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ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

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Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#261

Post by pms »

janmo wrote: post #171
rivo wrote: post #139

A few highlights from a conversation with a friend who works for Zeiss and regularly deals with ASML (take this with a grain of salt, I may have misunderstood some of it and he also may not be an expert in all of these areas): - The lenses (actually mirrors for EUV) only demagnify by a factor of 4. So your wafer template is already extremely small and costs millions to produce. - 13.5nm is pretty much the smallest wa…

> - Also in the thread, ASML has a monopoly on this tech. Others have not invested into EUV and by now, it's pretty much impossible for anybody to catch up. Having basically the entire tech economy relying on one unique supplier is just insane. I hope their production facilities are very well protected and decentralised otherwise one natural disaster in the Netherlands or an Unabomber type terrorist attack and the se…

Won't Netherlands be under water because of global warming?

Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#262

Post by utor »

hughrr wrote: post #12
cadence- wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like something governments could help with.

Indeed. Only time that happened was in East Germany and it didn’t work out too good.

Interesting! Did you have any source about East German semiconductor history?

Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#263

Post by pas »

doikor wrote: post #80
pas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the need for special 747s? Can't they put each chunk into a shipping container sized steel box and seal it vacuum tight, then ship that with regular 747s?

Splitting some of the parts into smaller parts will expose the insides to outside air which brings some serious cleanliness issues. The mirrors especially will get destroyed instantly by heat if there is any dirt on them when they are flashed by EUV.

I imagine they do the disassembly and packaging in a clean room. (At least for now the technicians require air :D) Then the packages are vacuum pumped, sealed, then shipped. Then at the destination fab they are assembled again in a clean room.

Yeah, I remember the articles about how insane the requirements are to protect masks: https://semiengineering.com/euv-pellicles-finally-ready/

Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#264

Post by saddlerustle »

sabas123 wrote: post #131
saddlerustle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optiver hires in Amsterdam with comparable compensation to top US companies.

Optiver works in a vastly different and super tiny sector (in employee count) which is renowned for having higher salaries than any other sector (including tech) and is a massive outlier.

Yes, though there's also a couple other examples. In my experience the biggest barrier to europeans getting fairly compensated is just that people believe it's impossible and so don't seek out the industries that do.

Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#265

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

ragebol wrote: post #203
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #116

Herein is described the most convenient manner to generate the precise wavelength of light required to print on EUV photomask: - A molten tin droplet drops into a vacuum - It's pulsed by a high-power (25kW) laser - Tin atoms are ionized, creating plasma - A precision ground concave mirror captures EUV radiation emitted by plasma - The Mirror transfers EUV to wafer (wavelength=13.5 nanometers, basically X-ray level, t…

Apparently, they zap the tin droplet with a soft pulse first to flatten it before hitting it with a big pulse to make the plasma. A former colleague of mine worked on tuning the laser-hitting -droplet process. Happens inside a vacuum of course, but after some time the vacuum would always drop. Turns out that when you miss the droplet often enough and thus hit the steel walls of the chamber, eventually you'll punch th…

The vacuum chamber is likely aluminum. Tin melts at 232 C, aluminum at 660 C. Vaporizing the tin could require enough power in the laser to melt the aluminum. It seems feasible to me, anyway, and is certainly sounds like the kind of thing that happens in equipment development.

Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#266

Post by another_story »

dirtyid wrote: post #179
another_story wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what? Probably a fight that will result in one of the greatest blows to the global economy ever, as well as the collapse of China as we know it today. The Taiwanese will destroy all the fabs before China can take them. We already have a chip shortage, can you imagine what it will be like to cut current supplies by another 40-50%? The resulting sanctions alone would cripple China. Hence, status quo will remain, a…

Destroying TSMC fabs is in neither US nor PRC or Taiwan's interest, it's the only point of consensus and mexican standoff leverage between all parties that prevents a TW war from escalating too far. IMO US and PRC would rather bargain some sort of sharing agreement over TSMC even in event of military actions in exchange for not glassing TW than have everyone lose access to the fabs. > imagine what it will be like to…

Obviously no one wants to destroy the fabs, but realize they would be destroyed if it was evident that Taiwan would be taken. That is part of the Taiwan playbook.

How would the PRC be forced to act on Taiwan?

Re: ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

#267

Post by bradknowles »

hvidgaard wrote: post #217
bradknowles wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to fully and completely test out the machines before they ship them out. So, yes — they do have their own fabs in house. They built them. Disclaimer: I worked a 6 month contract for ASML in Eindhoven, and I talked extensively with their engineers. They told me what they did as part of their testing process.

Sure they could. But someone still need to design the chips and take them from silicon to a packaged chip. They obviously do that to a limited degree, but a test run to see if everything is within spec is very different to producing actual usable finished chips. Or at least they don't have to go the full on complex state of the art chip design just for testing.

They have the masks and all the chemicals and other materials, equipment, and devices necessary to run the machines that they build. They get masks and other information as needed from their customers. They have to be able to demonstrate full end-to-end performance of the machine to the satisfaction of the customers, before the machines can then be disassembled and shipped out.

They make very few machines per year (measured in double digits), and each one takes a team of people many months to make.

Each team spends months on-site at the customer to prepare for the machine to be made, then goes back to Eindhoven to actually build it (which takes months), then it gets disassembled and shipped out to the site, then the team goes back to the site and spends more months rebuilding the machine and tweaking it for final operations. The whole process takes years to go from start to finish. That’s for one machine. And if you want to move it a foot to the left, then you’ve got to go back and tear it down and go through the rebuild process all over again. These machines are that sensitive. Just you walking into the clean room changes the atmosphere where the machines are running, and risks causing them to become misaligned and need recalibration.

And that’s for the regular non-EUV machines. Each one of these costs about 50 million bucks or more, and that’s just for the core machine itself, and not all the ancillary equipment that is needed. EUV machines cost two to three times that amount.

The technology to do EUV depends much more on things that are not chips, than they do cutting edge chips that could only be manufactured by the likes of TSMC. Their actual requirements for the chips themselves that go inside the machines are relatively low. With ASML, It’s the physical engineering processes that are truly superhuman.

So, they can easily make the chips in-house that they need. It’s more a matter of whether they want to do such a small run to get the chips they need, because they don’t need that many chips per machine, and they make just a tiny handful of machines each year.

OTOH, they can also easily get supplies from anyone they want, because of their critical position in the chain.

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