[HN Gopher] The $150M Machine Keeping Moore's Law Alive
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The $150M Machine Keeping Moore's Law Alive
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-08-31 10:24 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| xt00 wrote:
| For reference, until quite recently, chips that were referred to
| as being "14nm node" were actually built using light that was
| 193nm and lots of special techniques like multipatterning,
| immersion, crazy lenses, etc. So when EUV arrived and is now
| using 13nm, you can bet that 13nm will allow quite a bit of
| runway for creating tiny features -- one concern I'm sure is the
| use presently of mirrors for all of the optics, so not sure how
| that would work for something equivalent to immersion -- seems
| like not possible maybe?
| kragen wrote:
| AFAIK immersion is very difficult because EUV is kind of like a
| disruptor beam. _h_ _c_ /13 nm is about 95 electron volts;
| that's enough to ionize just about anything, though they more
| often boost inner (non-valence) electrons up to outer shells
| instead. It's just as accurate to think of them as super soft
| X-rays as it is to think of them as "extreme ultraviolet."
| Sometimes they're called "vacuum ultraviolet" because air is
| opaque to them.
|
| Refraction is the key to immersion's resolution improvements,
| and I don't really know how it works. I have the impression
| that the higher permittivity of the refractive medium means
| that the electric field of the light propagates more slowly
| into it because the material is electrically polarizing, but
| permittivity varies with frequency, normally decreasing at
| higher frequencies, so hard X-rays barely refract at all. That
| would suggest that EUV might not refract much, quite aside from
| being rapidly attenuated.
|
| However, at least within and near the visible spectrum,
| refractive index _increases_ at higher frequencies. So clearly
| there 's a lot I don't understand.
| tuyiown wrote:
| ASML get a lot of coverage since last year, I've had never heard
| of it before, and I suspect just like many.
|
| It looked liked it emerged due to concerns about TMSC getting too
| much power and advance with billions on investments for
| semiconductors, and all of sudden all was alright since TMSC
| heavily relied on a dutch company.
|
| Maybe there's more of it, I'm starting to suspect there's a
| submarine in there.
| ghassanmas wrote:
| Both needs each other as to what I'v concoluded when I
| researched this topic. Making the machine is one thing and
| using it for fabrication is different thing, it might sound
| naive to say so, since typically one might think generally of
| machines as they comes with manual, and that's all you need for
| opreation..etc, but that is really far from be the case for the
| EUV machines or the fabrication plants... Lastly, to add to the
| point, if it was only about the machine, why Intel haven't
| started using it for fabricating <7nm...
| Blahah wrote:
| If you find this interesting, there's an excellent history of
| precision in manufacturing by Simon Winchester called "Exactly"
| that includes a fascinating chapter on this. The book's chapters
| progress through various key technologies in history whose
| manufacture led to leaps forward in precision engineering,
| culminating with modern smartphones.
| malloc2048 wrote:
| I've recently bought several shares of ASML at about EUR670, as I
| can't imagine them going down anytime soon.
|
| They seem to have a pretty much monopoly on the most advanced
| chipmanufacturing process and respective machines.
|
| ASML stock is also already going up for years and years. I wish
| I'd bought them earlier.
|
| Although ASML should be our Dutch pride, it's a company we hardly
| hear about in the Dutch press. Probably because their tech is
| relatively hard to understand.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Sadly the most efficient way to get attention of the press is
| to say "I support Sinterklaas" on Twitter.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm assuming this is a jab at Zwarte Piet, which is a lot
| more controversial than Sinterklaas himself.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes, that was imprecise from me.
| [deleted]
| apexalpha wrote:
| _Although ASML should be our Dutch pride, it 's a company we
| hardly hear about in the Dutch press._
|
| As another Dutch person the main stream media pretty much
| covers big ASML news. The CEO and CFO also regularely give
| interviews.
| erwinh wrote:
| Living in Eindhoven & bought a couple of years ago as my first
| ever stock purchase, went to the yearly shareholder meeting in
| Veldhoven which was super low-key with a very homely vibe &
| some super long-term holders (20+ years). Still my most
| profitable purchase as well.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've heard of ASML for over a decade now - Dutch mainstream
| press might ignore them, but specialized sites like
| tweakers.net and partners (it's been one of my daily visits for
| nearly 20 years) have reported on them for ages (https://tweake
| rs.net/zoeken/?keyword=asml#filter:q1bKTq0szy9...)
