's because it can project chip designs at a higher resolution. High NA uses the same process as EUV machines but with a larger lens opening that allows for projection of smaller chip design in fewer steps. 'High NA means two things. First and foremost, shrink. So there's more devices on a single wafer,' said Jos Benschop, ASML's executive vice president of technology. 'Secondly, by avoiding multiple patterning, you can make them faster and you can make them with higher yield.' Benschop joined ASML in 1997, two years after it became a publicly traded company. Benschop then helped drive the decision to go all in on EUV. The technology took more than 20 years to develop. ASML executive VP of technology Jos Benschop gave CNBC's Katie Tarasov a look at High NA chipmaking in Veldhoven, Netherlands, on April 24, 2025. Magdalena Petrova 'We barely made it. I think sometimes people forget that,' Fouquet said. 'It's been a very risky investment because when we started, there was no guarantee the technology would work.' By 2018, ASML proved the viability of EUV and major chipmakers started placing big orders for the machines. The idea, which seemed impossible to many two decades ago, was to create large amounts of tiny rays of extreme ultraviolet light, projecting it through masks with increasingly small chip designs, onto wafers of silicon treated with photoresist chemicals. To create the EUV light, ASML shoots molten tin out of a nozzle at 50,000 droplets per second, shooting each drop with a powerful laser that creates a plasma that's hotter than the sun. Those tiny explosions are what emit photons of the EUV light, with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers. About the width of five DNA strands, EUV is so small that it's absorbed by all known substances, so the whole process has to happen in a vacuum. The EUV light bounces off mirrors that aim it through a lens, much like how a camera works. To solve for EUV getting absorbed by mirrors, German optics company Zeiss made specific mirrors just for ASML that are the flattest manmade surfaces in the world. ASML's older generation DUV machines use less precise rays of deep ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 193 nanometers. ASML still makes the machines — competing against Nikon and Canon in Japan on DUV — but it is the only company in the world that's succeeded at EUV lithography. Read More New UK WhatsApp 'block' alert issued to millions and ignoring it could cost you The Dutch company began developing the $400 million High NA machines around 2016. High NA machines work the same as DUV, with the same EUV light source. But there's one key difference. High NA stands for high numerical aperture – meaning it has a larger lens opening, increasing the angle at which the light is captured by the mirrors. More light coming in from steeper angles allows High NA machines to transfer increasingly small designs onto the wafer in one step. By comparison, lower NA machines require multiple projections of EUV light, through multiple masks. 'When the number increases, it gets very complex process-wise and the yield goes down,' Fouquet said. Resolution improves as NA increases, bringing down the need for multiple masks and exposures, saving time and money. The cost of the High NA machine, however, goes up. 'The bigger the mirror you have to use and therefore the bigger the system,' Fouquet said. These machines also take up a huge amount of power. 'If we don't improve the power efficiency of our AI chips over time, the training of the models could consume the entire worldwide energy and that could happen around 2035,' Fouquet said. That's why ASML has reduced the power needed per wafer exposure by more than 60% since 2018, he said. ASML's Assia Haddou shows CNBC's Katie Tarasov a High NA chipmaking machine in Veldhoven, Netherlands, on April 24, 2025. Magdalena Petrova
CNBC
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- CNBC
Exclusive look at the making of High NA, ASML's new $400 million chipmaking colossus
Behind highly secured doors in a giant lab in the Netherlands, there's a machine that's transforming how microchips are made. ASML spent nearly a decade developing High NA, which stands for high numerical aperture. With a price tag of more than $400 million, it's the world's most advanced and expensive chipmaking machine. CNBC went to the Netherlands for a tour of the lab in April. Before that, High NA had never been filmed, even by ASML's own team. Inside the lab, High NA qualification team lead Assia Haddou gave CNBC an exclusive, up-close look at the High NA machines, which she said are "bigger than a double-decker bus." The machine is made up of four modules, manufactured in Connecticut, California, Germany and the Netherlands, then assembled in the Veldhoven, Netherlands, lab for testing and approval, before being disassembled again to ship out. Haddou said it takes seven partially loaded Boeing 747s, or at least 25 trucks, to get one system to a customer. The world's first commercial installation of High NA happened at Intel's Oregon chip fabrication plant, or fab, in 2024. Only five of the colossal machines have ever been shipped. They're now being ramped up to make millions of chips on the factory floors of the few companies that can afford them: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung and Intel. High NA is the latest generation of ASML's Extreme Ultraviolet, or EUV, machines. ASML is the exclusive maker of EUV, the only lithography devices in the world capable of projecting the smallest blueprints that make up the most advanced microchips. Chip designs from giants like Nvidia, Apple and AMD can't be manufactured without EUV. ASML told CNBC that High NA will eventually be used by all its EUV customers. That includes other advanced chipmakers like Micron, SK Hynix and Rapidus. "This company has that market completely cornered," said Daniel Newman of The Futurum Group. CNBC asked CEO Christophe Fouquet what's stopping ASML from setting the price of its machines even higher. He explained that as machines advance, they make it cheaper to produce the chips themselves. "Moore's law says that we need to continue to drive costs down," Fouquet said. "There is a belief that if you drive costs down, you create more opportunity, so we need to be part of this game." Two major customers have confirmed