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Amazing looking machine! $380 million a pop. Must surely be one of the most sophisticated machines humanity has ever built? A great achievement of European scie

Amazing looking machine! $380 million a pop. Must surely be one of the most sophisticated machines humanity has ever built? A great achievement of European science and technology (ducks).

spwa4 2mo ago
That's what makes this hard to interpret. The whole strategy of intel is that they have their own version of this machine, part of their "18A" design. The only reason they need the ASML machine is because of the "optics" (between quotes because at the frequencies they work at no optics work - only (bad) mirrors do. However you need make the mirrors accurate enough - we're talking far more accurate than the chips, as in sub-nanometer max deviation, they can function as optics with high losses, but low enough that exposure works). No American company can achieve even 10 times lower accuracy at the moment. So is this giving up on their own version? That would mean their stock price is absolutely not justified at $110, and it should be more like $60-70 if not lower. Or is this "we have technical reasons to use this. We're still going to do 18A and it's still going to beat 2nm", which would mean their stock price is easily justified at $200 and it's high time to buy.
- vrganj 2mo ago
  Only the optics is an ... interesting way of phrasing it. There was a great Economist article a while ago that talks about this. ASMLs moat isn't just the know-how to build the machines themselves. It's a network of suppliers all across Europe, specialized businesses doing one little part better than anyone else in the world. This is the type of thing that Europe is still leading in, and it'll be incredibly hard to reproduce elsewhere. You don't just need to figure out how to build an High-NA EUV machine. You need to figure out how to build or procure all of the parts that go into it. Many of these suppliers have exclusive contracts with ASML. Here's the article, de-paywalled: https://archive.ph/jP1HX https://archive.ph/jP1HX
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    Yeah. ASML doesn't make the mirrors, but they have exclusive sales rights, exactly as you say. And yes, positioning them, for example, both in the fixed sense (mounting the mirrors in the machine) and in the dynamic sense (rapidly positioning wafers to nanometer-or-better accuracy below the beam, I forgot how quick exactly but it's 10s to 100s of times per second to maintain production rates) is very much not easy either. But it's "been done" (by teams of phds). Producing the mirrors has not been duplicated. Of course, producing the EUV beam in the first place has also not been duplicated and it's Californian technology. Intel 18A has a different strategy all together. I mean, it's not like they're saying much about it, but from the little we know, it's very different.
    - namibj 2mo ago
      No the beam source we know how to create; it's just that the way to do so requires a factory sized machine that better be feeding 10~30 steppers or a pair for uptime/maintenance windows and then probably more like 50 steppers. Free electron lasers are not hard at "mere EUV", and the accelerators to feed aren't either, it's just that an efficient setup requires recycling the beam which means bending it back which means a large (factory hall sized) accelerator at the beam energies needed for good EUV light.
      - lightedman 2mo ago
        Uhh, you do not need an accelerator to generate EUV. It's literally just molten tin hit with a laser.
        namibj 2mo ago
