10 ms·
The $150M Machine Keeping Moore’s Law Alive
- Stratoscope 5y agohttps://archive.is/0dxn4 https://archive.is/0dxn4
- malloc2048 5y agoI've recently bought several shares of ASML at about €670, as I can't imagine them going down anytime soon. They seem to have a pretty much monopoly on the most advanced chipmanufacturing process and respective machines. ASML stock is also already going up for years and years. I wish I'd bought them earlier. Although ASML should be our Dutch pride, it's a company we hardly hear about in the Dutch press. Probably because their tech is relatively hard to understand.
- apexalpha 5y agoAlthough ASML should be our Dutch pride, it's a company we hardly hear about in the Dutch press. As another Dutch person the main stream media pretty much covers big ASML news. The CEO and CFO also regularely give interviews.
- mavhc 5y agoAs a UK person who frequents HN, I've heard of them 5 times in the past 2 weeks.
- vlovich123 5y agoWouldn’t the next few years already be priced into the stock price?
- vmception 5y agoefficient market theory is astrology for males, in a world where astrology and trading was gendered. the commonality being that neither produce peer reviewed reproducible results. nothing is priced in. things can be undervalued with known public information. market appetite can also further overvalue something with a new normal for price to equity ratios.
- dtech 5y agoOnly if you believe in the efficient market hypothesis
- arthurcolle 5y ago"Don't even ask the question. The answer is yes, it's priced in. Think Amazon will beat the next earnings? That's already been priced in. You work at the drive thru for Mickey D's and found out that the burgers are made of human meat? Priced in. You think insiders don't already know that? The market is an all powerful, all encompassing being that knows the very inner workings of your subconscious before you were even born. Your very existence was priced in decades ago when the market was valuing Standard Oil's expected future earnings based on population growth that would lead to your birth, what age you would get a car, how many times you would drive your car every week, how many times you take the bus/train, etc. Anything you can think of has already been priced in, even the things you aren't thinking of. You have no original thoughts. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a product of the omniscent market. Free will is a myth. The market sees all, knows all and will be there from the beginning of time until the end of the universe (the market has already priced in the heat death of the universe). So please, before you make a post on wsb asking whether AAPL has priced in earpods 11 sales or whatever, know that it has already been priced in and don't ask such a dumb fucking question again." [0] [0] if you know, you know
- iddan 5y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/eberem/everything_is_priced_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/eberem/ever...
- quickthrower2 5y agoThat quote should be in a movie. Pretty awesome. Also wrong :-)
- ArnoVW 5y agoCounter point: beginning of 2021, for weeks I was wondering why the markets were not reacting to Covid. Only when travel restrictions were introduced, and only when they were introduced to the US, the market started taking notice. Does the market extrapolate future earnings and macro economic trends, sure. Do some people have secrete insights beyond that? Sure. But I'd say the market as a whole is pretty stupid and reactive.
- Dylan16807 5y agoIt's priced in at the confidence level the market has. If you're more confident than the market then it's an opportunity to make money. (You also have to be right, of course.)
- vasco 5y agoYou should try imagining harder.
- kristopolous 5y agoHistorically speaking these one off stock recommendations from HN have really been fantastic. I just sold them too early and didn't put enough down. Like that one comment I remember in 2011 recommending to buy and hold Bitcoin for 10 years. Right. I bought. Didn't hold. Same deal with Tesla. I want something that takes $5,000 from me, invests it, then makes me forget about it, then 10 years later sends me a letter and says "you forgot about this, 10 years ago you did such and such, here you go" You can do fractional buy from the US on that instrument in Sofi (not in RH) btw for those who were looking to put only like $50 in. If you are doing an onboard there to invest in this, email me (check my bio) and I'll send my referral bonus link for signup (it's $25 for stocks + $10 withdrawable cash currently). Free money...
- kalev 5y agoAside from ASML, what is the recommendation at this point in time?
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI’m feeling gold. It hasn’t moved for a decade and has all the reasons to move in the next one as people escape the currently overvalued overprinted mess we made for something real and tangible again. https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-gold/?time=20%20years&show_adjuster=1&logarithmic=1 https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-gold/?time=20%20years&show... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/buffett-indicator.php https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/buffett-indica... “Gold is money, everything else is credit”. -J.P. Morgan, 1912
- bbarnett 5y agoI want something that takes $5,000 from me, invests it, then makes me forget about it, then 10 years later sends me a letter and says "you forgot about this, 10 years ago you did such and such, here you go" I can help you here. Let's discuss. I accept eth or bc. 3f42d
- pipodeclown 5y ago
- inglor_cz 5y agoSadly the most efficient way to get attention of the press is to say "I support Sinterklaas" on Twitter.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI've heard of ASML for over a decade now - Dutch mainstream press might ignore them, but specialized sites like tweakers.net and partners (it's been one of my daily visits for nearly 20 years) have reported on them for ages (https://tweakers.net/zoeken/?keyword=asml#filter:q1bKTq0szy9KUbJSSizOzVHSUQJyUovcMlNzQGIlmbmpMLHg_KISsLJkpVoA https://tweakers.net/zoeken/?keyword=asml#filter:q1bKTq0szy9...) As for the stonks, it looks really healthy, only ever having gone up over the past 20 years. Significantly in the last two years though. But I think it's a safe bet given there's little competition on the market at their level. I'm sure e.g. China is working on a competitor, but they have their work cut out for them - even if they have the designs for these machines.