that High NA has shown big improvements over ASML's previous EUV machines. At a conference in February, Intel said it had used High NA to make about 30,000 wafers so far, and that the machine was about twice as reliable as its predecessors. At that same conference, Samsung said High NA could reduce its cycle time by 60%, meaning its chips can complete more operations per second. High NA can drive chip prices down because of these improvements in speed and performance. High NA also improves yield, meaning more of the chips on each wafer are usable. That's because it can project chip designs at a higher resolution. High NA uses the same process as EUV machines but with a larger lens opening that allows for projection of smaller chip design in fewer steps. "High NA means two things. First and foremost, shrink. So there's more devices on a single wafer," said Jos Benschop, ASML's executive vice president of technology. "Secondly, by avoiding multiple patterning, you can make them faster and you can make them with higher yield." Benschop joined ASML in 1997, two years after it became a publicly traded company. Benschop then helped drive the decision to go all in on EUV. The technology took more than 20 years to develop. "We barely made it. I think sometimes people forget that," Fouquet said. "It's been a very risky investment because when we started, there was no guarantee the technology would work." By 2018, ASML proved the viability of EUV and major chipmakers started placing big orders for the machines. The idea, which seemed impossible to many two decades ago, was to create large amounts of tiny rays of extreme ultraviolet light, projecting it through masks with increasingly small chip designs, onto wafers of silicon treated with photoresist chemicals. To create the EUV light, ASML shoots molten tin out of a nozzle at 50,000 droplets per second, shooting each drop with a powerful laser that creates a plasma that's hotter than the sun. Those tiny explosions are what emit photons of the EUV light, with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers. About the width of five DNA strands, EUV is so small that it's absorbed by all known substances, so the whole process has to happen in a vacuum. The EUV light bounces off mirrors that aim it through a lens, much like how a camera works. To solve for EUV getting absorbed by mirrors, German optics company Zeiss made specific mirrors just for ASML that are the flattest manmade surfaces in the world. ASML's older generation DUV machines use less precise rays of deep ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 193 nanometers. ASML still makes the machines — competing against Nikon and Canon in Japan on DUV — but it is the only company in the world that's succeeded at EUV lithography. The Dutch company began developing the $400 million High NA machines around 2016. High NA machines work the same as DUV, with the same EUV light source. But there's one key difference. High NA stands for high numerical aperture – meaning it has a larger lens opening, increasing the angle at which the light is captured by the mirrors. More light coming in from steeper angles allows High NA machines to transfer increasingly small designs onto the wafer in one step. By comparison, lower NA machines require multiple projections of EUV light, through multiple masks. "When the number increases, it gets very complex process-wise and the yield goes down," Fouquet said. Resolution improves as NA increases, bringing down the need for multiple masks and exposures, saving time and money. The cost of the High NA machine, however, goes up. "The bigger the mirror you have to use and therefore the bigger the system," Fouquet said. These machines also take up a huge amount of power. "If we don't improve the power efficiency of our AI chips over time, the training of the models could consume the entire worldwide energy and that could happen around 2035," Fouquet said. That's why ASML has reduced the power needed per wafer exposure by more than 60% since 2018, he said. ASML is known for its groundbreaking EUV machines, but its older DUV machines still made up 60% of business in 2024. ASML sold 44 EUV machines last year, with a price tag starting at $220 million. DUV machines are far cheaper, ranging from $5 million to $90 million, but ASML sold 374 of the legacy machines in 2024. China is a major buyer of those DUV systems, making up 49% of ASML's business in the second quarter of 2024. Fouquet told CNBC this peak in sales to China came because of a "huge backlog" in orders that ASML wasn't able to fill until last year. He said business in China should be back to the "historical normal" of between 20% and 25% in 2025. U.S. export controls prevent ASML from selling EUV to China. It's a ban that started under the first Trump administration. Newman of The Futurum Group said it's a "real long shot" that China could develop its own EUV machines, instead making devices like smartphones using the most advanced chips possible with DUV. U.S. concern over advanced tech making its way to China has accelerated amid the generative artificial intelligence race. That boom has also sent chip stocks soaring, including ASML's, which hit an all-time high in July. ASML's share price has declined more than 30% since, as the chip industry faces key uncertainties such as President Donald Trump's tariffs. Benschop told CNBC that ASML simply doesn't know how tariffs will impact the company. With about 800 global suppliers, tariff implications for ASML are complex. Making a single High NA machine requires many steps of imports and exports. The machine's four modules are made in the U.S., Netherlands and Germany, then they're shipped to the Netherlands for assembly and testing, where they're disassembled again for shipment to chip fabs in places like the U.S. or Asia. For years, Asia has made up more than 80% of ASML's business. The U.S. share sat around 17% in 2024 but is growing fast. ASML has 44,000 employees globally, and 8,500 of them are based in the U.S. across 18 offices. Many of ASML's 2024 High NA shipments went to Intel, which is building new fabs in Ohio and Arizona. The U.S.