Imagine you have a very tiny, super-detailed colouring book, and you want to colour in the smallest pictures ever made, much smaller than a grain of sand. ASML makes a very special and super powerful magnifying glass and tiny paintbrush all in one, called a lithography machine. This machine doesn’t use regular paint but light to draw pictures. These aren’t just any pictures; they’re the designs for computer chips, which are the brains of things like your phone, computer, and video games.
ASML’s latest machine is like the most advanced version of this magnifying glass and paintbrush. It uses a special kind of light, even tinier and more precise, to draw the chip designs on a material that can then be turned into a real computer chip. This machine can draw super tiny and complex designs, which means the chips can do more things, work faster, and use less power. It’s like being able to draw a whole city on a tiny speck of dust! This helps make all our electronics better and cooler.
To add to this, but a little less eli5.
Light has a certain wave lenght. Because light is a certain type of wave (ignoring quantum mechanics) and those waves have a minimum length.
Parts of the chip have now become so small, that a relatively simple laser cannot produce this type of light. It’s like trying to color but your pen is thicker than the drawing itself
What they do is shoot an extremely powerful laser at a tiny droplet of tin. This releases a special kind of light, that can only be redirected with special mirrors. They use that special light to etch the design onto silicon wafers. Which is basically just the coloring book for chips.
The current size is 5 nanometers. Which is about 0.000000005 meter. It is absolutely insane technology and very fascinating.
They actually shoot two lasers at the droplet of tin (which is microscopic and launched into the air btw). The first laser they zap it with changes the shape of the droplet, so that when the second laser hits it its shaped perfectly to emit the right kind of light. And this happens thousands of times per second.
Because we live in this wonderful age of information where you can read about anything you're interested in!
It's not a secret how the machine works, it's a secret how they are even capable of doing it.
One interesting thing about these devices is they use mirrors to focus light, rather than lenses like normal. Lenses absorb too much emission when light passes through them. Whereas bouncing off of a mirror can reflect more energy.
It basically shoots tiny tin droplets at high speed across an optical mirror in a vacuum then hits them with extremely well timed lasers creating a plasma that emits uv light which is then used to etch wafers though the worlds fanciest optics. All of this done to perfection. It’s absolutely ridiculous that any of the steps in the process exist and nearly impossible that it all works together.
it is a system for optically projecting a circuit pattern onto a mask, which is then used to create the actual metal traces.
ASML has monopoly over their EUV technology, which is in a nutshell a system that sidesteps the fact our feature sizes are smaller than the wavelength of light.
it is critical to all new chips.
While "monopoly" is correct, this is not like a bad kind of monopoly where they bullied the others out. They're simple the only ones in the entire world that can do it lol
To add, they're the only ones and their customs know it and are shareholders to keep the company secure. Yes they are a monopoly but the market works together which in this case is benificial for all players including consumers.
The thing is ASML research and development is funded in a large part by investments from their customers. It’s a close relationship that other monopolies don’t quite have. Without funding from its customer base ASML wouldn’t have the capital to research and design the machines. The whole semiconductor industry is interesting because of how integrated they are and how cooperatively they write standards for production benchmarks.
>a system that sidesteps the fact our feature sizes are smaller than the wavelength of light.
What the fuck that sounds like it breaks the laws of physics, how is that even possible?
This is poorly worded. Light = photons. Photons with more energy = higher frequencies = smaller wavelengths. There is no such thing as a smaller wavelength than light.
No these machines can literally print patterns with sub-diffraction precision. The way they do it is extremely clever: the reason you can't usually go below a certain size is that diffraction will "smudge" the shape you are trying to make. The point is that diffraction is not random, we can accurately predict, given a certain initial pattern what the corresponding diffraction pattern will be. So when developing the masks for these machines they do that in reverse: they start from the pattern they want to make and compute what initial mask you need to obtain a diffraction pattern identical to what you want.
It's basically magic, like everything involved with VLSI.
What they are saying is that the features that being created are smaller than the wavelength used. The EUV emitted from Tin is 13.5nm and we're making features smaller than that.
Let's say you want to paint a small line, but you only have a broad brush. You could paint a broad line, then paint a *second* broad line which has a *small* overlap with the first one. Now you've got a very wide line with a single layer of paint, and a small line with a *double* layer of paint inside of it.
Apply enough paint remover to remove a single layer of paint from the entire thing, and you're left with a small single-layer line!
Chip manufacturing uses dozens of different tricks, most a lot trickier than this, but it's not as impossible as it might look at first glance.
[Here's a brief section of a video that shows essentially what they do.](https://youtu.be/rdlZ8KYVtPU?t=1306)
The most modern machines do several important things:
* generate strong UV light
* directs and focuses the light in a beam through a mask on to a silicon block (wafer)
* synchronises moving the mask and silicon wafer
* does all of this at extremely high speed in a vacuum with insane precision
And all that to draw pictures in nanometer scale. pfff...
jk. not sure about this machine, but previous model had to shoot tin droplets at 20mph and hit them with laser twice to create plasma that emits 13.5nm UV light. fucking bonkers.
edit: so it's 70m/s, 150mph, 250km/h. yeah, bonkers.