- throwawaysea 5y agoThey don’t have a monopoly on EUV, although they have the most mature production systems, albeit still at low volumes. The core technology and research behind EUV was actually performed by US Department of Energy labs, who then shared their work under agreements with a small number of industry partners, including but not exclusively ASML, back in 1999 (https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/ https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/). This is also why ASML has a US presence and must source components from the US. There are other companies playing in this space, and while several are pursuing EUV, some are also using alternate approaches to fulfilling the same demand (like Canon’s nanoimprint). I would characterize ASML as temporarily having a long lead on EUV, but that can change in the span of 5-10 years.
- xadhominemx 5y agoThey have a monopoly in EUV lithography. If you might have competition in 5-10 years, then you have a monopoly.
- HPsquared 5y ago5-10 years is a long time in web development, but not in strategy terms.
- xadhominemx 5y agoThere is not going to be a competitor to ASML in 5 years. There might be alternatives on the horizon in 10 years, but they will very much still have a monopoly on EUV lithography.
- erwinh 5y agoLiving in Eindhoven & bought a couple of years ago as my first ever stock purchase, went to the yearly shareholder meeting in Veldhoven which was super low-key with a very homely vibe & some super long-term holders (20+ years). Still my most profitable purchase as well.
- float4 5y agoHehe my dad bought 500 ASML shares in '08 at roughly €15. And then he sold for €45 three years later.
- adflux 5y agoGreat decision, he tripled his money
- xt00 5y agoFor reference, until quite recently, chips that were referred to as being "14nm node" were actually built using light that was 193nm and lots of special techniques like multipatterning, immersion, crazy lenses, etc. So when EUV arrived and is now using 13nm, you can bet that 13nm will allow quite a bit of runway for creating tiny features -- one concern I'm sure is the use presently of mirrors for all of the optics, so not sure how that would work for something equivalent to immersion -- seems like not possible maybe?
- kragen 5y agoAFAIK immersion is very difficult because EUV is kind of like a disruptor beam. h c/13 nm is about 95 electron volts; that's enough to ionize just about anything, though they more often boost inner (non-valence) electrons up to outer shells instead. It's just as accurate to think of them as super soft X-rays as it is to think of them as "extreme ultraviolet." Sometimes they're called "vacuum ultraviolet" because air is opaque to them. Refraction is the key to immersion's resolution improvements, and I don't really know how it works. I have the impression that the higher permittivity of the refractive medium means that the electric field of the light propagates more slowly into it because the material is electrically polarizing, but permittivity varies with frequency, normally decreasing at higher frequencies, so hard X-rays barely refract at all. That would suggest that EUV might not refract much, quite aside from being rapidly attenuated. However, at least within and near the visible spectrum, refractive index increases at higher frequencies. So clearly there's a lot I don't understand.
- HPsquared 5y agoIf even air would absorb/scatter the EUV beam, immersion in liquid would seem to also cause a LOT of scattering. That'd reduce the contrast, which sounds undesirable. (Speaking as a complete noob here)
- kragen 5y agoThat was my thought, yeah, but maybe the attenuation of a liquid immersion layer of, say, 100 nanometers thickness would be tolerable?
- tuyiown 5y agoASML get a lot of coverage since last year, I've had never heard of it before, and I suspect just like many. It looked liked it emerged due to concerns about TMSC getting too much power and advance with billions on investments for semiconductors, and all of sudden all was alright since TMSC heavily relied on a dutch company. Maybe there's more of it, I'm starting to suspect there's a submarine in there.
- ghassanmas 5y agoBoth needs each other as to what I'v concoluded when I researched this topic. Making the machine is one thing and using it for fabrication is different thing, it might sound naive to say so, since typically one might think generally of machines as they comes with manual, and that's all you need for opreation..etc, but that is really far from be the case for the EUV machines or the fabrication plants... Lastly, to add to the point, if it was only about the machine, why Intel haven't started using it for fabricating <7nm...
- httpz 5y agoWhether it's Apple's latest M1 chip made by TSMC or Nvidia's latest GPU made by Samsung, it's needs to be manufactured using ASML's EUVs. The crazy part is, ASML was only able to ship 31 EUVs in 2020 and there was only about 100 EUVs in the world as of January this year.[1] [1] https://optics.org/news/12/1/28 https://optics.org/news/12/1/28
- quickthrower2 5y agoIs this something VC would help scale up? Or is it hitting some kind of hard limits of resources.