        The tin plasma source is the one we don't know how to reproduce; in contrast we know how to do it with an electron-syncrotron (though IIRC for the energies here it is technically practical to do with just a linac) and there are AFAIK several vendors that can provide you the hardware for such an accelerator; the know-how is distributed among many applied particle physicists all around the world; and the FEL hardware to make the actual EUV beam(s) is not high-tech compared to even the high-vacuum accelerator cavities. The main difficulty of that approach is that physical constraints of field strengths (exceeding those would cause stray electrons to spontaneously free themselves from any vaguely conducting surfaces they are on, and fly around the accelerator, causing arcing damage, wasting energy, and disturbing the beam/beam-control-sensors), the thing has to be fairly large; also, building it with a bit more incremental power is a cheap upgrade (at least if done at design time of the accelerator) up to around a dozen EUV scanners worth of light output. Complicated by that you ideally want redundancy to not have EUV scanner downtime just because the accelerator needs maintenance, so in practice you'd want like 3~5 accelerators each sized for 20~30 scanners in one building with EUV-routing-flexibility to have n+1 redundancy for the accelerators. But those 40~120 EUV scanners, especially if you include the rest of the fab to actually run them in production, is a very large investment. Like, somewhere between 1 and 5 % of TSMC's market cap. Not under 2 aircraft-carriers (the big ones)... it's in no way a "low-risk" investment. But, back before GlobalFoundries gave up on the EUV race, a free electron laser was exactly what they were working on bringing to use for EUV litho (it's mostly a energy efficiency question around recovering energy from the electron beam after it was used to generate the EUV, and the substantial difficulties of efficciently redirecting the EUV from the source to the scanners, that's still open research with FEL illumination for EUV scanners).
- whazor 2mo ago
  As I understand it, the machine also needs lots of 'normal parts' and can be designed differently to fit the factory and the automation. Like if you need a pipe, instead of buying it from ASML, you can buy it from a local hardware vendor. And parts of the ASML also break, and those parts would be directly shipped from the vendor that makes the part. ASML manages the integration between these parts and each part can have multiple vendors that makes them according to the specs.
- zmb_ 2mo ago
  Intel does not have their own version of this machine. This ASML machine is a component in a very large system of machines from many manufacturers that runs wafers automatically from machine to machine until a month later a chip comes out the other end. That system is “18A”. Intel designs, builds and operates that system. Intel does not make the machines, they buy them and figure out how to configure and operate them as a part of the system.
mDyJzDPmBdG 2mo ago
Depends on definition of machine. Do ISS, LHC or ITER count?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- smolder 2mo ago
  ASMLs machines can easily be "one of the most sophisticated" without stepping on LHC or ITERs toes. I'm not sure ISS qualifies anymore. I would have went with JWST.
- 0123456789ABCDE 2mo ago
  no. neither of the observations gp made is dependent upon the definition of machine, nor is it dependent on the inclusion of the examples you brought up in that definition.
- sroussey 2mo ago
  Can’t buy and ship those. I love how ASML machines are shaped to the contours of a jet fuselage for this reason!
arcticfox 2mo ago
> A great achievement of European science and technology (ducks). It's a fantastic machine but the bulk of the achievement is clearly a joint European-American effort.
- hvb2 2mo ago
  Not even that, the company happens to be Dutch but it's employees are from everywhere. A company doesn't make anything, the employees do, especially in a sector like this. The companies job is to hire well and create strong teams that work together.
- apexalpha 2mo ago
  Then Apple M series is also a joint European-American effort, no? Since ARM is European? Weirdly enough it never seems to work that way in discourse.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - stingraycharles 2mo ago
    Should add China to the list of pretty much all of them as well. It’s a silly take.
- jorvi 2mo ago
  In that case the internet is mostly due to the Brits (invention of packet switching at the NPL by Donald Davies). Cheers!
petcat 2mo ago