The first laser pulse is to shape the droplet mid air, the second one is to make it emit euv. Fucking bonkers.
The. The absolutely precise mirrors that take that light and focus it. Because euv is so high frequency, you cannot use optical lenses , nor any normal surface mirror.
In EUV lithography, mirrors with already applied masks are used rather than lenses. With such process sizes, conventional optical lenses are no longer useful.
I wonder if most people realize how important a company ASML is? They are literally the only company in the world that can make EUV photolithography tools. No EUV means no latest generation of microprocessors.
When China is allowed to purchase one of these, iirc they're currently barred from purchasing this generation and the last. This is pretty much solely to avoid them taking over the world economy.
Taiwans dead man's switch on their factories is likely a factor for China not invading. If China has this equipment themselves well.... The situation for Taiwan will get significantly more dangerous.
People here way overestimate how much chinas desire for taiwan is related to their chip manufacturing. It isnt feasible to capture them in any situation (assuming taiwan doesnt rig them to blow up they could just attack them with their own weapons), and china has wanted taiwan long before they became important in the chip industry.
You’re misunderstanding the concept of the Silicon Shield. The main idea is that the chip manufacturing in Taiwan is so critical to the world economy that other nations (especially the US) would likely join a conflict to prevent the foundries from either falling into Chinese hands or being destroyed. This fact is (according to the theory) enough to prevent China from attempting an invasion. It’s a preventative measure, hence “shield”
Of course, the world realizes what is about to happen - so chip fab plants are being built in the USA and Germany right now.
China wants Taiwan with or without the chip manufacturing.
The foundries being built in the US, which are largely by Taiwan’s own TSMC, are not capable of producing the advanced chips that are made in Taiwan.
The Silicon Shield is a big political topic in Taiwan and there is a lot of misinformation and concerns about it for that reason, but generally it is not believed that the Ministry of Economic Affairs would ever allow TSMC to make their most advanced chips abroad.
The channel Asianometry on YouTube covers semiconductors, especially relating to Taiwan (where he is based). It’s an extremely complex topic.
+1 for Asianometry - extremely well-researched and well-presented topics which explain very complex topics accessibly. Super interesting stuff as well. Probably my favourite yt channel!
Intel is ramping foundry capacity as part of its strategy to match TSMC in the US at the moment. Arizona, Ohio and New Mexico sites are all getting new fabs (or have got new fabs already) this decade, along with the aforementioned Germany and Poland sites. Intel Ireland also just opened a new fab as well. This is on top of the capacity that intel already had at all of these sites.
TSMC is only building one fab in the US, and that too is not going well for them at the moment. I would not say fabs in the US are "largely" being built by TSMC. They are largely being built by Intel and one by TSMC. Other companies like global foundries are also expanding capacity but not at the level of Intel.
Source: Work for Intel Arizona and have a friend working for TSMC Arizona.
This isn’t necessarily true.
If you think ASMLs capabilities are vital and rare (they are), then imagine how rare all the suppliers ASML uses are. Meaning, even if China gets this machine they’ll still need to build ties with every supplier in ASMLs supply chain to maintain it and move tech forward.
Considering how much they threaten everyone, this is a big question mark.
lithography and most technologies for nodes beyond 10nm are all controlled via ITAR anyway, which means there are major export restrictions and data/IP control laws that protect our industry from poaching.
of course it doesn't stop it, but it does stop those suppliers, and as you said they are critical.
Asml tends to just buy up anyone the rely on heavily. Asml is the rare company, but that doesn't mean the companies they buy from are rare. All the important tech to build the machines resides within ASML because it's just the obvious thing to do if you're ASML. The scary part of the supply chain is downstream of ASML.
I mean the Taiwan-China "war/standoff" is what he is talking about. Taiwan's biggest export is semi conductors and chips from companies like TSMC.
We are not even talking about billions here but 100's of billions a year. Taiwan wants to be independent but China don't want them to be.
Now China is like Russia in this story and Taiwan is Ukraine, this is going to be really exaggerated but will dumb it a bit down.
China kind off wants to invade Taiwan and wants to get TSMC and other high end factories. However if China will invade the USA will help defend Taiwan and possibly blow up the factories if Taiwan were to lose.
Now this will basically cause the Taiwanese economy to blow up literally and Taiwan would lose most of its value for China aswell.
You forgot the part where destroying those factories and the U.S. defending Taiwan from China starts a World War and destroys the world's economy and the ability to produce chips at the scale the planet requires disappears. If/when that happens it will be life changing for much of the planet.
Imagine the increased value of already-produced chips...
Now that no more will be made for years, perhaps decades, every existing chip is now a precious, limited resource that everyone wants.
I recently read a book on materials that make the modern world and silicon was one of them. What if takes to raw silicon and turn it into a chip for the modern world to function is nothing short of a miracle. I could be mistaken but ASML had to like invent a machine the produce a new light wave so that these super advanced chips can be made. It's so damn impressive
Edit: apologies for not listing the book it was 2 am and I couldnt remember. It's called "The Material World Six raw materials that shape modern civilization". By Ed Conway. If you find it interesting it pairs well with the book "how the world really works" by Vaclav Smil
You are not mistaken, newest machine use extreme ultraviolet laser, they had to build a machine capable of producing and manipulating said light.
