Tom’s Hardware, which got its mitts on the footage, says the clip reveals hundreds of expensive gadgets calmly pumping out chips in the yellow glow of a clean room. The real star of the show is one of ASML’s eye-wateringly pricey Twinscan NXE EUV lithography machines. It is the only gear on Earth able to etch out the fiddly patterns inside next-gen silicon like Nvidia’s Blackwell B300.

The footage offers a rare peek at Fab 21’s phase one setup. It starts with a clean room walkthrough, all bathed in yellow light to block the wavelengths that could accidentally expose photoresist coatings on the wafers. This is where TSMC is steadily ramping up production of 4nm and 5nm chips for the likes of Apple, AMD and Nvidia.

Soon after, we get a glimpse of what TSMC calls the “silver highway”, a swanky suspended rail system that carries FOUPs (front-opening unified pods) packed with 12-inch wafers. Hundreds of these pods zip around like obedient mechanical bees, all in sync to keep the high-throughput production rhythm on track.

Tom’s reckons the lithography kit in the spotlight is likely ASML’s NXE:3600D. The demo shows a carbon dioxide laser vaporising tiny droplets of yttrium. The resulting plasma emits 13.5-nanometre EUV light, which gets bounced through a maze of mirrors since traditional lenses just absorb it, to project the ultra-fine patterns onto the wafers.

Despite the high drama, the video doesn’t show the wafer stage or the mask shield, but TSMC confirmed those components are part of the setup in this first-phase fab. For reference, the NXE:3600D can print features down to a resolution of 13nm with a half-pitch and has an overlay accuracy down to 1.1nm, which is more precise than most people’s ability to hold a thought.

While Fab 21 phase one churns out 4nm and 5nm chips, construction is under way on phase two. That’s the one expected to crank out 3nm and 2nm parts, likely destined for the next round of toys from the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple.