The EUV barrier has been broken.

And I found out right on the heels of yesterday’s EUV update – but too late to get it into that piece. Remember the issue with the misalignment of the laser? That happened when bringing the system back up from a power upgrade. Well, there’s more to it than most of us realized.

While the power upgrade was officially for 30 W publicly, they had had a breakthrough and were privately hoping for a lot more. They just didn’t want to say anything about it until they knew it would work; there have already been far too many expectations set and then missed with this technology. And the timing with SPIE Litho would have been perfect – what an amazing opportunity for a surprise announcement. But the glitch during bring-up messed all that up. The PR folks must have been going nuts.

But here’s the bottom line: the 30 W was a lowball goal. Once they got the system up and running again, they were able to push things to see how far they could get. And they got as high as 108 W!! This gets us past that magical 100-W barrier.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s piece, we don’t usually rush to press with breathless news, but this seems pretty big, given that it’s what so many folks have been waiting for. There’s been no formal announcement yet, but my source (who wishes to remain anonymous) said that the team’s excitement is beyond measure.

More details as they unfoold…