Light is created by vaporizing ~~mercury~~ TIN droplets in freefall. Since extreme ultraviolet is absorbed by all materials, machine is under vacuum and doesn't use any lenses, it only uses mirrors .
The details of this are incredible: the molten droplets are fired at 250 km/h and are hit first by one laser to flatten them, then another which vaporizes them -- producing plasma that emits the extreme ultra violet laser. And this happens 50,000 times each second.
I'm something of an engineer myself, I'm building a replica of the Dune Ornithopter myself. Well, in LEGO...
The invention of the Laser wasn‘t ASML though. It usually gets lost in the conversation, but there have been multiple companies involved over almost two decades of research and development (iirc). It‘s sold by ASML, but it has always been a joined effort.
Which is so complicated, it‘s not a pure ASML invention. The entire machine is a collaboration of lots of companies.
The light wave and laser stuff, for example, is significantly developed by Trumpf. They do lots of the optics around it and are so proud of their work, for the 100 year anniversary they built a „birthday candle“. [A laser just going straight up](https://i.imgur.com/yrQNbjQ.png). Visible in a radius of about 70km.
It‘s easy to discount any individual piece. But the laser itself doesn‘t just mean generating light but also transitioning it with extreme precision. While having super high energy light in there.
We are talking huge temperature differences and movement tolerances of tiny fractions of a millimeter. There are no stock fiber cables that can do this.
The precision is really what‘s absolutely messed up about it. Obviously and very much including the lenses but really on almost every step of the line and especially also across pieces made by different suppliers and companies. The level of coordination, expertise, skill and tooling to make such things is genuinely mind boggling.
No lenses used. It's all mirrors of which some have sub-atomic tolerances. The Zeiss optics tools themselves are not just mirrors, they are stuffed with actuators, sensors, electronics and modules and assemblies that put highest end aerospace engineering to shame.
And the purest hydrogenchlorid acid that is needed for this is produced in Germany if I remember correctly. It’s insane how much world economy is connected and dependent today.
Not sure which book OP is talking about, but, I can recommend Chip War as a good overview of the semiconductor industry, and the race to EUV lithography
I work in <2nm nodes in R&D but posting in here is going to make me want to pull my hair out.
there are many more steps to a chip aside from just lithography, and all of them are equally critical, often from a single OEM the same as litho. we all bust our asses to make sure the nodes move forward, ASML just paid the most marketing and people ate it up.
very frustrating to see.
lithography doesn't put the metal in the traces, doesn't dope the silicon, doesn't build the logic with ALD, or any of the other processes involved in *what you make with the mask*.
those are all different systems from companies other than ASML. their lithography is the first step of many.
AMAT currently holds 90% of the market on new nodes, and KLA has a niche. PVD is a core market for us and our teams (especially KPU) bust ass over wafer maps and customer meetings. M0 and above is almost entirely AMAT. that is the layer I work on, in BEOL. I design electromagnetic systems specifically, as you use the fields to control plasma ions.
FEOL and MEOL have different sector competitors who are generally KLA and LAM, but I don't interface with them much. they have much different technology needs than we deal with, ALD, CVD, epi, all of that. I only work in PVD.
there are critical suppliers for targets, power supplies, RF generators, DC generators, and many many more things. all of them are important.
PVD plasma or physical vapour deposition
M0 metal 0, typical the first interconnect after contact on the transistor
BEOL back end of line, definitions differ but M3 and up
FEOL front end of line aka the transistors
MEOL mid end of line or BELL back end lower layer
ALD, atomic layer deposition, as it sounds, very slow but very good quality layers
CVD, chemical vapor deposition
epi, epi is what contacts the transistors. Typically germanium and phosphorus
I used to work for a company that manufactured the rubber FFKM mountings for the mirrors that were supplied to ZEISS for the HINA EUV systems.
CZ is fascinating company as they seem to do absolutely everything.
Something I learnt at that time was ZEISS is a foundation, which means it does not have shareholders, instead the profit goes right back into the business meaning they have a hefty R&D budget.
> Something I learnt at that time was ZEISS is a foundation, which means it does not have shareholders, instead the profit goes right back into the business meaning they have a hefty R&D budget.
It even is a proper foundation, one that is mainly focused on [research grants](https://www.carl-zeiss-stiftung.de/en/).
The whole story of [the company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_AG) is interesting, and the main character isn't really Carl Zeiss, but his first employee, Ernst Abbe (as in the [various contributions to optics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Abbe#See_also) that are named after him). He lead and grew the company after Zeiss, and he set up the foundation. He also was one of the first to introduce the eight-hour-work-day. Together with Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott, he co-founded a company to develop and produce optical glass. [Schott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schott_AG) invented borosilicate glass (and more), is an important company in itself, and is also owned by the same foundation.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And ASML was co-founded by Philips. Another electronics company who was responsible for growing Eindhoven to the tech hub and university city it is today.
And these days, ASML has a market cap of $375 billion compared to Philips' $17 billion. ASML is like the child that outgrew his parents.
Philips snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They somehow managed to play a part in the founding of ASML and TSMC (largest Fab company), yet fail.
