5 ms·
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 go
by 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 agoThe 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 agoOh, AMSL was designing components of the EUV system by 2005. So, more likely 25 years!
- ghc 6mo agoLet'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 agoInventing EUV lasers.
- ghc 6mo agoOptics 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 agoEvery 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 agoExcept 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 agoDo you have a link for the all-in-one project? I'd like to know more.