The countdown begins as Apple is finally going to release iPhone 12 tonight at 10 pm.

This time, Apple is likely to reveal the new model powered by a new type of chip.

The new chip will allow owners to perform several functions such as 4K video, enhance high-resolution photos and play graphically-intensive video games more smoothly than was possible before while using less battery power.

According to BBC, The “five-nanometre process” involved refers to the fact that the chip’s transistors have been shrunk down – the tiny on-off switches are now only about 25 atoms wide – allowing billions more to be packed in. It eventually implies more brainpower.

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What is this new chip?

Many industry insiders expected the advance could be delivered so soon.

That it has been, is in large part down to the ingenuity of a relatively obscure Dutch company – ASML.

“At such small scales precision is key,” said Dr. Ian Cutress, who reports on the sector for Anandtech.

“What they’re doing is akin to hitting a stamp on the surface of Mars with a paper aeroplane.”

“We take a molten droplet of tin and we fire a high-power industrial laser onto it, which basically vaporizes it and creates a plasma,” explained spokesman Sander Hofman.

“And that plasma shines UV light.

“This all happens 50,000 times a second – so 50,000 droplets get hit – which creates enough light for us to capture with a series of mirrors – the flattest in the world.”

He added that the blueprint of the chip’s design is encoded into the light by passing it through a mask and then contracting it with lenses.

It then hits a light-sensitive coating on a silicon wafer, causing the chip’s design to be “printed”.