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> By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips. Makes one wonder: Would we be much be

> By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips. Makes one wonder: Would we be much better off of worse off if we reshaped society to do more of things, where a new technology is unlikely to work but highly beneficial in the limits? Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources?

danielheath 6mo ago
I mean, it’s been tried; a reading of relevant historical texts would give you lots of ammunition to support either argument.
IAmBroom 6mo ago
Big gambles have big risks. It's the gambler's folly, after a big win (ASML's EUV) to say, gee, we should have bought more lottery tickets! Next time, it all goes on red! What is no longer mentioned is that ASML made another big gamble at the time they started on EUV. They decided to make an all-in-one chip making machine that took silicon and output chips (instead of matrices of chip circuits laid out on a wafer). On paper, the machine would save a lot of money for the fab houses. IRL: no one asked for it, and no one was willing to risk their entire production on a single, untried, swiss army knife of a fabricator. The whole program was a wash. People were reassigned and the project died a very quick death. ASML lost a ton of money on this misguided attempt, but not enough to choke them. So, they rolled the dice twice, and one gamble paid off handsomely. If it went the other way, they'd be a smaller company, and Moore's Law would be overshooting reality. If neither paid off, they'd be DOA.
- smueller1234 6mo ago
  The timelines matter as well: They were working on EUV at Zeiss (who make the lensing/mirroring systems) already in 2005. That's about 20 years of development.
  - IAmBroom 6mo ago
    Oh, AMSL was designing components of the EUV system by 2005. So, more likely 25 years!
- ghc 6mo ago
  Let's not forget the really big gamble (inventing EUV) was made in the 1990s by US national labs: Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and Lawrence Berkeley.
  - IAmBroom 6mo ago
    Inventing EUV lasers.
    - ghc 6mo ago
      Optics and photoresist materials too. The partnership developed the first EUV lithography in 2001: https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-its-stand https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-it...
  - robocat 6mo ago
    Every country tries to claim critical dependency for innovations. I guess you parochially mention that one because you remember that narrative (maybe because it makes you feel better). I maliciously searched for examples of the French thinking they invented the transistor. Turns out the French do have a claim of inventing it simultaneously (at the same time as Bell) and the French even commercialised their version since their tech had different parameters (Apparently it was two German inventors working for Westinghouse in France on a project for French telecoms as I recall). The history of invention/commercialisation is usually wierd.
    - shmeeed 6mo ago
      >Apparently it was two German inventors working for Westinghouse in France on a project for French telecoms as I recall So the Germans invented it! JK I like how you put this. It always seems weird to me how some people get hung up on these claims when it's so obvious that history is full of basically simultaneous inventions.
    - ghc 6mo ago
      Except ASML licensed the technology from the US Government, after the government labs built the first EUV fab in 2001. Not to take anything away from ASML...all the US companies that also licensed the tech failed to commercialize it, but the US Government blocked Canon and other Japanese companies from acquiring the technology. The entire reason ASML has the technology and nobody in Japan does is geopolitical.
- eggsome 6mo ago
  Do you have a link for the all-in-one project? I'd like to know more.
aa-jv 6mo ago
We could have more ASML's immediately if we eradicate the desire to covet technology for one in-group, over another. > reshaped society Invalidate all of ASML's patents = get cheaper chips, sooner. It is intellectual property which gives some of us the ability to build these things and sell them to others - get rid of this phony concept and we can have more nice things...
- runako 6mo ago
  That's a great way to lower the cost of the current generation of the tech while ensuring there is no next generation of the tech.
  - rigonkulous 6mo ago
    I don't think that makes any sense whatsoever. If everyone could make these machines, there'd be more of these machines. There are so many examples of this out there, already, that I find this specious "no next generation" argument to be either simply coming from bias, or ignorance. For sure, we only care about Taiwan because there is one Taiwan. End patents: no more Taiwan problem.
    - runako 6mo ago
      > If everyone could make these machines, there'd be more of these machines. My post is in violent agreement with this, for this generation of machines. ASML spends ~$5B annually on R&D with the expectation that they will be able to make ~30% net profit in the future. If you remove patent protection, there will be more competition and obviously profit margins will fall. I want to rephrase that for emphasis. The point of aa-jv's post was that we would get cheaper chips by invalidating IP. Cheaper chips means lower margins (because you have not lowered input prices). Lower margins was the explicit goal, so to the extent that the changes in IP law work, you will get lower margins for companies like ASML. At that point, you have a field of companies looking at (say) 10% net returns, still needing to invest billions of new capital into R&D every year. Worse: no patents means that Company A could spend $5B on R&D and Company B could spend $0, and both of them could reap the benefits of that $5B by Company A. So it's not even necessarily clear that the industry would see much net innovation. Are we even certain there are companies who would enter this capital-intensive business assuming IP was free? Compulsory licensing is a thing, but I am not aware of that even being something that has been requested.
pjc50 6mo ago
> Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources? It seems obvious that the answer would be both? All of these things are "bets", at almost every level. What happens is someone comes along and notices the 9/10 failed attempts and decides that the right thing to do is only to make bets which are guaranteed to win. So they get smaller and smaller.

danielheath 6mo ago

I mean, it’s been tried; a reading of relevant historical texts would give you lots of ammunition to support either argument.