-based chipmaker has struggled in recent years, but Fouquet said Intel remains a "formidable partner" for ASML and that it's "very critical" for U.S. semiconductor independence. Taiwan-based TSMC is far ahead of Intel in advancing chip nodes. CNBC recently visited TSMC's new fab north of Phoenix, which is now in volume production. As the most advanced chip fab on U.S. soil, the need for High NA there will likely come soon. ASML, meanwhile, is building its first U.S. training center in Arizona. Fouquet told CNBC it will open in the "next few months" with a goal of training 1,200 people on EUV and DUV each year. It's "a capacity that will not only meet what is needed in the U.S., but will be used also to train even more people worldwide," he said. The Dutch company plans to further increase the numerical aperture on its next machine, Hyper NA. Fouquet told CNBC that ASML has some draft optical designs for this next machine, and that, "it's not necessarily a difficult product." He expects the need for Hyper NA to come "between 2032 and 2035." He wouldn't speculate on price. For now, ASML is focused on meeting demand for High NA. It plans to ship at least five more systems this year and ramping to a production capacity of 20 machines in a few years. Watch the video to see High NA in action:
USA Today
21-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Pentagon accepts $400 million jet from Qatar for President Donald Trump
Pentagon accepts $400 million jet from Qatar for President Donald Trump Show Caption Hide Caption President Donald Trump plans to accept jet from Qatar President Donald Trump plans to accept 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar's royal family to replace Air Force One. WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has accepted a luxury Boeing 747 jet from Qatar to be used as Air Force One, the president's plane, according to the Defense Department. The unprecedented $400 million gift, which President Donald Trump has said will transfer to his library after his term ends, will require extensive renovation to serve essentially as the flying White House. 'The Secretary of Defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations," Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman said in a May 21 statement. "The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United States." More: How Air Force One compares to 747 that Qatar wants to give Trump Qatar offered Trump the plane during his trip last week to the Middle East. News of the offer drew immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats. Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, called on the Pentagon inspector general to investigate what he called a "brazen attempt to evade constitutional limitations on the acceptance of personal gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval." More: Planes on the brain: Trump covets jet gift, announces Boeing deal on Qatar trip Retrofitting the plane against counterintelligence and surveillance risks would be costly and take years to complete, Reed said. Replacements for the current Boeing 747s used as Air Force One are years behind schedule.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Planes on the brain: Trump covets jet gift, announces Boeing deal on Qatar trip
Ahead of his trip to Qatar and the Middle East this week, President Donald Trump cooed over Qatar's planned gift of a Boeing 747 jet, saying he would be "stupid" not to accept a "free, very expensive airplane." Aboard Air Force One, Trump lamented to Fox News host Sean Hannity of the U.S. government plane's comparative old age of 40 years and lackluster appearance next to Qatar's, Saudi Arabia's and the United Arab Emirates' "brand new Boeing 747s." "You see ours next to it. This is like a totally different plane," Trump said. It was not the last time planes were mentioned on the president's first overseas business trip during his second term – the White House announced on May 14 that Qatar Airways will buy more than 200 new jets from Boeing. As Trump doubles down on accepting the luxury plane from Qatar despite ethics concerns, Virginia-based Boeing has announced a plane deal with a foreign country's airline for less than half the price originally announced. Speaking to reporters as he sat down with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to sign economic and defense agreements, Trump said the deal was "the largest order of jets in the history of Boeing," adding, "that's pretty good." "It's over $200 billion but 160 in terms of the jets, that's fantastic," Trump said. In its official announcement later that day, the White House issued a corrected, much lower number – $96 billion agreement for up to 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft. Qatar Airways said in a news release that the deal was the largest aircraft order in its history. The Qatar Airways deal wasn't the first time during Trump's Middle East trip that Boeing cashed in – AviLease, an aircraft leasing firm owned by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, ordered as many as 30 Boeing jets, the airplane maker announced May 13, as Trump visited Saudi Arabia. More: Fighter jets, chandeliers, a Cybertruck: See the pomp of Trump's Middle East visit The plane Qatar has offered to Trump, by contrast, has no price tag, sparking concerns from both Democrats and Republicans of corruption and that it violates the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which says gifts from foreign officials and countries are off limits for U.S. officials. "The American people should make their disgust known: There is no room for this kind of flagrant disregard of the Constitution in the skies above," Norman Eisen, Virginia Canter and Richard W. Painter – all former White House legal counsels – wrote in a New York Times opinion article. Democratic lawmakers were also incensed. "This cannot be allowed to stand. Our foreign policy cannot simply be a mechanism to make Donald Trump and his family rich," Sen. Chris Murray, D-Conn., said in a video statement. Trump has countered that the plane is a "gift, free of charge" to the Defense Department – not to him personally. "Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done," he wrote on Truth Social in a post in the early morning hours of May 14, local time, after he arrived in Riyadh. "Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country." Contributing: Reuters This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Planes on the brain: Trump inks plane deals, covets jets in Qatar
