Comment by bri3d

ASML make fancy printers.

TSMC and other ASML customers build the designs that let those fancy printers create transistors and then logic gates, as well as a basic library of arrangements for those logic gates (PDK). They also provide all of the raw materials and processes and physics that go into said printers.

Apple and other design customers then compile RTL using that PDK to produce a design that can be manufactured using the fab’s process steps.

The printers are A hard part but far from The hard part. If you have an ASML machine it is useless to you unless you have also figured out how to build a 3D transistor in layers. Good luck!