3 ms·

1.2B lines of code (end of video) strikes me as really a whole lot for an industrial control system. Yes, these machines are awfully complex, but 1.2 billion ?

1.2B lines of code (end of video) strikes me as really a whole lot for an industrial control system. Yes, these machines are awfully complex, but 1.2 billion ? Really ?

cf1241290841 3y ago
ASML have a defacto monopoly. These machines being this complicated is a giant plus for them. edit: To give an example from another industry, Dave from EEVBlog has a nice teardown for a DLP projector from the upper price segment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3eGqjV9yG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3eGqjV9yG0 You can argue that an important design criteria building this was often the pricetag of the end product.
- baq 3y ago
  OTOH the reason for their monopoly isn’t for the lack of trying from the competition… it’s amazing they got EUV to work at commercial scale.
  - cf1241290841 3y ago
    Most definitively, every new generation they put out is a technological marvel.
danpalmer 3y ago
This equates roughly to 1k developers writing net 1000 lines per day, every day for 5 years. While it's unlikely, the numbers aren't actually as far off as I expected. Maybe they have 10k developers. Maybe the systems have been worked on for 20 years, maybe devs are only doing 100 lines a day. Lots of combinations come to the right order of magnitude here. However, most engineers in teams of 1k-10k aren't this productive (not necessarily their fault), and much development is rewrites, so I suspect that the actual amount is about an order of magnitude lower. What might make up the numbers in order for this to be the "headline" summary number, could be that only net lines were counted, or that they use some sort of monorepo where they have e.g. all of Python committed in, all of GCC/LLVM or other toolchains, etc. Add a few toolchains like that and you'll quickly make up the numbers I'm sure.
rfw300 3y ago
I also thought that seems implausibly large. My guess, based on some quick research, is that a large fraction of that is procedurally generated, not human-written. Here's one example: > Formal verification tools allow those teams to be confident that their solution is complete and error-free, and the code itself is then automatically generated... With such a model-driven engineering (MDE) approach, software developers at ASML recently replaced half a million lines of code that had been built the conventional way. https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-code-is-not-enough https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-cod...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Klaus23 3y ago
There are at least half a dozen other errors in the video, and that's without me looking for them. I would not be surprised if this was just wrong.
zurfer 3y ago
as another sibling points out, this seems too high. Their official website speaks about millions of lines of code [1]. They also published an article (2017) where they proudly say, they got rid of half a million lines of code [2]. A comment on HN from someone who might have insider info says 20M lines of C [3]. Would be great to get the sources from the video. Maybe they talked about compiled assembly? [1] https://www.asml.com/en/technology/software https://www.asml.com/en/technology/software [2] https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-code-is-not-enough https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-cod... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181
- throwaway902375 3y ago
  I’ve talked to a fair share of insiders myself and general consensus is that the hardware basically sells itself, and customers approach the software stack as something they’re unfortunately stuck with. ASML developed new software products over the years but it didn’t pan out and at this point customers are wary of anything being sold and would rather keep 20 year old inefficient but proven to work systems around. Think racks of control systems next to DUV machines that are officially years EOL but ASML is forced to sell today because it’s all a customer is willing to buy into.
  - ur-whale 3y ago
    LOL. Very likely explanation, reminds me of the abomination that is the software stack of Xilinx.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    I have 0 idea about the new software they failed to make, but let me guess: -- Machine has to be connected to internet at all times for no functional reason whatsoever -- Account has to be created for every employee to login to "cloud" -- Software had "smart" in the name -- Monthly subscription, the more accounts the higher the cost -- Completely bugged and broken web interface at all times. Make sure the style and behavior of UX components is unlike anything else and broken. -- Hosted through Azure with the most elaborate and complex infrastructure setup possible. At least 100 mb upload per served webpage and 1 GB of RAM useage at the client side. -- Machine serves the website/API from the smallest possible microcontroller for no reason. -- Webapp / client runs in Microsoft Edge only. -- Tracking sent to ASML servers for "no reason" -- Everybody at ASML working on the cloud software had to work on-site in Eindhoven for no reason whatsoever and was paid as little as possible by forming renumeration fixing cartels with other companies in the area. I hope that I'm completely wrong.
miohtama 3y ago
That was an old figure. Must be more now if the software team doubles in size every four year.
TheUnhinged 3y ago
That was 20 years ago. In another video, John says ~8 billion LOC, which seems more a accurate. ASML is a system integrator. I presume that those numbers include 3rd party SW, and offline tooling and modeling SW. An ASML machine is IMO more complex than the shuttle, ISS, a 747 and an aircraft carrier, combined.

