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ASML Q4 2022 financial results

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Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#71

Post by nwiswell »

bradknowles wrote: post #62
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tolerances are very tight. Manufacturing must be difficult.

I worked a six month contract at ASML years ago. One of the most fascinating things was touring around the spaces with an experienced team leader, who explained a lot of their processes. Note that the below comes from my experience there prior to 2006. Nothing that I'm going to explain here is company proprietary information. Even if I had that, I wouldn't expose it. Each top machine costs hundreds of millions of dol…

> I do believe the top machines now cost over a billion dollars, each.

This isn't accurate, the top end is no more than $200M (and large customers will negotiate down from there).

> The machines are so sensitive that a truck driving down the road ten miles away can affect the output and may cause the machine to be knocked out of calibration.

This is obviously untrue, fabs are busy industrial centers.

The assembly-partial disassembly-reassembly process you laid out is accurate, however, and is the case for all major wafer fabrication equipment.

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#72

Post by dirtyid »

tooltalk wrote: post #59
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's not really any magic. I've read that it would take China at least 10 years to get to ASML's current level. It might not be magic but there must be a lot of unknowns when starting from scratch.

China doesn't really have any chip-making equipment supply-chain of their own; neither does Taiwan or South Korea. I think that 10 years to EUV timeline is a bit too ambitious considering that it required ASML about 20-30 years to develope and commercialize (with support of the industry, TSMC, Samsung, and Intel). Unless ASML is allowed to license their EUV to China and all 600+ suppliers who make high-precision lens…

10 years optimistic but PRC in position to create indigenous semi supply chain. After elevating semi to first-level dicipline in 2018, PRC is spitting out 30k IC graduates per year. They're still about 200k short, ~520k/720k out of what IC talent white paper estimates PRC needed for semi industry. I wadger that's comparable to total direct semi industry talent globally, which is really effort from a handful of countries (NL,US,JP,DE) in hardware industry that historically got 2nd pick on talent due to how well software pays. Would take less than 20-30 years to catchup especially if industrial policy mitigates commercialization concerns. It won't be easy but feasible especially if PRC indigenization starts taking domestic shares and take revenue/R&D stream western incubants who has to boost subsidy to plug loss.

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#73

Post by eric-hu »

tooltalk wrote: post #61
eric-hu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung was a bigger foundry than TSMC until the 2010’s when Apple provided TSMC with billions in interest free loans in exchange for getting first dibs on new fab processes.

Samsung's custom foundry started sometime in 2000's with Apple as their anchor client. TSMC really singlehandledly created the custom foundry industry in the late 1980's and is the largest by far. TSMC has always been the market leader -- though it had local competitors like UMC in Taiwan -- and Samsung the late comer. Samsung managed to come out with the first 14nm ahead of TSMC's 16nm in 2012 and made all Apple's A…

> this is in spite of TSMC's higher cost and marginal performance difference

Do you have references for this? Specifically the marginal performance difference. My understanding is that Apple had bigger fab contacts with Samsung than TSMC but were dissatisfied with Samsung’s roadmap execution. That was supposedly the motivation for them to finance TSMC’s new fabs at low interest. I could be wrong, I’m going off memory of various comments I’ve read on this forum over the years.

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#74

Post by seper8 »

nwiswell wrote: post #70
seper8 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not really any harder than making an airplane. Except the airplane still works if something is misaligned by 10NM...

That's adjusted dynamically during operation by interferometer controls, not in manufacturing. You'd get more than 10nm of misalignment just due to a couple degrees of temperature change.

And that dynamical adjustment is very easy too ofcourse! Just move it x nm in the right direction!

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#75

Post by seper8 »

nwiswell wrote: post #71
bradknowles wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked a six month contract at ASML years ago. One of the most fascinating things was touring around the spaces with an experienced team leader, who explained a lot of their processes. Note that the below comes from my experience there prior to 2006. Nothing that I'm going to explain here is company proprietary information. Even if I had that, I wouldn't expose it. Each top machine costs hundreds of millions of dol…

> I do believe the top machines now cost over a billion dollars, each. This isn't accurate, the top end is no more than $200M (and large customers will negotiate down from there). > The machines are so sensitive that a truck driving down the road ten miles away can affect the output and may cause the machine to be knocked out of calibration. This is obviously untrue, fabs are busy industrial centers. The assembly-par…

