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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding This is a very solid base to start from. "As of 2023 it is the largest su

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding This is a very solid base to start from. "As of 2023 it is the largest supplier for the semiconductor industry and the sole supplier in the world of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) photolithography machines that are required to manufacture the most advanced chips."

impossiblefork 2y ago
It's a great company, but it's a basic technology firm, which is pretty typical for the kind of industry that have traditionally been viewed as sensible in Europe. Such industries are subject to business cycles, i.e. the classic problem with machine tools, so people in these businesses need to think differently about what is good and bad, and what is sensible. The companies that compete in AI are companies that use the products of the companies that use the products of these companies, and the foundation doesn't really have much to do with what's built on top of it. If we want microchip manufacturing the thing we'd build on top would probably be NXP, but I don't think we really want microchip manufacturing unless we want to do something special. I don't have a problem with what I hear about TSMCs prices, they sound alright. What's interesting to me would be if there was some effort to make European DL/floating point maths accelerators for sale to the general public, to rid of the world of NVIDIA's margins, so that more people can have access to such machines, and then presumably, once compute were cheaper it'd be easier to have a compute intensive AI firm in Europe.
constantcrying 2y ago
AI companies in the US are mostly startups. ASML goes back to Phillips, which is over a century old and has moved into semi conductors very early. What ASML does is push a the technological boundary of an industrial process, which requires enormous R&D. You can find many such companies in the EU. The EU wants large corporations to do innovation. The US allows startups to do that, the consequences are pretty obvious.

impossiblefork 2y ago

It's a great company, but it's a basic technology firm, which is pretty typical for the kind of industry that have traditionally been viewed as sensible in Europe. Such industries are subject to business cycles, i.e. the classic problem with machine tools, so people in these businesses need to think differently about what is good and bad, and what is sensible. The companies that compete in AI are companies that use the products of the companies that use the products of these companies, and the foundation doesn't really have much to do with what's built on top of it. If we want microchip manufacturing the thing we'd build on top would probably be NXP, but I don't think we really want microchip manufacturing unless we want to do something special. I don't have a problem with what I hear about TSMCs prices, they sound alright. What's interesting to me would be if there was some effort to make European DL/floating point maths accelerators for sale to the general public, to rid of the world of NVIDIA's margins, so that more people can have access to such machines, and then presumably, once compute were cheaper it'd be easier to have a compute intensive AI firm in Europe.

constantcrying 2y ago

AI companies in the US are mostly startups. ASML goes back to Phillips, which is over a century old and has moved into semi conductors very early. What ASML does is push a the technological boundary of an industrial process, which requires enormous R&D. You can find many such companies in the EU. The EU wants large corporations to do innovation. The US allows startups to do that, the consequences are pretty obvious.