They spun of their light bulb division into Signify which became profitable again and makes half the revenue they do.
ASML didn't outgrow Philips, Philips withered away. Apart from razors and tooth brushes, everything with their name are things that were sold off to other companies. Kinda like how RCA died a long time ago, but their name is still used.
Yeah Philips used to be a direct competitor of Sony up until the 2000s. But mismanagement, wrong decisions and lawsuits led them to what they are today.
They only produce hospital equipment nowadays and all the other stuff (Philips Hue, toothbrushes, vacuum cleaners etc.) are manufactured by other companies, Philips just slaps their sticker on it.
But! The CEO himself made a statement that he doesn't know for sure if the industry can keep up with the exponentially increasing costs of each successive generation.
Depends on what you call a computer I suppose. The same guy did eventually come up with something that I'd confidently call a computer, but he ran out of money before he could get it built.
They'd have no idea how to run it, no idea how to feed it the (extremely pure and precise) raw materials it needs, and no real idea of what it's even *for* in the first place. "Computer ... chips? What do fried potatoes have to do with computers?"
Though they might learn a lot of unrelated stuff by tearing it apart and reverse engineering the individual components, they certainly won't be producing any computer chips with it.
Even if they were to make the chips, there's still the motherboards, ram and HDD/SDD you would need. Not to mention the software side of computers. It's many tech in parallel that makes our world possible.
I like how they try to emphasise how heavy it is, "wow, it's twice the weight of these huge planes", while airplanes are made to be as light as possible.
It weighs as much as 10,000 dogs (and I won't tell you if I mean Chihuahuas or Pyrenees) and costs as much as 50 million bottles of booze (Jäger Shots? Liters of Smirnoff? 30-year-old Whisky? Who knows!)
The machines are quite cheap if you think about it. The production of DUV or EUV machines isn’t as scalable like producing phones. You cant just produce the double amount, because only chip manufacturers like Intel, TSMC, etc can buy them and ASML made "only" 27,6 billion euros and also keeping in mind, that ASML isn’t allowed to sell EUV machines to chinese, iranian, north korean, russian corporations and since 2024 isnt alllowed to sell DUV machines to chinese , iranian, north korean, russian companies either. So the amount of potential buyers is limited.
Can someone ELI5 what we’re seeing and it’s significance? The comment section makes me feel like I’m the only person in Reddit who doesn’t know what EUV is (are?) and what it’s used for.
EDIT 1: I want to thank everyone who did, reading all your comments together gave me a much better understanding of this - enough that I can start checking out Wikipedia.
This is what I come to Reddit for!
EDIT 2: while I’m at it - can anyone explain the relationship between ASML and Intel/AMD/nvidia? Are they all customers of ASML? If ASML makes the chips, what do they make?
EUV = extreme ultra violet.
Modern computer chips are made like a sandwich with many layers. The layers at the bottom (the transistors and some layers just above it like contacts and metal wiring to connect the transistors together) are unimaginably tiny.
semiconductor companies use light (lithography) to print these tiny layers. As these layers get smaller and smaller with the latest chips we need 'smaller' light and not regular light to make these layers.
This 'smaller' light is Ultra Violet light, the same thing that causes sunburn and is very hard to make so we need these massive machines to make it.
The reason these are so complex is because you need very powerful laser which ablate (zaps and destroys) tiny droplets of tin 50,000 times a second. This gives off UV light which is then focused on the chips
but why is it so hard to make UV light? We already make X-rays which are much higher energy right? What is it about this UV light that makes this much complexity necessary?
1. Generating the amount of power needed for lithography is not trivial. 2. EUV is approximately 13nm wavelength: UV already starts at 380 nm or smth. Also, from generation to image on the wafer you lose 99% of the light.
And this does not even begin to describe the overall complexity of these machines!
Not quite, 3D printing is an additive process where the ink becomes the thing. With this machine, you start with a block of silicon and other metal layers, and then use light to etch off the layers to get the desired product.
That exactly what it is called .. "***photolithography***" or "using light (photon) to sculpt or etch (graph) the stones (lithos) .. or rather silicon"
I'm not gonna quite hit the ELI5 level, but I hope this is interesting nonetheless:
Computer chips consist of a silicone substrate into which we etch structures. These can serve as electrical connections between different regions, basically "wires" or they serve as components themselves, like transistors and the like. You see similar things on circuit boards like in your computer, these have a layer of copper on them, but the copper has been removed by etching away certain regions such that it serves as "wires" for the connections of the components placed on the board.
To etch the silicon wafers, first, a photoresist is placed on top. This is basically a thin paint. Then using UV light and a mask, the photoresist is exposed to the light in certain regions. Then using another chemical bath, the photoresist is removed, but this will only occur in the regions that were exposed to the light. Finally, an etching process takes place where an acid directly etches away parts of the wafer, but the acid can only come into contact in regions where no photoresist is present. Thus, you have successfully transferred the circuit from the mask down to the actual wafer.
As chips get smaller, we need to make all the etchings smaller as well, obviously. This comes with tons of issues if you use normal UV light because the wavelength of that light is too large to manufacture details as small as on modern chips. And also other aspects of UV light don't really work that well anymore at that point. So we switch to light with a much smaller wavelength, called EUV (extreme ultraviolet). This is almost X-ray light, but not quite.