Wrong again

https://www.reuters.com/technology/ intel-orders-asml-machine-still-drawing-board-chipmakers-look-an-edge-2022-01-19/

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#76

Post by nwiswell »

seper8 wrote: post #75
nwiswell wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do believe the top machines now cost over a billion dollars, each. This isn't accurate, the top end is no more than $200M (and large customers will negotiate down from there). > The machines are so sensitive that a truck driving down the road ten miles away can affect the output and may cause the machine to be knocked out of calibration. This is obviously untrue, fabs are busy industrial centers. The assembly-par…

Wrong again https://www.reuters.com/technology/ intel-orders-asml-machine-still-drawing-board-chipmakers-look-an-edge-2022-01-19/

That is a development system. The purchase prices of the actual manufacturing systems are never disclosed, since the negotiated price differs between customers.

In any event the HVM systems will cost significantly less. This similar article says $150M, as I claimed, and again the actual customer price would be less:

https://content.techgig.com/technology/intel-to-get-chipmaki...

> ASML's most advanced machines in current commercial production, known as EUV lithography systems because of the "Extreme Ultraviolet" light waves they use to map out the circuitry of computer chips, are as big as a bus and cost around $150 million each.

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#77

Post by nwiswell »

seper8 wrote: post #74
nwiswell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's adjusted dynamically during operation by interferometer controls, not in manufacturing. You'd get more than 10nm of misalignment just due to a couple degrees of temperature change.

And that dynamical adjustment is very easy too ofcourse! Just move it x nm in the right direction!

In fact it is quite easy! This is a solved problem, the stage is moved those minute distances using piezoelectric actuators.

Moving hundreds of microns accurately is actually a harder problem, since that requires traditional lead-screw style stages.

The two strategies are used together to create a stage that can move macroscopic distances quickly (e.g., die to die), but also make minute adjustments quickly to ensure alignment is maintained.

But, again, this has nothing to do with manufacturing

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#78

Post by ksec »

rjzzleep wrote: post #55
markus_zhang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years is probably an underestimate given then current geopolitical condition.

Just last year people were commenting here on HN that China is years away from making anything under 14nm and that even that would be hard for them. Then we heard about China being years away from hypersonic missiles and how they couldn't even make fast memory chips. Then we were surprised not only have been making 7nm chips for a year already, they also make the fastest memory chips. Our response? Let's sanction the…

>Just last year people were commenting here on HN that China is years away from making anything under 14nm and that even that would be hard for them.

Forget about the topic of China for a bit, 99.999% of HN comments on anything hardware are pretty much worthless. To the point I question how did software developers get so abstracted that they had little to zero basic understanding of hardware. When they should be considered in the same field.

If it is wasn't for the 0.00000001% of rare comments for those who actually work inside Intel, AMD, Lattice and ASML ( or some other SemiConductor Companies ) I would have skipped hardware topics on HN.

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#79

Post by seper8 »

nwiswell wrote: post #76
seper8 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong again https://www.reuters.com/technology/ intel-orders-asml-machine-still-drawing-board-chipmakers-look-an-edge-2022-01-19/

That is a development system. The purchase prices of the actual manufacturing systems are never disclosed, since the negotiated price differs between customers. In any event the HVM systems will cost significantly less. This similar article says $150M, as I claimed, and again the actual customer price would be less: https://content.techgig.com/technology/intel-to-get-chipmaki... > ASML's most advanced machines in cur…

How are you so confidently wrong so often?

Wonder if you have ever heard of ASML before reading this news article. Just stop it.

Re: ASML Q4 2022 financial results

#80

Post by seper8 »

nwiswell wrote: post #77
seper8 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that dynamical adjustment is very easy too ofcourse! Just move it x nm in the right direction!

In fact it is quite easy! This is a solved problem, the stage is moved those minute distances using piezoelectric actuators. Moving hundreds of microns accurately is actually a harder problem, since that requires traditional lead-screw style stages. The two strategies are used together to create a stage that can move macroscopic distances quickly (e.g., die to die), but also make minute adjustments quickly to ensure…

Again, you have to manufacture and assemble all the components for the machine to work.

The reason only one company in the world can do it is not because it is easy. If it where easy other companies would be able to imitate it, but they cant. This is why ASML has a profit margin of 50%. This is why companies order these machines years in advance.

There are and have been many companies that have built airplanes. There is one company and one alone that can build these machines. I happen to work at said company and it is a long time ago that I have seen someone so confidently wrong on the internet.

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