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US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

reuters.com

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Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#51

Post by rwmj »

epicureanideal wrote: post #39
armada651 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually relatively easy to make a lithography machine that can etch features beyond what EUV can do. You simply use an electron scanning beam rather than photons. It's what the industry uses to create the masks used in lithography machines, but it could just as easily be used to make the actual chip. The problem is that it doesn't scale, at all. A scanning process is way too slow to be useful in mass productio…

Interesting! Makes me think of old 1990s X-Files episodes with chips under a microscope “smaller than we can produce”. I wonder if the government makes small batches of bespoke chips that are super miniature based on non scalable processes, and how far back in time would they have been able to develop 1nm chips for example?

The TV series could have been true! Even in the 1980s we could push individual atoms around, albeit very very slowly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope#...)

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#52

Post by 15155 »

armada651 wrote: post #35
cowthulhu wrote: post #4

This doesn’t seem plausible. Leading edge lithography requires you to be at (or beyond) the cutting edge in many realms - even with a breakthrough in one realm, I don’t understand how a startup could expect to catch up to ASML across the board in a few years. Their website is light on technical details and heavy on nationalistic fluff, which does not lend much confidence.

It is actually relatively easy to make a lithography machine that can etch features beyond what EUV can do. You simply use an electron scanning beam rather than photons. It's what the industry uses to create the masks used in lithography machines, but it could just as easily be used to make the actual chip. The problem is that it doesn't scale, at all. A scanning process is way too slow to be useful in mass productio…

Patterning is just one of many issues.

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#53

Post by klelatti »

klelatti wrote: post #27

The same guys who couldn’t develop a sleep tracker? https://open.substack.com/pub/foxchapelresearch/p/i-think-su... Edit please note the comments in the linked post by SemiAnalysis below who have lots of reports that the tool is legit but who are skeptical. They have clearly progressed somewhat since the tracker project!

For balance here is SemiAnalysis - who really know what they are talking about - on Substrate

https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/how-to-kill-2-m...

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#54

Post by blackoil »

jmyeet wrote: post #40

You know who is going to develop cutting edge EUV+ lithography to rival ASML? It's not this startup (most likely). It's China. Chipmaking is in a very weird geopolitical state and it has national security interests for most of the world. A Dutch company produces the machines to make chips and sells them to Taiwanese companies. The US still has the power to dictate who ASML can sell to and China is restricted. This sy…

Chip making is one of the unique tech which is at the farthest end of humanity's engineering capabilities. Not just ASML, its entire supply chain is full of extremely precise components which 1 or 2 companies have mastered. e.g. the mirrors used are so precise that if scaled to size of earth tallest mountain will be 1cm high. Sure China will make it one day and maybe will beat rest of the world, it is not given to be in near future.

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#55

Post by ternus »

klelatti wrote: post #53
klelatti wrote: post #27

The same guys who couldn’t develop a sleep tracker? https://open.substack.com/pub/foxchapelresearch/p/i-think-su... Edit please note the comments in the linked post by SemiAnalysis below who have lots of reports that the tool is legit but who are skeptical. They have clearly progressed somewhat since the tracker project!

For balance here is SemiAnalysis - who really know what they are talking about - on Substrate https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/how-to-kill-2-m...

Good writeup. Note that they say:

> Evidence so far is scarce, so we repeat these claims with some healthy skepticism. But we should also note, external contacts and 3rd party reports are all telling us the same story: the litho tool is legit. Note we have worked with Substrate since as far back as 2022, but the technical analysis here was by team members who did not have access to that NDA information.

> Naysayers will point out a million reasons why this is improbable, difficult, etc. - and they are mostly correct.

> We're hopeful for success but skeptical given how many questions there are.

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#56

Post by klelatti »

ternus wrote: post #55
klelatti wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For balance here is SemiAnalysis - who really know what they are talking about - on Substrate https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/how-to-kill-2-m...

Good writeup. Note that they say: > Evidence so far is scarce, so we repeat these claims with some healthy skepticism. But we should also note, external contacts and 3rd party reports are all telling us the same story: the litho tool is legit. Note we have worked with Substrate since as far back as 2022, but the technical analysis here was by team members who did not have access to that NDA information. > Naysayers w…

Thank you. I’ve added a brief summary of this in the top comment.

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#57

Post by DeonRob »

ksec wrote: post #2

Somewhere along the line people have to realise most of the cost in chip design goes to software. So while it is nice to have some competition to ASML, it wouldn't change the cost equation as much as people expect. And yes, ASML also have their own version using X-Ray in the pipeline.

this has 0 to do with price and if they win the fact that the US will choose its local competitor over them wouldnt be because of price

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#58

Post by MangoCoffee »

chasil wrote: post #8

Japan has also made some strides in this area, reported here a few months ago. "Professor Shintake aligned two axis-symmetric mirrors in a straight line and used a total of only four mirrors instead of ten. "Because highly absorbent EUV light weakens by 40% with each reflection, only about 1% of the energy from the light source reaches the wafer when bounced off ten mirrors while more than 10% does when only four mir…

IBM also worked on X-ray lithography

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5389640

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#59

Post by BergAndCo »

klelatti wrote: post #27

The same guys who couldn’t develop a sleep tracker? https://open.substack.com/pub/foxchapelresearch/p/i-think-su... Edit please note the comments in the linked post by SemiAnalysis below who have lots of reports that the tool is legit but who are skeptical. They have clearly progressed somewhat since the tracker project!

This news article is a week old, meaning this post was clearly upvote-brigaded by reputation management software to try to bury the post about Substrate being a fraud.

Re: US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

#60

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

DeonRob wrote: post #57
ksec wrote: post #2

Somewhere along the line people have to realise most of the cost in chip design goes to software. So while it is nice to have some competition to ASML, it wouldn't change the cost equation as much as people expect. And yes, ASML also have their own version using X-Ray in the pipeline.

this has 0 to do with price and if they win the fact that the US will choose its local competitor over them wouldnt be because of price

> local competitor

Meh, ASML could be ordered to move to the US and they would comply.

It's not necessary, cf. Nexperia.

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