[HN Gopher] ASML's Secret: A view from inside the global semicon...
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ASML's Secret: A view from inside the global semiconductor giant
[video]
Author : timgluz
Score : 149 points
Date : 2022-10-03 12:20 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| throwie_wayward wrote:
| I absolutely despise the ancient traditional ways they practice:
| referring to their techniques of 'mystery', secrecy, and
| occultation of knowledge (which they do in order to construct
| knowledge as authority and then wield it as power)
|
| they've overdone it. by this point they have made it way to
| fucking difficult for people to truly come to grips with the
| complexity of modern life mostly becuase in their zealous
| protection of 'technical knowledge' they've made a life such as
| my own impossible to realize (this in turn, stunts the
| advancement and development of ways to cope with the consequences
| of modernity and high-technology in the culture at large, becuase
| people cannot learn to undesrtand enough that they can figure it
| out; they move us to a scenario in which only their own chosen
| selected few are in a position from which something could be
| done; but they select for obedience and dullness; not for spark)
|
| Maybe my reasoning is leaping a lot; but as I see things, this
| attitude towards knowledge and understanding is the cause of the
| now troubling distrust in the academic-scientific apparatus by a
| largely ignorant public (an ignorance which is somebody's
| profit).
|
| this attitude has stunted my own personal pursuit of happiness.
| that I cannot easily come to understand their 'propietary'
| techniques (higher-order logical systems, advanced litography,
| etc) that they use to do what they do is just frustrating.
|
| I'll end by adding that there are many more instances of this
| attitude around knowledge in other subjects I've studied... even
| some which are no longer considered 'sacred' (in more 'developed'
| countries) but which were still making people act all mysterious
| and in awe of 'the knowledge' in my own famously ignorant native
| country.
| jdmdmdmdmd wrote:
| >construct knowledge as authority
|
| Can you explain why you used the word construct here?
| throwie_wayward wrote:
| because 'knowledge' on its own will not work to wield power
| over others just by itself. there are other ingredients in
| ensuring that knowledge can be used as power; these usually
| look like 'technology'.
|
| I should also say that it's only due to the internet (and its
| novel aggregation-theory dynamics) that these old attitudes I
| am ranting against become truly noxious.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I have no clue what you're on about. ASML has hardly any
| culture of secrecy to speak of, or at least in comparison to
| famously secretive companies like Apple.
|
| Talk to a random ASML engineer at a party and they'll
| enthusiastically tell you everything about what they're working
| on.
| sylware wrote:
| Well, the video does not show the ppl actually designing the
| blueprint of the machine and doing the R&D, the real brains... we
| are showed mostly assembly workers (all above averagely skilled),
| customer service operators, etc.
|
| I was surprised to agree with most of what ASML bosses said, and
| I would have given exactly the same answer than the assembly
| operator, namely not providing any timeline... because it is
| complete garbage to do so on so much complex machines, not to
| mention the machine is a prototype, then the first one. I may
| have answered "yesterday".
|
| But noway they will make me use a doz computer, or an android
| phone...
|
| I am _seriously_ curious on how they want to get their pitch
| below 7nm with a 13.6nm EUV light. Do they plan to go massive
| multi-patterning with sub-nm xray positioning? For below 7nm
| pitch, what would they use: xray light? electron/ion beams?
| pattern printing? And what about the purity of the wafer dopped
| silicon for smaller features? xray light: what materials to use??
| Quantum interference tricks?
|
| I wonder how many silicon atoms from a wafer crystal we have on a
| 1nm row...
|
| All that is to get chips which consume less energy, get faster
| telecom, play magnificient games, store more in flash ram.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| The documentary spends a lot of time interviewing their head of
| R&D who is described as the 'mad professor', he talks
| extensively about the problem of the tin exploding onto the
| mirror and how he encountered that problem etc, so presumably
| he should count as someone doing R&D for real.
| sylware wrote:
| The head of R&D, but he is the only "real brain" who is
| presented on the show. Could have presented maybe 1 other
| "real brain".
|
| I have heard about "the 2 times lazered tin droplet to
| generate "enough" EUV light" already in an older ASML
| documentary (years ago).
| rjzzleep wrote:
| To summarize the video the secret is just how the people
| collaborate. Some parts seem oddly manual and others
| interestingly esoteric. Interesting little detail is how that
| researcher knows the political game of not presenting to Intel
| but instead having the VP himself present.
