[HN Gopher] ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fa...
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ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker
Author : craigjb
Score : 135 points
Date : 2024-02-20 21:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| consumer451 wrote:
| ctrl-f China = 0 results, so here is some context:
|
| > ASML's China Sales Surged Despite Secret Dutch Deal With US
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-25/asml-s-ch...
|
| Edit: note to self, don't beer and then HN.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Err,
|
| > Secondly, ASML could sell sophisticated tools to Chinese
| customers for most of calendar 2023 as sanctions against the
| Chinese semiconductor sector kicked in only in September and
| only for one tool. By contrast, sales of tools to Chinese
| clients by Applied Materials were, to a degree, impacted by the
| U.S. export rules introduced in October 2023.
|
| Maybe control-f is not the best strategy here.
| lvh wrote:
| You should try C-f "Chinese".
| consumer451 wrote:
| Ha, derp on my part. You'd think I would've learned not to
| beer and HN by now.
| szundi wrote:
| "Chin"
| nn3 wrote:
| Relevant HN comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181
|
| Apparently their software development processes are terrible.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| From that comment I concluded that software patching speed
| isn't a bottleneck there. It sounds frustrating but to be
| terrible it needs to significantly impede the product or
| business relationships, which isn't at all happening.
| away271828 wrote:
| Stability and long product lifecycles are incredibly
| important to them. They're pretty much the opposite of move
| fast and break things or deploy early/deploy often.
| hcfman wrote:
| Try searching how much money is lost by clients if the fab
| is down. You have to be very careful with software for
| fabs.
| ghaff wrote:
| Absolutely. What makes a lot of sense for one
| organization would be absolutely insane for others. ASML
| has incredible innovation in some areas but I'd expect
| them to prioritize stability in others.
| jimkoen wrote:
| Honestly, if you think about the availability guarantees
| that these FAB's have to deliver, I'm kinda surprised
| they don't run off of IBM mainframes. Can't believe it
| but it would be a perfect use case. High bandwidth I/O,
| paired with ungodly, over-the-horizon-radar like
| availability.
| konschubert wrote:
| I find it strange that they are making so few machines.
|
| The price would probably drop slightly if they made 10x more
| machines, but they would still end up earning more. And the
| world would be a better place, too.
|
| So I am left wondering ... what is capping their output? What
| is the bottleneck?
| olejorgenb wrote:
| Linked comment is from 2018.
|
| Not really that old on this context though.
| hcfman wrote:
| Except that link is to a story with a lot of garbage in it.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Do you have other insight? A counterpoint? Anecdote that
| supports a different narrative? Anything, at all, that would
| contribute to the conversation and support your "garbage"
| comment?
| newprint wrote:
| Lol, thank you for link. I was expecting the opposite from this
| company, but for some reason, after reading this, I'm not
| surprised at all.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They are physicists and hardware folks, right? I would expect
| messy code written by convoluted processes for nightmare
| applications, that somehow works.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Bro if they're not using Linear and having AI write their
| PRDs then they are _Bad At Software_.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I was expecting the opposite from this company_
|
| Why? Because they're hot on the stock market since the
| pandemic? Nokia's SW was the same kind of shitshow when it
| was dominant. IIRC a long time ago someone on HN wrote here
| that compiling Symbian OS at Nokia took 2 whole days and
| Nokia management saw no problem with that.
|
| To me, it's exactly what I expect from a HW company, from
| personal experience. SW is seen just as a necessary evil,
| another item on the BoM. Oh, and there's a bunch of useless
| processes designed as jobs programs to keep some useless
| managers employed, where each of them needs to review your
| change and give their green light despite them not being up
| to date on the technical side for >10 years.
|
| I know this because it's exactly the same at another major
| Dutch semiconductor spin-off from Philipps I was at in a past
| life.