- klelatti 5y agoASML has a market cap of c $350 billion. If they wanted to raise tens of billions on the public markets they could probably do it. Not VC territory at all. They're probably limited by the size of the market.
- raffraffraff 5y agoPure market forces don't seem to be enough in a bunch of places.
- klelatti 5y agoThat's probably true in general but ASML surely isn't a good example. Massive capital investment and extraordinary long term planning are the things that are sometimes considered to be difficult for the private sector.
- cryptica 5y agoWhenever I see a big complex looking machine like that, my first thought is "That's impressive, these guys probably don't have much competition" then my second thought is "Surely it's possible to build a smaller, simpler machine that does the same thing in a much simpler way."
- Blahah 5y agoIf you find this interesting, there's an excellent history of precision in manufacturing by Simon Winchester called "Exactly" that includes a fascinating chapter on this. The book's chapters progress through various key technologies in history whose manufacture led to leaps forward in precision engineering, culminating with modern smartphones.
- laktak 5y ago> which means chips can keep shrinking for years to come At what point would quantum tunnelling make it impossible to shrink them further?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- google234123 5y agoIn a few hundred years we’ll need to start using galaxies to power our computers if Moore’s law holds true.
- adflux 5y agoPower usage doesn't scale (linearly) with Moores law
- google234123 5y agoThere is a minimum amount of energy required to process a bit of information.
- Armisael16 5y agoThe Landauer limit is about 2.8 zJ at room temperature. Modern chips are ludicrously far away from that being relevant. A chip using 1W would need to do 10^20 operations per second to even get close; right now they do more like 10^9.
- qualudeheart 5y agoCan we make Moores law stop? I think it’s accelerating too much. When there is acelleration there is novelty. When there is novelty there is uncertainty. When there is uncertainty there are problems. We need to make research into semiconductors and progress in hardware illegal. Only so will we be able to prevent social harms caused by artificial intelligence because the most advanced AI architectures are very resource intensive. When there is resource consumption there is scarcity. When there is scarcity there are problems.
- lr1970 5y agoA recent (9 days ago) related Hacker News thread about ASML and its $150 million machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266708
- pgtruesdell 5y agoI knew I saw this on HN a couple days ago. I figure that's what "inspired" this article, though it doesn't really have any more detail than the tweet thread...
- DrBazza 5y ago> “To tell you the truth, nobody actually wants to use EUV,” says David Kanter, a chip analyst with Real World Technologies. “It's a mere 20 years late and 10X over budget. But if you want to build very dense structures, it’s the only tool you’ve got.” Why would nobody want to use EUV?
- phonon 5y agoMore expensive equipment and lower throughput compared to immersion lithography.
- abbassi 5y agoFrom the text: Amid the recent chip shortage, triggered by the pandemic’s economic shock waves, ASML’s products have become central to a geopolitical struggle between the US and China, with Washington making it a high priority to block China's access to the machines. The US government has successfully pressured the Dutch not to grant the export licenses needed to send the machines to China, and ASML says it has shipped none to the country.
- kleton 5y agoIn fairness, ASML, the US government, and SMIC all know that SMIC would buy exactly one of these before making their own.
- drlobster 5y agoHaving an EUV scanner in your possession is not even half the battle. Building the mirror systems alone is an enormous effort taking thousands of engineers at Zeiss. Not just the figuring and coating of the mirrors but the metrology for them takes a bunch of bespoke systems developed by Zeiss.
- yboris 5y agoA YouTube video about this machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJIO7aRXUCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJIO7aRXUCg
- amelius 5y agoWhy doesn't this company have like 10x the valuation of Amazon, Google and Apple combined?
- kube-system 5y agoStock prices aren’t necessarily linked to a company being important, unique, or revolutionary. ASML’s success is highly linked to their ability to stay cutting edge with a very specific technology, and their ability to keep their literal handful of customers. Amazon, Google, and Apple can kill a bunch of products, lose a bunch of customers, fail at a few projects, do a few things worse than other companies, and still turn a big profit.
- ruffrey 5y agoIt's far from the whole story, but hardware companies tend to have lower multiples.
- thedrbrian 5y agoRelevant OmegaTau https://omegataupodcast.net/49-chip-production-and-waferscanners/ https://omegataupodcast.net/49-chip-production-and-waferscan...
- hamburgerwah 5y agoTwo important facts that lots of folks seem to miss. The extreme ultraviolet process was created by and remains owned by the US DOE and LLNL. The US wields enormous control over ASML because of this fact. https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/ebooks/PM/EUV-Lithography/2/EUV-LLC-An-Historical-Perspective/10.1117/3.769214.ch2 https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/ebooks/PM/EUV-Lithography... The EUV process is an insane rube goldberg physics "hack" that makes these machines very far from something you can just churn out model T style.
- anotheryou 5y agoGood youtube documentary about ASML: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtxx9TnH76R3D0aXnw-IVVaA383XTfMv https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtxx9TnH76R3D0aXnw-I... There is also one on Zeiss, the optics supplier.