|
| As for the stonks, it looks really healthy, only ever having
| gone up over the past 20 years. Significantly in the last two
| years though. But I think it's a safe bet given there's little
| competition on the market at their level. I'm sure e.g. China
| is working on a competitor, but they have their work cut out
| for them - even if they have the designs for these machines.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| They don't have a monopoly on EUV, although they have the most
| mature production systems, albeit still at low volumes. The
| core technology and research behind EUV was actually performed
| by US Department of Energy labs, who then shared their work
| under agreements with a small number of industry partners,
| including but not exclusively ASML, back in 1999
| (https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/).
| This is also why ASML has a US presence and must source
| components from the US. There are other companies playing in
| this space, and while several are pursuing EUV, some are also
| using alternate approaches to fulfilling the same demand (like
| Canon's nanoimprint). I would characterize ASML as temporarily
| having a long lead on EUV, but that can change in the span of
| 5-10 years.
| float4 wrote:
| Hehe my dad bought 500 ASML shares in '08 at roughly EUR15.
|
| And then he sold for EUR45 three years later.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Wouldn't the next few years already be priced into the stock
| price?
| vmception wrote:
| efficient market theory is astrology for males, in a world
| where astrology and trading was gendered.
|
| the commonality being that neither produce peer reviewed
| reproducible results.
|
| nothing is priced in. things can be undervalued with known
| public information. market appetite can also further
| overvalue something with a new normal for price to equity
| ratios.
| dtech wrote:
| Only if you believe in the efficient market hypothesis
| arthurcolle wrote:
| "Don't even ask the question. The answer is yes, it's priced
| in. Think Amazon will beat the next earnings? That's already
| been priced in. You work at the drive thru for Mickey D's and
| found out that the burgers are made of human meat? Priced in.
| You think insiders don't already know that? The market is an
| all powerful, all encompassing being that knows the very
| inner workings of your subconscious before you were even
| born. Your very existence was priced in decades ago when the
| market was valuing Standard Oil's expected future earnings
| based on population growth that would lead to your birth,
| what age you would get a car, how many times you would drive
| your car every week, how many times you take the bus/train,
| etc. Anything you can think of has already been priced in,
| even the things you aren't thinking of. You have no original
| thoughts. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a product
| of the omniscent market. Free will is a myth. The market sees
| all, knows all and will be there from the beginning of time
| until the end of the universe (the market has already priced
| in the heat death of the universe). So please, before you
| make a post on wsb asking whether AAPL has priced in earpods
| 11 sales or whatever, know that it has already been priced in
| and don't ask such a dumb fucking question again." [0]
|
| [0] if you know, you know
| iddan wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/eberem/eve
| r...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That quote should be in a movie. Pretty awesome. Also
| wrong :-)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's priced in at the confidence level the market has. If
| you're more confident than the market then it's an
| opportunity to make money. (You also have to be right, of
| course.)
| vasco wrote:
| You should try imagining harder.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Historically speaking these one off stock recommendations from
| HN have really been fantastic. I just sold them too early and
| didn't put enough down.
|
| Like that one comment I remember in 2011 recommending to buy
| and hold Bitcoin for 10 years. Right. I bought. Didn't hold.
| Same deal with Tesla.
|
| I want something that takes $5,000 from me, invests it, then
| makes me forget about it, then 10 years later sends me a letter
| and says "you forgot about this, 10 years ago you did such and
| such, here you go"
|
| You can do fractional buy from the US on that instrument in
| Sofi (not in RH) btw for those who were looking to put only
| like $50 in. If you are doing an onboard there to invest in
| this, email me (check my bio) and I'll send my referral bonus
| link for signup (it's $25 for stocks + $10 withdrawable cash
| currently). Free money...
| kalev wrote:
| Aside from ASML, what is the recommendation at this point in
| time?
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I'm feeling gold. It hasn't moved for a decade and has all
| the reasons to move in the next one as people escape the
| currently overvalued overprinted mess we made for something
| real and tangible again.
|
| https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-
| gold/?time=20%20years&show...
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
|
| https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/buffett-
| indica...
|
| "Gold is money, everything else is credit". -J.P. Morgan,
| 1912
| bbarnett wrote:
| _I want something that takes $5,000 from me, invests it, then
| makes me forget about it, then 10 years later sends me a
| letter and says "you forgot about this, 10 years ago you did
| such and such, here you go"_
|
| I can help you here. Let's discuss. I accept eth or bc. 3f42d
| pipodeclown wrote:
| Personally, I wouldn't put ASML in the buy bucket for very
| long though. The stock has already more than tripled during
| the last year, mostly off the back of the big producers
| announcing enormous expansions of production capacity which
| is great for ASML. This Industry is cyclical though so in a
| couple of years once those factories are opened, there will
| be a large overcapacity leading to scaling down capex.