> A great achievement of European science and technology It's an amazing piece of technology but this is... wildly wrong. ASML is a multi-national company that licenses IP largely from USA and Japan, but also Taiwan and Germany. The actual EUV light source is developed and produced in California by Cymer, which ASML acquired in 2013. But ASML was only permitted to acquire the company under a strict technology sharing and export control agreement with the US government. Additionally, a huge portion of the photolithography research is directly developed (and owned) by US companies and research organizations such as IBM, Albany NanoTech, and SEMATECH. There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands. The same reason that Cymer is still in San Diego instead of being relocated to Europe. Because it's American technology. But Europe certainly plays a huge role in it. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-ny-creates-begins-installation-first-major-tool-high-na-euv https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-n... https://research.ibm.com/blog/euv-center-albany-nstc https://research.ibm.com/blog/euv-center-albany-nstc https://www.eetimes.com/asml-sematech-team-on-manufacturing-rd-2/ https://www.eetimes.com/asml-sematech-team-on-manufacturing-... https://www.eetimes.com/asml-to-build-400-million-us-research-center/ https://www.eetimes.com/asml-to-build-400-million-us-researc...
- Lucasoato 2mo ago
  > There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands. The same reason that Cymer is still in San Diego instead of being relocated to Europe. Why is the Netherlands government even allowing this?
  - grumbelbart2 2mo ago
    The supply chain both in parts for their machines, but also in terms of research and technology for new machines is very deep and very international. If the US states that a technology can only be used by ASML if they keep R&D in the US, then there is no easy alternative for ASML. That is true not only for ASML, but for the semiconductor industry in general. The number of smaller, specialized companies for certain tools, chemicals and software is staggering. And they sit all over the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
throwup238 2mo ago
EUV was developed in a joint venture with the Department of Energy and ASML, Intel, etc called EUV Corp. It’s why the US can export control it.
- Farfignoggen 2mo ago
  LOL, no Mention of IMEC(Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre) in the EUV development process and the only reason that the US can restrict the ASML EUV equipment is the EUV Light source and mirror optics for that is partially US produced and the IP there falls under US IP/Export restrictions! From ASML: "ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source was developed and is manufactured at its facility in San Diego, California. Acquired from the US firm Cymer in 2013, the R&D team here developed the laser-produced plasma (LPP) system that fires lasers at tin droplets 50,000 times per second to generate EUV light."
  - teknologist 2mo ago
    Yes, and that changes what?
- culi 2mo ago
  Also Japan has a monopoly on essential EUV materials like photoresists and mask blanks and pellicles. Japan is also the only country in the world that can produce a number of highly specialized ancillary machinery like the actinic light systems used to inspect EUV photomasks. ASML also acquired its e-beam inspection tech from a Taiwanese company. There's also no way ASML could run anything at production if it wasn't for TSMC and Samsung. Not to mention the critical role of the US in its development. The core EUV light source was invented in San Diego!
amelius 2mo ago
> Amazing looking machine! As with most of this type of technology, most of the stuff you see is basically a giant refrigerator and giant vacuum cleaner. The actual meat is much smaller and hidden from view.
lvl155 2mo ago
Basically most of the technology was US govt funded at some point. Now the Dutch can just leech off of that. I guess that’s what they’re good at considering their long history with VOC and “mercantilism”.
johndear223 2mo ago
The lasers are made in San Diego, the lenses made in Germany.

