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> other countries will replicate the research How did that go for China and Russia during the last... 20 years of them throwing all their money and brain power
by boltzmann-brain 3y ago
> other countries will replicate the research
How did that go for China and Russia during the last... 20 years of them throwing all their money and brain power at it?
No, ASML is guarding profound insights. I run a community for silicon valley veterans from areas like silicon design, manufacturing, hardware design, top-tier testing equipment, military and research lab prototyping, etc. The stuff ASML is doing is night on impossible, and even the brightest minds I know in that community find it hard to begin to imagine the minute details that really make ASML's tech stack a possibility as opposed to a flight of fancy.
There's a very good reason why the powers that be decided to move heaven and earth to get TSMC out of Taiwan and onto safer ground. This knowledge is at the very edge of what we know about physics and manufacturing. There's no replicating it, there's only losing it and starting again from scratch with no genius insight at all.
I hope ASML has something like an internal journal, like oldschool HP or Bell Systems, and one day they'll release it, because it will revolutionize what we know about a lot of practical engineering, even if by then it's 30 years behind the curve of what they're doing at that point.
- roenxi 3y agoThe US dropped the atomic bomb in 1945. The USSR replicated their efforts by 1949, and both had ICBMs by the 1960s. The Chinese were late starters figuring the tech out by the 64s. It is likely that nano-fabrication is harder than the atomic bomb - but betting on the Chinese not figuring this out just seems overoptomistic. They can bribe people. They can hire people. They can spy. They have some of the brightest scientists and engineers. They have enormous market, military and political incentives. They know what they are targeting and the tolerances they need. There is a good chance they crack this nut. > How did that go for China and Russia during the last... 20 years of them throwing all their money and brain power at it? ASML wasn't causing trouble until the Trump sanctions of 2018, up until then SMIC could just buy machines off them. The situation is different now and the research efforts will have kicked up a notch.