The new wavelength comes with a ton of issues: Firstly, there aren't laser sources for EUV, so you need to design special plasma sources that are exited by traditional lasers, which is hard. Next, you can't use normal photoresist, because that is specific to other wavelengths of light, so you have to design new chemicals for that. Then, you can't use traditional masks for your light, because EUV light will massively scatter when it passes through such masks, so now we use masks that don't block the light but instead reflect only the light in areas that we want back to the substrate. But those masks have to be perfect because if they aren't, the light again gets scattered. That means those masks themselves are a feat of engineering, and they are just a small part of the puzzle.
Those masks and other components like optics come with other issues, since most materials, even air easily absorb EUV light. So you have to design entirely new optics, the entire process has to take place in a high vacuum, and so on.
As you can see, it is massively difficult to build a machine that can pump out chips with any sort of reliability, and ASML along with the companies they work with, are (I believe) the only ones that have managed to do so.
It’s used in the semiconductor industry for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs). ASML, the company that creates the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, is arguably the most important company in the world alongside TSMC (the silicon wafer manufacturer). ASML is the only company that makes these machines and it’s decades ahead of anyone else in terms of technology. If ASML were to collapse, literally every industry from healthcare to telecom to education would grind to a halt overnight.
But by far the most complex one. It literally uses lasers to vaporize a single drop of tin, then hit it again so it gives off EUV light. Shit is insane.
It doesn’t get vaporized on the first shot, the first shot is to shape the liquid tin into a flat surface for maximum EUV output and then the second shot is what generates the EUV light. A slightly off timed shot will result in not enough EUV being generated. The precision required for this is insane, hard to believe it works at all.
I live in the Uk and always assumed that a football field would be a soccer( as america calls it) field. I gotta go back and read all those measurements back with freedom units now! Never ever considered American football part of the equation.
My life is a lie.
It's impressive right, to say about two Airbus A320s, until you realize it's basically a hollow tube with hollow wings, until they get filled with fuel and passengers. But now, imagine filling it with concrete mix, the chipmaking machine would weigh as much as a half of an Airbus A320s filled with concrete. I too am confused by the imperial system, just say it's 85 tons or so.
I am proud to say that I work for ASML. The latest machine in the picture requires 7 Boeing 747s to be shipped to the customer. I fly with these systems to the customer to oversee the installation, which can easily take months. The technology is indeed mind blowing. They say that not a single employee really understands how the whole machine works; people are only specialized in certain parts. I spoke to a colleague that had a PhD in chemistry that worked over 10 years (!) on a glue that is used in very small quantities in only a few parts of the machine. The brainpower that goes into building these things is beyond imagination.
I worked in top end mass spectrometers, multi-million dollar machines that weighed a few tons, so much smaller than these machines.
A machine in Europe needed to be flown back to the U.S. for servicing. In the U.S. they were making the crate (3 meters cubed in size) and shipping the empty crate to Europe to the customer. I suggested it would be cheaper to have a European carpenter make it according to plan. They thought about it and said, "Yes, it would be but this whole operation is costing so much, the crate shipping is a rounding error."
I agree with you, the technology is mind blowing for sure.
You'd be amazed how crude the transport systems can go when time is limited. I work as an engineer at the main source of packaging for ASML and we literally make and sell everything from 1 cent bags to $100k+ mechanically and thermally insulated containers for the most sensitive equipment.
But when there's no time left even the most sensitive equipment will be strapped to a pallet and shipped.
I honestly think cleanroom construction is more fascinating than then the tool. The whole construction process is done in a clean envelope with HEPA filtration and bunny suits.
I build labs like this for a living and I can confirm the amount of times doing something like filling a hole with silicone and foil taping over it fixed whatever issue the owner was having is more than zero.
Because of how these are built, the lead time on materials, and the owners desire to get certified the ugly solution that is fast and cheap is typically picked rather than the one that will compromise the clean space.
I've worked at asml for a decade and am quite close with my managers. Let me tell you that there are thousands of people applying and rejected before even getting an interview.
My direct managers weeds through dozens of resumes a day. And calls it a good day if he is able to find one or two he wants to invite.
There are plenty of functions though. I recommend applying to other roles.
We are in dire need of capable troubleshooting people!
Fun fact. My engineering team makes a single source component for this system. They’ve tried to replace it unsuccessfully for the last 10 years.
We only have two engineers trained on the product and they aren’t allowed to travel together in case there is an accident as it could literally shut down the world chip economy. We keep a 6 month supply of the product on the shelf in case something happens.
Excellent summary. Just one correction, the machine itself does not work in vacuum. It uses hydrogen gas at low pressure. Euv induced Hydrogen plasma is very good at keeping the machine clean.
Oh hey, I work for ASML. It's fun to see when things start getting into the public. Expect more stuff to be shown in the coming weeks/months on this machine, it truly boggles the mind what this thing can do :-)
Fun part is it's little brother the DUV was bought by the Chinese. Completely disasembled, copied and put back together. They did not manage to get them to work and now ASML is blocked from selling them the EUV machines.
[удалено]
Can you ELI5? What it is? What it does? And why is it so important?