Amazing looking machine! $380 million a pop. Must surely be one of the most sophisticated machines humanity has ever built? A great achievement of European science and technology (ducks).

spwa4 2mo ago

That's what makes this hard to interpret. The whole strategy of intel is that they have their own version of this machine, part of their "18A" design. The only reason they need the ASML machine is because of the "optics" (between quotes because at the frequencies they work at no optics work - only (bad) mirrors do. However you need make the mirrors accurate enough - we're talking far more accurate than the chips, as in sub-nanometer max deviation, they can function as optics with high losses, but low enough that exposure works). No American company can achieve even 10 times lower accuracy at the moment. So is this giving up on their own version? That would mean their stock price is absolutely not justified at $110, and it should be more like $60-70 if not lower. Or is this "we have technical reasons to use this. We're still going to do 18A and it's still going to beat 2nm", which would mean their stock price is easily justified at $200 and it's high time to buy.

vrganj 2mo ago
Only the optics is an ... interesting way of phrasing it. There was a great Economist article a while ago that talks about this. ASMLs moat isn't just the know-how to build the machines themselves. It's a network of suppliers all across Europe, specialized businesses doing one little part better than anyone else in the world. This is the type of thing that Europe is still leading in, and it'll be incredibly hard to reproduce elsewhere. You don't just need to figure out how to build an High-NA EUV machine. You need to figure out how to build or procure all of the parts that go into it. Many of these suppliers have exclusive contracts with ASML. Here's the article, de-paywalled: https://archive.ph/jP1HX https://archive.ph/jP1HX
- spwa4 2mo ago
  Yeah. ASML doesn't make the mirrors, but they have exclusive sales rights, exactly as you say. And yes, positioning them, for example, both in the fixed sense (mounting the mirrors in the machine) and in the dynamic sense (rapidly positioning wafers to nanometer-or-better accuracy below the beam, I forgot how quick exactly but it's 10s to 100s of times per second to maintain production rates) is very much not easy either. But it's "been done" (by teams of phds). Producing the mirrors has not been duplicated. Of course, producing the EUV beam in the first place has also not been duplicated and it's Californian technology. Intel 18A has a different strategy all together. I mean, it's not like they're saying much about it, but from the little we know, it's very different.
  - namibj 2mo ago
    No the beam source we know how to create; it's just that the way to do so requires a factory sized machine that better be feeding 10~30 steppers or a pair for uptime/maintenance windows and then probably more like 50 steppers. Free electron lasers are not hard at "mere EUV", and the accelerators to feed aren't either, it's just that an efficient setup requires recycling the beam which means bending it back which means a large (factory hall sized) accelerator at the beam energies needed for good EUV light.
    - lightedman 2mo ago
      Uhh, you do not need an accelerator to generate EUV. It's literally just molten tin hit with a laser.
      - namibj 2mo ago
        The tin plasma source is the one we don't know how to reproduce; in contrast we know how to do it with an electron-syncrotron (though IIRC for the energies here it is technically practical to do with just a linac) and there are AFAIK several vendors that can provide you the hardware for such an accelerator; the know-how is distributed among many applied particle physicists all around the world; and the FEL hardware to make the actual EUV beam(s) is not high-tech compared to even the high-vacuum accelerator cavities. The main difficulty of that approach is that physical constraints of field strengths (exceeding those would cause stray electrons to spontaneously free themselves from any vaguely conducting surfaces they are on, and fly around the accelerator, causing arcing damage, wasting energy, and disturbing the beam/beam-control-sensors), the thing has to be fairly large; also, building it with a bit more incremental power is a cheap upgrade (at least if done at design time of the accelerator) up to around a dozen EUV scanners worth of light output. Complicated by that you ideally want redundancy to not have EUV scanner downtime just because the accelerator needs maintenance, so in practice you'd want like 3~5 accelerators each sized for 20~30 scanners in one building with EUV-routing-flexibility to have n+1 redundancy for the accelerators. But those 40~120 EUV scanners, especially if you include the rest of the fab to actually run them in production, is a very large investment. Like, somewhere between 1 and 5 % of TSMC's market cap. Not under 2 aircraft-carriers (the big ones)... it's in no way a "low-risk" investment. But, back before GlobalFoundries gave up on the EUV race, a free electron laser was exactly what they were working on bringing to use for EUV litho (it's mostly a energy efficiency question around recovering energy from the electron beam after it was used to generate the EUV, and the substantial difficulties of efficciently redirecting the EUV from the source to the scanners, that's still open research with FEL illumination for EUV scanners).
whazor 2mo ago
As I understand it, the machine also needs lots of 'normal parts' and can be designed differently to fit the factory and the automation. Like if you need a pipe, instead of buying it from ASML, you can buy it from a local hardware vendor. And parts of the ASML also break, and those parts would be directly shipped from the vendor that makes the part. ASML manages the integration between these parts and each part can have multiple vendors that makes them according to the specs.
zmb_ 2mo ago
Intel does not have their own version of this machine. This ASML machine is a component in a very large system of machines from many manufacturers that runs wafers automatically from machine to machine until a month later a chip comes out the other end. That system is “18A”. Intel designs, builds and operates that system. Intel does not make the machines, they buy them and figure out how to configure and operate them as a part of the system.

mDyJzDPmBdG 2mo ago

Depends on definition of machine. Do ISS, LHC or ITER count?