IAmBroom 6mo ago

Big gambles have big risks. It's the gambler's folly, after a big win (ASML's EUV) to say, gee, we should have bought more lottery tickets! Next time, it all goes on red! What is no longer mentioned is that ASML made another big gamble at the time they started on EUV. They decided to make an all-in-one chip making machine that took silicon and output chips (instead of matrices of chip circuits laid out on a wafer). On paper, the machine would save a lot of money for the fab houses. IRL: no one asked for it, and no one was willing to risk their entire production on a single, untried, swiss army knife of a fabricator. The whole program was a wash. People were reassigned and the project died a very quick death. ASML lost a ton of money on this misguided attempt, but not enough to choke them. So, they rolled the dice twice, and one gamble paid off handsomely. If it went the other way, they'd be a smaller company, and Moore's Law would be overshooting reality. If neither paid off, they'd be DOA.

smueller1234 6mo ago
The timelines matter as well: They were working on EUV at Zeiss (who make the lensing/mirroring systems) already in 2005. That's about 20 years of development.
- IAmBroom 6mo ago
  Oh, AMSL was designing components of the EUV system by 2005. So, more likely 25 years!
ghc 6mo ago
Let's not forget the really big gamble (inventing EUV) was made in the 1990s by US national labs: Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and Lawrence Berkeley.
- IAmBroom 6mo ago
  Inventing EUV lasers.
  - ghc 6mo ago
    Optics and photoresist materials too. The partnership developed the first EUV lithography in 2001: https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-its-stand https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-it...
- robocat 6mo ago
  Every country tries to claim critical dependency for innovations. I guess you parochially mention that one because you remember that narrative (maybe because it makes you feel better). I maliciously searched for examples of the French thinking they invented the transistor. Turns out the French do have a claim of inventing it simultaneously (at the same time as Bell) and the French even commercialised their version since their tech had different parameters (Apparently it was two German inventors working for Westinghouse in France on a project for French telecoms as I recall). The history of invention/commercialisation is usually wierd.
  - shmeeed 6mo ago
    >Apparently it was two German inventors working for Westinghouse in France on a project for French telecoms as I recall So the Germans invented it! JK I like how you put this. It always seems weird to me how some people get hung up on these claims when it's so obvious that history is full of basically simultaneous inventions.
  - ghc 6mo ago
    Except ASML licensed the technology from the US Government, after the government labs built the first EUV fab in 2001. Not to take anything away from ASML...all the US companies that also licensed the tech failed to commercialize it, but the US Government blocked Canon and other Japanese companies from acquiring the technology. The entire reason ASML has the technology and nobody in Japan does is geopolitical.
eggsome 6mo ago
Do you have a link for the all-in-one project? I'd like to know more.

aa-jv 6mo ago

We could have more ASML's immediately if we eradicate the desire to covet technology for one in-group, over another. > reshaped society Invalidate all of ASML's patents = get cheaper chips, sooner. It is intellectual property which gives some of us the ability to build these things and sell them to others - get rid of this phony concept and we can have more nice things...

runako 6mo ago
That's a great way to lower the cost of the current generation of the tech while ensuring there is no next generation of the tech.
- rigonkulous 6mo ago
  I don't think that makes any sense whatsoever. If everyone could make these machines, there'd be more of these machines. There are so many examples of this out there, already, that I find this specious "no next generation" argument to be either simply coming from bias, or ignorance. For sure, we only care about Taiwan because there is one Taiwan. End patents: no more Taiwan problem.
  - runako 6mo ago
    > If everyone could make these machines, there'd be more of these machines. My post is in violent agreement with this, for this generation of machines. ASML spends ~$5B annually on R&D with the expectation that they will be able to make ~30% net profit in the future. If you remove patent protection, there will be more competition and obviously profit margins will fall. I want to rephrase that for emphasis. The point of aa-jv's post was that we would get cheaper chips by invalidating IP. Cheaper chips means lower margins (because you have not lowered input prices). Lower margins was the explicit goal, so to the extent that the changes in IP law work, you will get lower margins for companies like ASML. At that point, you have a field of companies looking at (say) 10% net returns, still needing to invest billions of new capital into R&D every year. Worse: no patents means that Company A could spend $5B on R&D and Company B could spend $0, and both of them could reap the benefits of that $5B by Company A. So it's not even necessarily clear that the industry would see much net innovation. Are we even certain there are companies who would enter this capital-intensive business assuming IP was free? Compulsory licensing is a thing, but I am not aware of that even being something that has been requested.

pjc50 6mo ago

> Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources? It seems obvious that the answer would be both? All of these things are "bets", at almost every level. What happens is someone comes along and notices the 9/10 failed attempts and decides that the right thing to do is only to make bets which are guaranteed to win. So they get smaller and smaller.