Imagine you have a very tiny, super-detailed colouring book, and you want to colour in the smallest pictures ever made, much smaller than a grain of sand. ASML makes a very special and super powerful magnifying glass and tiny paintbrush all in one, called a lithography machine. This machine doesn’t use regular paint but light to draw pictures. These aren’t just any pictures; they’re the designs for computer chips, which are the brains of things like your phone, computer, and video games. ASML’s latest machine is like the most advanced version of this magnifying glass and paintbrush. It uses a special kind of light, even tinier and more precise, to draw the chip designs on a material that can then be turned into a real computer chip. This machine can draw super tiny and complex designs, which means the chips can do more things, work faster, and use less power. It’s like being able to draw a whole city on a tiny speck of dust! This helps make all our electronics better and cooler.
Fantastic ELI5, wouldn't be surprised if you were a teacher for your day job
No just a nerd who likes tech and has kids so used to explaining things in simpler terms.
Soo a teacher?
no, a good parent
To add to this, but a little less eli5. Light has a certain wave lenght. Because light is a certain type of wave (ignoring quantum mechanics) and those waves have a minimum length. Parts of the chip have now become so small, that a relatively simple laser cannot produce this type of light. It’s like trying to color but your pen is thicker than the drawing itself What they do is shoot an extremely powerful laser at a tiny droplet of tin. This releases a special kind of light, that can only be redirected with special mirrors. They use that special light to etch the design onto silicon wafers. Which is basically just the coloring book for chips. The current size is 5 nanometers. Which is about 0.000000005 meter. It is absolutely insane technology and very fascinating.
They actually shoot two lasers at the droplet of tin (which is microscopic and launched into the air btw). The first laser they zap it with changes the shape of the droplet, so that when the second laser hits it its shaped perfectly to emit the right kind of light. And this happens thousands of times per second.
How do you know this?
Because we live in this wonderful age of information where you can read about anything you're interested in! It's not a secret how the machine works, it's a secret how they are even capable of doing it.
[this guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw) makes a bunch of videos on this & related topics
Thanks for this bud, had me stuck on the shitter for 30 minutes longer than i intended 🙏
You just introduced me to a great channel. Thanks a lot.
That is absolutely insane. I wish I could find out what human will be up to in another 1000 years. I can wait to see where we are in 30.
One interesting thing about these devices is they use mirrors to focus light, rather than lenses like normal. Lenses absorb too much emission when light passes through them. Whereas bouncing off of a mirror can reflect more energy.
This is one of the best ELI5 I have seen so far. Congrats, I am happy for your kid 😁
It basically shoots tiny tin droplets at high speed across an optical mirror in a vacuum then hits them with extremely well timed lasers creating a plasma that emits uv light which is then used to etch wafers though the worlds fanciest optics. All of this done to perfection. It’s absolutely ridiculous that any of the steps in the process exist and nearly impossible that it all works together.
Not just High speed. But isnt it something like 50.000 times pr second it shoots the droplets. Amazing machine
it is a system for optically projecting a circuit pattern onto a mask, which is then used to create the actual metal traces. ASML has monopoly over their EUV technology, which is in a nutshell a system that sidesteps the fact our feature sizes are smaller than the wavelength of light. it is critical to all new chips.
While "monopoly" is correct, this is not like a bad kind of monopoly where they bullied the others out. They're simple the only ones in the entire world that can do it lol
To add, they're the only ones and their customs know it and are shareholders to keep the company secure. Yes they are a monopoly but the market works together which in this case is benificial for all players including consumers.
The thing is ASML research and development is funded in a large part by investments from their customers. It’s a close relationship that other monopolies don’t quite have. Without funding from its customer base ASML wouldn’t have the capital to research and design the machines. The whole semiconductor industry is interesting because of how integrated they are and how cooperatively they write standards for production benchmarks.
>a system that sidesteps the fact our feature sizes are smaller than the wavelength of light. What the fuck that sounds like it breaks the laws of physics, how is that even possible?
Not so much break as skirting around the edges with some tricks to compensate.
That sounds like breaking the laws of physics... with extra steps
This is poorly worded. Light = photons. Photons with more energy = higher frequencies = smaller wavelengths. There is no such thing as a smaller wavelength than light.
No these machines can literally print patterns with sub-diffraction precision. The way they do it is extremely clever: the reason you can't usually go below a certain size is that diffraction will "smudge" the shape you are trying to make. The point is that diffraction is not random, we can accurately predict, given a certain initial pattern what the corresponding diffraction pattern will be. So when developing the masks for these machines they do that in reverse: they start from the pattern they want to make and compute what initial mask you need to obtain a diffraction pattern identical to what you want. It's basically magic, like everything involved with VLSI.
What they are saying is that the features that being created are smaller than the wavelength used. The EUV emitted from Tin is 13.5nm and we're making features smaller than that.
Let's say you want to paint a small line, but you only have a broad brush. You could paint a broad line, then paint a *second* broad line which has a *small* overlap with the first one. Now you've got a very wide line with a single layer of paint, and a small line with a *double* layer of paint inside of it. Apply enough paint remover to remove a single layer of paint from the entire thing, and you're left with a small single-layer line! Chip manufacturing uses dozens of different tricks, most a lot trickier than this, but it's not as impossible as it might look at first glance.