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
smolder 2mo ago
ASMLs machines can easily be "one of the most sophisticated" without stepping on LHC or ITERs toes. I'm not sure ISS qualifies anymore. I would have went with JWST.
0123456789ABCDE 2mo ago
no. neither of the observations gp made is dependent upon the definition of machine, nor is it dependent on the inclusion of the examples you brought up in that definition.
sroussey 2mo ago
Can’t buy and ship those. I love how ASML machines are shaped to the contours of a jet fuselage for this reason!

arcticfox 2mo ago

> A great achievement of European science and technology (ducks). It's a fantastic machine but the bulk of the achievement is clearly a joint European-American effort.

hvb2 2mo ago
Not even that, the company happens to be Dutch but it's employees are from everywhere. A company doesn't make anything, the employees do, especially in a sector like this. The companies job is to hire well and create strong teams that work together.
apexalpha 2mo ago
Then Apple M series is also a joint European-American effort, no? Since ARM is European? Weirdly enough it never seems to work that way in discourse.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- stingraycharles 2mo ago
  Should add China to the list of pretty much all of them as well. It’s a silly take.
jorvi 2mo ago
In that case the internet is mostly due to the Brits (invention of packet switching at the NPL by Donald Davies). Cheers!

petcat 2mo ago

> A great achievement of European science and technology It's an amazing piece of technology but this is... wildly wrong. ASML is a multi-national company that licenses IP largely from USA and Japan, but also Taiwan and Germany. The actual EUV light source is developed and produced in California by Cymer, which ASML acquired in 2013. But ASML was only permitted to acquire the company under a strict technology sharing and export control agreement with the US government. Additionally, a huge portion of the photolithography research is directly developed (and owned) by US companies and research organizations such as IBM, Albany NanoTech, and SEMATECH. There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands. The same reason that Cymer is still in San Diego instead of being relocated to Europe. Because it's American technology. But Europe certainly plays a huge role in it. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-ny-creates-begins-installation-first-major-tool-high-na-euv https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-n... https://research.ibm.com/blog/euv-center-albany-nstc https://research.ibm.com/blog/euv-center-albany-nstc https://www.eetimes.com/asml-sematech-team-on-manufacturing-rd-2/ https://www.eetimes.com/asml-sematech-team-on-manufacturing-... https://www.eetimes.com/asml-to-build-400-million-us-research-center/ https://www.eetimes.com/asml-to-build-400-million-us-researc...

Lucasoato 2mo ago
> There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands. The same reason that Cymer is still in San Diego instead of being relocated to Europe. Why is the Netherlands government even allowing this?
- grumbelbart2 2mo ago
  The supply chain both in parts for their machines, but also in terms of research and technology for new machines is very deep and very international. If the US states that a technology can only be used by ASML if they keep R&D in the US, then there is no easy alternative for ASML. That is true not only for ASML, but for the semiconductor industry in general. The number of smaller, specialized companies for certain tools, chemicals and software is staggering. And they sit all over the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

throwup238 2mo ago

EUV was developed in a joint venture with the Department of Energy and ASML, Intel, etc called EUV Corp. It’s why the US can export control it.

Farfignoggen 2mo ago
LOL, no Mention of IMEC(Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre) in the EUV development process and the only reason that the US can restrict the ASML EUV equipment is the EUV Light source and mirror optics for that is partially US produced and the IP there falls under US IP/Export restrictions! From ASML: "ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source was developed and is manufactured at its facility in San Diego, California. Acquired from the US firm Cymer in 2013, the R&D team here developed the laser-produced plasma (LPP) system that fires lasers at tin droplets 50,000 times per second to generate EUV light."
- teknologist 2mo ago
  Yes, and that changes what?
culi 2mo ago
Also Japan has a monopoly on essential EUV materials like photoresists and mask blanks and pellicles. Japan is also the only country in the world that can produce a number of highly specialized ancillary machinery like the actinic light systems used to inspect EUV photomasks. ASML also acquired its e-beam inspection tech from a Taiwanese company. There's also no way ASML could run anything at production if it wasn't for TSMC and Samsung. Not to mention the critical role of the US in its development. The core EUV light source was invented in San Diego!

amelius 2mo ago

> Amazing looking machine! As with most of this type of technology, most of the stuff you see is basically a giant refrigerator and giant vacuum cleaner. The actual meat is much smaller and hidden from view.

lvl155 2mo ago

Basically most of the technology was US govt funded at some point. Now the Dutch can just leech off of that. I guess that’s what they’re good at considering their long history with VOC and “mercantilism”.

johndear223 2mo ago

The lasers are made in San Diego, the lenses made in Germany.