1.2B lines of code (end of video) strikes me as really a whole lot for an industrial control system. Yes, these machines are awfully complex, but 1.2 billion ? Really ?

cf1241290841 3y ago

ASML have a defacto monopoly. These machines being this complicated is a giant plus for them. edit: To give an example from another industry, Dave from EEVBlog has a nice teardown for a DLP projector from the upper price segment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3eGqjV9yG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3eGqjV9yG0 You can argue that an important design criteria building this was often the pricetag of the end product.

baq 3y ago
OTOH the reason for their monopoly isn’t for the lack of trying from the competition… it’s amazing they got EUV to work at commercial scale.
- cf1241290841 3y ago
  Most definitively, every new generation they put out is a technological marvel.

danpalmer 3y ago

This equates roughly to 1k developers writing net 1000 lines per day, every day for 5 years. While it's unlikely, the numbers aren't actually as far off as I expected. Maybe they have 10k developers. Maybe the systems have been worked on for 20 years, maybe devs are only doing 100 lines a day. Lots of combinations come to the right order of magnitude here. However, most engineers in teams of 1k-10k aren't this productive (not necessarily their fault), and much development is rewrites, so I suspect that the actual amount is about an order of magnitude lower. What might make up the numbers in order for this to be the "headline" summary number, could be that only net lines were counted, or that they use some sort of monorepo where they have e.g. all of Python committed in, all of GCC/LLVM or other toolchains, etc. Add a few toolchains like that and you'll quickly make up the numbers I'm sure.

rfw300 3y ago

I also thought that seems implausibly large. My guess, based on some quick research, is that a large fraction of that is procedurally generated, not human-written. Here's one example: > Formal verification tools allow those teams to be confident that their solution is complete and error-free, and the code itself is then automatically generated... With such a model-driven engineering (MDE) approach, software developers at ASML recently replaced half a million lines of code that had been built the conventional way. https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-code-is-not-enough https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-cod...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Klaus23 3y ago

There are at least half a dozen other errors in the video, and that's without me looking for them. I would not be surprised if this was just wrong.

zurfer 3y ago

as another sibling points out, this seems too high. Their official website speaks about millions of lines of code [1]. They also published an article (2017) where they proudly say, they got rid of half a million lines of code [2]. A comment on HN from someone who might have insider info says 20M lines of C [3]. Would be great to get the sources from the video. Maybe they talked about compiled assembly? [1] https://www.asml.com/en/technology/software https://www.asml.com/en/technology/software [2] https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-code-is-not-enough https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2017/knowing-how-to-cod... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181

throwaway902375 3y ago
I’ve talked to a fair share of insiders myself and general consensus is that the hardware basically sells itself, and customers approach the software stack as something they’re unfortunately stuck with. ASML developed new software products over the years but it didn’t pan out and at this point customers are wary of anything being sold and would rather keep 20 year old inefficient but proven to work systems around. Think racks of control systems next to DUV machines that are officially years EOL but ASML is forced to sell today because it’s all a customer is willing to buy into.
- ur-whale 3y ago
  LOL. Very likely explanation, reminds me of the abomination that is the software stack of Xilinx.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  I have 0 idea about the new software they failed to make, but let me guess: -- Machine has to be connected to internet at all times for no functional reason whatsoever -- Account has to be created for every employee to login to "cloud" -- Software had "smart" in the name -- Monthly subscription, the more accounts the higher the cost -- Completely bugged and broken web interface at all times. Make sure the style and behavior of UX components is unlike anything else and broken. -- Hosted through Azure with the most elaborate and complex infrastructure setup possible. At least 100 mb upload per served webpage and 1 GB of RAM useage at the client side. -- Machine serves the website/API from the smallest possible microcontroller for no reason. -- Webapp / client runs in Microsoft Edge only. -- Tracking sent to ASML servers for "no reason" -- Everybody at ASML working on the cloud software had to work on-site in Eindhoven for no reason whatsoever and was paid as little as possible by forming renumeration fixing cartels with other companies in the area. I hope that I'm completely wrong.

miohtama 3y ago

That was an old figure. Must be more now if the software team doubles in size every four year.

TheUnhinged 3y ago

That was 20 years ago. In another video, John says ~8 billion LOC, which seems more a accurate. ASML is a system integrator. I presume that those numbers include 3rd party SW, and offline tooling and modeling SW. An ASML machine is IMO more complex than the shuttle, ISS, a 747 and an aircraft carrier, combined.