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ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

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Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#61

Post by smueller1234 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #51
jstummbillig wrote: post #25

> By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips. Makes one wonder: Would we be much better off of worse off if we reshaped society to do more of things, where a new technology is unlikely to work but highly beneficial in the limits? Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources?

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). O…

The 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.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#62

Post by jmyeet »

Every part of this technology is astounding and you need a reasonable basis in physics to truly appreciate just how astounding it is. And the tolerances are so ridiculously precise, it boggles the mind.

Even before you get to the lithography machine you need silicon. For a long time we've known how this is done. You create what's called a boule, which is where you create a cylinder of almost pure silicon by seeding molten silicon with a crystal and slowly forming it. You then cut the boule into the silicon discs we often see. That machining and polishing itself has to be super-precise.

But I can remember when the tolerance for impurities was at 1 part per 300 million. I read recently that even 1 part per billion is now too impure. And that makes sense. The biggest chips are what? 80 billion transistors? I seem to remember NVidia makes chips in that range (or rather TSMC does for NVidia). At 1ppb that might make ruining your chip just too likely.

So my point is that there's a whole industry to make super-pure silicon which itself took amazing advancements and without that this machine would be a lot less useful.

Another part that amazes me is just how pervasive multiple layers on chips have become. I can remember when that was novel. The upper layers are made by cheaper machines with EUV reserved for a transistor "base layer" where all the interconnects really are.

It's amazing just how many problems had to be solved to make this posible.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#65

Post by runako »

aa-jv wrote: post #56
jstummbillig wrote: post #25

> By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips. Makes one wonder: Would we be much better off of worse off if we reshaped society to do more of things, where a new technology is unlikely to work but highly beneficial in the limits? Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources?

We could have more ASML's immediately if we eradicate the desire to covet technology for one in-group, over another. > reshaped society Invalidate all of ASML's patents = get cheaper chips, sooner. It is intellectual property which gives some of us the ability to build these things and sell them to others - get rid of this phony concept and we can have more nice things...

That's a great way to lower the cost of the current generation of the tech while ensuring there is no next generation of the tech.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#66

Post by bombcar »

aa-jv wrote: post #56
jstummbillig wrote: post #25

> By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips. Makes one wonder: Would we be much better off of worse off if we reshaped society to do more of things, where a new technology is unlikely to work but highly beneficial in the limits? Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources?

We could have more ASML's immediately if we eradicate the desire to covet technology for one in-group, over another. > reshaped society Invalidate all of ASML's patents = get cheaper chips, sooner. It is intellectual property which gives some of us the ability to build these things and sell them to others - get rid of this phony concept and we can have more nice things...

Or you could have nobody bother to invest in things like this because of no reward, or they become closely guarded trade secrets of which the Elves keep and nobody else is even allowed to know they exist.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#67

Post by bombcar »

maxglute wrote: post #60
KermitTheFrog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-zero chances - yes. Unavoidable - I wouldn't be so sure. I can't imagine how many top human-hours and cutting-edge inventions involved to construct this machine. And much of this simply cannot be stolen or bought, no matter how much money you have.

One can ballpark it, during EUV commercialization, ASML had 15k employees, Zeiss 3k, Cymer 1k. 20 years of non priority commercial development, lots of setbacks. Final integration ~5k suppliers. For reference commercial aviation Boeing/Airbus with as 100k employees, 50k suppliers. And we don't even know it's correct technical roadmap. Initially they thought synchrotron better than plasma/LPP but went with latter beca…

That's the key - if it was done once, it can be done again, and likely it's going to be significantly cheaper/easier because it's known it can be done. We see this from olympic records (e.g., the 4 minute mile was a "barrier" until one day it was passed and suddenly a bunch of people passed it).

Of course, doing it "legally" is another question - someone in the US trying to replicate would likely run into patent and other issues.

But a top-secret Manhattan-style project done by the US or China? definitely doable, and if you add spy-shit in, perhaps even faster.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#68

Post by adrian_b »

codeulike wrote: post #20
mytailorisrich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has never happened in the history of the world that a company or country could maintain its technological advance indefinitely. Either China will catch up on this or that particular technology will become obsolete. But it is certain that they won't stay behind forever (measured in a small number of decades at most).

Right but if you dont say how long it will take them, youre not really saying anything.

There is no doubt that less than 10 years will be needed for China to be able to do something equivalent to what the ASML machines can do now.

What is far less certain is what ASML will be able to do at that time, i.e. if they will be able to progress significantly over the state-of-the-art of today, or they will reach a plateau.

Besides China, there is a renewed effort in Japan to become competitive again, so ASML may face in the future both Chinese and Japanese competitors.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#69

Post by wahern »

aa-jv wrote: post #56
jstummbillig wrote: post #25

> By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips. Makes one wonder: Would we be much better off of worse off if we reshaped society to do more of things, where a new technology is unlikely to work but highly beneficial in the limits? Would we sooner have 10 additional ASMLs or waste a lot of resources?

We could have more ASML's immediately if we eradicate the desire to covet technology for one in-group, over another. > reshaped society Invalidate all of ASML's patents = get cheaper chips, sooner. It is intellectual property which gives some of us the ability to build these things and sell them to others - get rid of this phony concept and we can have more nice things...

The article might disagree. See the subsection, "The importance of tacit knowledge". OTOH, if that tacit knowledge is indeed so critical then there's less risk (e.g. regarding future investment incentives) to narrowing patent protections. OTOOH, ASML's supply chain is deep and complex, and the patent portfolio is presumably similarly diffuse, which makes it difficult to analyze or even, short of a complete patent regime overhaul, identify which patents to open up to accelerate adoption.

Re: ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips

#70

Post by maxalbarello »

throw0101c wrote: post #53
maxalbarello wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i find it hard to believe that there is no equivalent anywhere else in the world. there is so much talent out there and the stakes are so high that it seems like an inevitability. whatever many secrets are involved, information wants to be free and it's hard to believe that others won't figure it out. by the time they do catch up we better be steps ahead. what's after EUV?

> i find it hard to believe that there is no equivalent anywhere else in the world. there is so much talent out there and the stakes are so high that it seems like an inevitability. Well, even jet engine manufacturing is something that China is behind in (relatively speaking), and it (seems?) is simpler than some of the stuff in EUV machines.

yeah but maybe there the stakes are not as high. although i guess it touches the military and so it might be
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