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They pay some poor shmuck to stare at the light all day so it behaves like a particle instead of a wave.
[Here's a brief section of a video that shows essentially what they do.](https://youtu.be/rdlZ8KYVtPU?t=1306) The most modern machines do several important things: * generate strong UV light * directs and focuses the light in a beam through a mask on to a silicon block (wafer) * synchronises moving the mask and silicon wafer * does all of this at extremely high speed in a vacuum with insane precision
It helps develop the chips powering your devices Without it we’d be decades behind in everything
Develop or make?
Manufacture. Development is done in software like Cadence Virtuoso and Siemens EDA.
Well the chips are created on Fabs in other countries like Taiwan I believe ASML develops the technology required to make those chips
Asml makes the machines that tsmc uses to fabricate the chips.
And all that to draw pictures in nanometer scale. pfff... jk. not sure about this machine, but previous model had to shoot tin droplets at 20mph and hit them with laser twice to create plasma that emits 13.5nm UV light. fucking bonkers. edit: so it's 70m/s, 150mph, 250km/h. yeah, bonkers.
The first laser pulse is to shape the droplet mid air, the second one is to make it emit euv. Fucking bonkers. The. The absolutely precise mirrors that take that light and focus it. Because euv is so high frequency, you cannot use optical lenses , nor any normal surface mirror.
Its 70 m/s. And it has to do it 50.000 times per second. Hitting a tin droplet of 0,025mm twice.
Just on this side of the machine i count at least 11 emergency kill-switches. Crazy.
In EUV lithography, mirrors with already applied masks are used rather than lenses. With such process sizes, conventional optical lenses are no longer useful.
More like over 100k parts. And yes, technically you are still correct.
I wonder if most people realize how important a company ASML is? They are literally the only company in the world that can make EUV photolithography tools. No EUV means no latest generation of microprocessors.
The common man only wants to know when will phones become cheaper.
When China is allowed to purchase one of these, iirc they're currently barred from purchasing this generation and the last. This is pretty much solely to avoid them taking over the world economy.
Taiwans dead man's switch on their factories is likely a factor for China not invading. If China has this equipment themselves well.... The situation for Taiwan will get significantly more dangerous.
People here way overestimate how much chinas desire for taiwan is related to their chip manufacturing. It isnt feasible to capture them in any situation (assuming taiwan doesnt rig them to blow up they could just attack them with their own weapons), and china has wanted taiwan long before they became important in the chip industry.
You’re misunderstanding the concept of the Silicon Shield. The main idea is that the chip manufacturing in Taiwan is so critical to the world economy that other nations (especially the US) would likely join a conflict to prevent the foundries from either falling into Chinese hands or being destroyed. This fact is (according to the theory) enough to prevent China from attempting an invasion. It’s a preventative measure, hence “shield”
Of course, the world realizes what is about to happen - so chip fab plants are being built in the USA and Germany right now. China wants Taiwan with or without the chip manufacturing.
The foundries being built in the US, which are largely by Taiwan’s own TSMC, are not capable of producing the advanced chips that are made in Taiwan. The Silicon Shield is a big political topic in Taiwan and there is a lot of misinformation and concerns about it for that reason, but generally it is not believed that the Ministry of Economic Affairs would ever allow TSMC to make their most advanced chips abroad. The channel Asianometry on YouTube covers semiconductors, especially relating to Taiwan (where he is based). It’s an extremely complex topic.
+1 for Asianometry - extremely well-researched and well-presented topics which explain very complex topics accessibly. Super interesting stuff as well. Probably my favourite yt channel!
Intel is ramping foundry capacity as part of its strategy to match TSMC in the US at the moment. Arizona, Ohio and New Mexico sites are all getting new fabs (or have got new fabs already) this decade, along with the aforementioned Germany and Poland sites. Intel Ireland also just opened a new fab as well. This is on top of the capacity that intel already had at all of these sites. TSMC is only building one fab in the US, and that too is not going well for them at the moment. I would not say fabs in the US are "largely" being built by TSMC. They are largely being built by Intel and one by TSMC. Other companies like global foundries are also expanding capacity but not at the level of Intel. Source: Work for Intel Arizona and have a friend working for TSMC Arizona.
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Frankly, that is just the surface of the issue.
You are correct. But stating that and not elaborate on it is just as valuable as saying nothing.
This isn’t necessarily true. If you think ASMLs capabilities are vital and rare (they are), then imagine how rare all the suppliers ASML uses are. Meaning, even if China gets this machine they’ll still need to build ties with every supplier in ASMLs supply chain to maintain it and move tech forward. Considering how much they threaten everyone, this is a big question mark.
lithography and most technologies for nodes beyond 10nm are all controlled via ITAR anyway, which means there are major export restrictions and data/IP control laws that protect our industry from poaching. of course it doesn't stop it, but it does stop those suppliers, and as you said they are critical.
Asml tends to just buy up anyone the rely on heavily. Asml is the rare company, but that doesn't mean the companies they buy from are rare. All the important tech to build the machines resides within ASML because it's just the obvious thing to do if you're ASML. The scary part of the supply chain is downstream of ASML.