|
| Just because ASML is hot right now, doesn't mean they value
| and employ top SW talent, because they don't sell SW, they
| sell HW and that's what their customers value, and so ASML
| values physicists and traditional engineers, not SW devs.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| i advised one of their software-making vendors on software-
| organisation+culture and similars, about 10y ago. It went
| pretty well, but the funny thing was, The tools and environment
| they had to use (because of ASML) to check/test stuff, was
| _same_ as it was in Motorola 25 years ago (Sun CDE /Common
| Desktop Env? something like that). I felt like dropped in a
| time machine :/
| jessriedel wrote:
| Tbc, based on the comment that looks to be driven almost
| completely by the fact that they are making a tiny number of
| incredibly expensive bespoke machines, so they can't just keep
| extra machines lying around to do unit tests with (both because
| each machine is expensive, and because the results wouldn't
| necessarily generalize to other machines). So it sounds like a
| constraint of the field, not bad choices.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| The build taking 8 hours doesn't seem to be consequence of
| the field they are operating
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Why do you need the actual production machine for unit tests?
| Why can't you build a SW simulator for them and run unit
| tests on them?
|
| I used to work in automotive and all unit tests didn't
| require the finished car, just the SW.
|
| Nasa doesn't hava another Voyager probe in their lab floating
| around in zero gravity to run unit tests on before sending
| the SW patches, they use simulators.
|
| For calibration you do need the final production HW, but unit
| tests shouldn't, so maybe there's a confusion here about the
| type of tests ran.
| gowings97 wrote:
| to do finite element analysis on the (nanometer) scale of
| processes/manufacturing they do - heh.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I don't think so. Any update that is as complex, expensive and
| critical, to equipments such as ASML's, should be carefully
| examined to the teeth.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I've lived in NL for a while, few years, changed few companies,
| it's a place where processes are more important than actual
| code quality, where people stay in the same job for 10-15 years
| and everything below that is seen as a bad thing, people is
| hired for the culture primarily, having awareness of software
| principles is really worthless. I ran away as the last company
| I interviewed with, after solving a coding puzzle in 30
| seconds, finishing in 15 mins something which had to take 45
| mins, asked "Are you available to come at the office on Friday
| for company parties?". So I can only have nightmares about
| software practices in NL companies
|
| I've seen files with 13k lines of if/else/switch, how do you
| test that shit .-.
| konschubert wrote:
| That sounds a bit like Germany ( but none of the companies I
| worked at so far). I thought that the dutch would be more ...
| modern?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I don't know, I've worked in Germany, but only for US
| companies, so I can't speak for proper German company
| software development culture :(
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is a bit of an odd article, they spend half of it describing
| this as a remarkable turn of events, and the other half
| describing why it isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison and
| how the companies aren't in direct competition.
| Handprint4469 wrote:
| The clickbaity titles are leaking into the beginning of their
| articles.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Eh, "burying the lede" and "key context in paragraph 28" are
| as old as time...
| newprint wrote:
| I don't want to brag, but buying ASML stocks was probably the
| smartest financial decision in my life. Also, AMSL & AMAT aren't
| competing in some areas. AMAT provides tooling & services that
| assist ASML.
| grenoire wrote:
| Same, I sold at the peak. Don't hold on to your winners for too
| long, the stock price is not entirely a function of the
| company's financial success. A lot of it is just on whims and
| cycles.
| gabagaul wrote:
| Time to spread some liberty and freedom in the Netherlands.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Is there any need? We licensed them specifically the tech
| because it would have been unreasonable to have given it to the
| established players and because they bought SVGI.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| The US is not far from doing that. See the Hague Invasion Act.
|
| Also I've been wondering why our Prime Minister has been so
| enthusiastically following US foreign policy lately. Turns out
| he's eyeing the NATO boss seat, and the US has the most
| important vote.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Also that's what we do since WW2. We are a close ally of the
| US, use US weapons, usually follow them in foreign policy. So
| not very surprising imo.
| konschubert wrote:
| I think Europe would do well not to repeat the Russian mistake
| with China.
| httpz wrote:
| Zeiss -> ASML -> TSMC -> Nvidia
|
| Seems crazy that there are no alternatives for these four
| companies in the high end AI semiconductor supply chain.
| tester756 wrote:
| Wasnt it recently announced that Nvidia will use Intel's
| foundry? At least for Advanced Packaging
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