| kristopolous wrote:
| You could have said that about Microsoft stock in 1990,
| Amazon in 1999, Google in 2011, Apple in about 2005... And
| about lots of forgotten flops as well.
|
| The future is unpredictable and the best payoffs are going
| to inherently be controversial and have a larger risk
| Nevermark wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the current chip shortage
| becomes chronic for the next decade. The number of uses of
| chips are skyrocketing as products that are now "smart"
| compete to be even smarter.
|
| AI applications are processing heavy and applications are
| growing exponentially.
|
| The competition in the highest end chips is fierce now that
| Ford, Toyota, etc. are competing against Tesla which has
| its own custom chips.
|
| Augmented reality in the next several years will severely
| push demand for the highest performance, lowest energy
| using chips. Which tend to be the top of the line chips.
|
| Governments around the world have realized chip production
| is an existential capability. The US alone will be pouring
| money into catching up and matching TSMC, Samsung, etc. And
| those companies will respond by prioritizing progress even
| more.
|
| My money is on their not being a downturn in chip demand,
| or over capacity, for a very long time. Maybe not for
| decades.
|
| That's a strong statement, but I think computing has turned
| a corner.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > I just sold them too early and didn't put enough down.
|
| Mood; I bought ETH and sold when I thought it couldn't go any
| higher. I've bought and sold Tesla and Apple a couple of
| times thinking it couldn't possibly go any higher. Still made
| my money back and then some though, so I can't complain.
|
| As for your wish, index funds are your friend, low risk as
| well. I've got some money safely in a savings account
| (effectively no return on investment), some in 'play' stonks
| (-2.19% to +70% return on investment per year, 2020 was
| really good), and some in a managed investment fund that just
| spreads things around according to a risk profile (don't have
| a lot of numbers for that one, but +13.29% so far this year).
|
| This is not financial advice, I'm confident we'll have a
| market crash again within a year or two, and when investing
| you need to manage risk; index fund (following e.g. the S&P
| 500) are relatively safe investments, trading stocks is fine
| if you don't panic sell, but options and going 'all in' on
| single stocks is dangerous and not recommended. Don't invest
| money you can't afford to lose. Don't beat yourself up for
| not getting in on things earlier.
| laktak wrote:
| > which means chips can keep shrinking for years to come
|
| At what point would quantum tunnelling make it impossible to
| shrink them further?
| httpz wrote:
| Whether it's Apple's latest M1 chip made by TSMC or Nvidia's
| latest GPU made by Samsung, it's needs to be manufactured using
| ASML's EUVs. The crazy part is, ASML was only able to ship 31
| EUVs in 2020 and there was only about 100 EUVs in the world as of
| January this year.[1]
|
| [1] https://optics.org/news/12/1/28
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Is this something VC would help scale up? Or is it hitting some
| kind of hard limits of resources.
| klelatti wrote:
| ASML has a market cap of c $350 billion. If they wanted to
| raise tens of billions on the public markets they could
| probably do it. Not VC territory at all. They're probably
| limited by the size of the market.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Pure market forces don't seem to be enough in a bunch of
| places.
| cocoggu wrote:
| My guess is that the limit is human resources. The machines
| are probably assembled by hand and they probably need highly-
| skilled and specialized engineers to work on it, such kind of
| profiles are rare. The demand is not large enough to
| industrialize the production of such a complex machine so you
| have to rely on humans.
| FastEatSlow wrote:
| Each of their machines is custom and needs very specialised
| knowledge, so it's difficult to scale up. However, VC could
| encourage competition, which would help keep the chip
| industry healthy, as we all know what happens when a company
| has a monopoly in an industry.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Companies like these should be highlighted the next time
| there's a discussion on HN about Europe's lack of startups and
| unicorns.
| dtech wrote:
| They are often mentioned in these context, along with
| Spotify, Adyen, SAP and a few others. It doesn't really fit
| the US-based narrative so is mostly ignored.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| it was started 37 years ago and has a mkt cap of 350 bn. Not
| sure that qualifies as a startup, and neither does it serve
| as a counter pointer to "Europe's lack of startups and
| unicorns."
| fhe wrote:
| these examples are so often named precisely because there are
| few others.
| cryptica wrote:
| Whenever I see a big complex looking machine like that, my first
| thought is "That's impressive, these guys probably don't have
| much competition" then my second thought is "Surely it's possible
| to build a smaller, simpler machine that does the same thing in a
| much simpler way."
| Stratoscope wrote:
| https://archive.is/0dxn4
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