|
| At least there is a lesson for society here about how to keep
| people together instead of dividing them. I'm both fascinated by
| the company, and like others in the company drawn by the
| technology, but also wonder if I would have a problem working in
| this cult like setting.
| doikor wrote:
| > Some parts seem oddly manual and others interestingly
| esoteric.
|
| They don't really make that many machine for heavy automation
| to make much sense.
|
| By the end of 2021 they had made ~140 EUV machines in total
| with commercial production starting in 2011. So if you average
| it out they make ~15 per year. Though the production rate has
| most likely ramped up over the years so most of those have been
| built closer to today then 2011.
|
| And in those ~140 EUV machines there is many different versions
| with improvements. So you would have had to redo your
| automation lines multiple times over the process of building
| them.
|
| In total they make around 300 machines per year at the moment
| but only a fraction of them are the highest end ones.
| baybal2 wrote:
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Maybe, but then again the demand is far higher than what they
| can deliver and their solution is to hire thousands more
| people. While that's a simple scaling mechanism they were
| limited by Covid restrictions and will probably be limited by
| the worsening energy crisis
| himlion wrote:
| They are also very much limited by the housing crisis in
| the Netherlands. They are perpetually looking for places to
| house their employees.
| doikor wrote:
| Even if they 10x their production you are talking about 200
| of the same machine max per year. Nowhere near the numbers
| where proper industrial automation would make much sense.
|
| Also who would be buying these machines if they 10x their
| production? They go into fabs that costs 10 to 20 billion
| to build. Let's say you put 10 of them in each fab. It
| would still require 150 billion in fab investments every
| year. There is demand but not that much demand (or capacity
| to build the fabs)
| churnedgodotdev wrote:
| ASML is the closest thing to the planet Dune in our world. Chips
| made with their machines extend life. Chips made with their
| machines expand consciousness. And he who controls the chips,
| controls the universe. The information universe, at least. I just
| wish for a messiah to arrive who leads the jihad against FAANG.
| The Kwisatz-RISC-V-Haderach. The Voice from the Open Source
| World. Fortunately, he need not fell Mark Zuckerberg in single
| combat with crysknife in order to lead our people to true
| freedom.
| tablespoon wrote:
| What's the purpose of this corridor the workers walk through?
| Some kind of cleaning process, or a security scan to make sure
| they're not bringing in unauthorized devices?
|
| https://youtu.be/zQu_TMgHO98?t=34
| bob1029 wrote:
| It's an air shower designed to get any last bits off your bunny
| suit before you go into the cleanroom.
| wofo wrote:
| Hi there! This is a totally off-topic comment, but since
| there is no way in HN to send private messages, I though I
| might as well reply to your most recent comment. I have been
| enjoying your comments about being a craftsman and working in
| a niche, and I think I am heading in the same direction. I
| could use some advice and would love to ask you a few
| questions, if you don't mind (email is in my profile).
| Powerjaxx wrote:
| For Those looking to learn more about ASML. The book ASML's
| architects by Rene Raaijmakers is a great book! (FYI: I've read
| the Dutch version, so I am not sure how good the translated
| version is)
| tullatulla wrote:
| Can also highly recommend the translated version!
| Beldin wrote:
| As a student, I did a tour of ASML. One of the coolest things was
| one of the tour guides bragging how they would inspect the
| prospective location for a new plant and deny sale if they didn't
| like it.
|
| Why? Because their machines are _incredibly_ sensitive... and
| equally expensive. And your customers get angry if the machine
| doesn 't work reliably - and rightly so.
|
| I don't know if they do that still, and it likely was somewhat
| hyperbole, but the core of it is actually correct: the machine is
| indeed that sensitive, and is indeed that expensive. Every second
| of lost operation is expensive, and creating a fab around one of
| them is not quite as straightforward as just pouring some
| concrete somewhere and adding walls and a roof.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I recall when STMicroelectronics built their new fab [1] near
| Grenoble, France, it was built on a kind of stilt-and-spring
| system to insulate it from vibrations from a nearby highway.
|
| (and similarly, the nearby ILL Synchotron [2] had issues that
| were eventually tracked to trucks passing on its nearby
| highway)
|
| [1] https://goo.gl/maps/jNESRpcdMkAtVURM9
|
| [2] https://goo.gl/maps/4oXRXw6pxkxMFCUt5 Note that the
| satellite view is blurred because that whole area technically
| belongs to the french CEA, their Nuclear Administration!
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