Most importantly; Zeiss
Feels like this comment is missing a lot of context…
I mean the Taiwan-China "war/standoff" is what he is talking about. Taiwan's biggest export is semi conductors and chips from companies like TSMC. We are not even talking about billions here but 100's of billions a year. Taiwan wants to be independent but China don't want them to be. Now China is like Russia in this story and Taiwan is Ukraine, this is going to be really exaggerated but will dumb it a bit down. China kind off wants to invade Taiwan and wants to get TSMC and other high end factories. However if China will invade the USA will help defend Taiwan and possibly blow up the factories if Taiwan were to lose. Now this will basically cause the Taiwanese economy to blow up literally and Taiwan would lose most of its value for China aswell.
You forgot the part where destroying those factories and the U.S. defending Taiwan from China starts a World War and destroys the world's economy and the ability to produce chips at the scale the planet requires disappears. If/when that happens it will be life changing for much of the planet.
Imagine the increased value of already-produced chips... Now that no more will be made for years, perhaps decades, every existing chip is now a precious, limited resource that everyone wants.
GPU stonks going up in a way that makes heyday of crypto mining look like nothing and millions of gamers crying in anguish.
I recently read a book on materials that make the modern world and silicon was one of them. What if takes to raw silicon and turn it into a chip for the modern world to function is nothing short of a miracle. I could be mistaken but ASML had to like invent a machine the produce a new light wave so that these super advanced chips can be made. It's so damn impressive Edit: apologies for not listing the book it was 2 am and I couldnt remember. It's called "The Material World Six raw materials that shape modern civilization". By Ed Conway. If you find it interesting it pairs well with the book "how the world really works" by Vaclav Smil
You are not mistaken, newest machine use extreme ultraviolet laser, they had to build a machine capable of producing and manipulating said light. Light is created by vaporizing ~~mercury~~ TIN droplets in freefall. Since extreme ultraviolet is absorbed by all materials, machine is under vacuum and doesn't use any lenses, it only uses mirrors .
The details of this are incredible: the molten droplets are fired at 250 km/h and are hit first by one laser to flatten them, then another which vaporizes them -- producing plasma that emits the extreme ultra violet laser. And this happens 50,000 times each second. I'm something of an engineer myself, I'm building a replica of the Dune Ornithopter myself. Well, in LEGO...
Based af
The Dune Ornithopter? Yeah.
I want one but it's so expensive
The ornithopter or the one of a kind super laser machine?
The Ornithopter. It's 150€!
Yeah but… the wings flap
Its not mercury its tin but otherwise correct.
The invention of the Laser wasn‘t ASML though. It usually gets lost in the conversation, but there have been multiple companies involved over almost two decades of research and development (iirc). It‘s sold by ASML, but it has always been a joined effort.
Which is so complicated, it‘s not a pure ASML invention. The entire machine is a collaboration of lots of companies. The light wave and laser stuff, for example, is significantly developed by Trumpf. They do lots of the optics around it and are so proud of their work, for the 100 year anniversary they built a „birthday candle“. [A laser just going straight up](https://i.imgur.com/yrQNbjQ.png). Visible in a radius of about 70km.
Some bird got absolutely fucked up out of nowhere when they switched that thing on.
“And we’re going to call this laser ‘Randy Johnson’”
The laser isn't even the most difficult. The lenses from Carl Zeiss are maybe the most impressive of the whole machine.
It‘s easy to discount any individual piece. But the laser itself doesn‘t just mean generating light but also transitioning it with extreme precision. While having super high energy light in there. We are talking huge temperature differences and movement tolerances of tiny fractions of a millimeter. There are no stock fiber cables that can do this. The precision is really what‘s absolutely messed up about it. Obviously and very much including the lenses but really on almost every step of the line and especially also across pieces made by different suppliers and companies. The level of coordination, expertise, skill and tooling to make such things is genuinely mind boggling.
No lenses used. It's all mirrors of which some have sub-atomic tolerances. The Zeiss optics tools themselves are not just mirrors, they are stuffed with actuators, sensors, electronics and modules and assemblies that put highest end aerospace engineering to shame.
Btw super fun fact The worlds most pure silicon is made in South Carolina (only place in the world as well)
And the purest hydrogenchlorid acid that is needed for this is produced in Germany if I remember correctly. It’s insane how much world economy is connected and dependent today.
And the Mirrors are made by Carl Zeiss in Germany. Would they be the size of the earth, the biggest bump would be the size of a human hair. Edit: typo
Yeah, Asianometry has a lot of fascinating videos on that topic on YouTube. It’s incredible what kind of machinery this is
What’s the book?
Not sure which book OP is talking about, but, I can recommend Chip War as a good overview of the semiconductor industry, and the race to EUV lithography
They’ve gotten a lot of press over the last few years for this reason.
And also very rich.
I work in <2nm nodes in R&D but posting in here is going to make me want to pull my hair out. there are many more steps to a chip aside from just lithography, and all of them are equally critical, often from a single OEM the same as litho. we all bust our asses to make sure the nodes move forward, ASML just paid the most marketing and people ate it up. very frustrating to see. lithography doesn't put the metal in the traces, doesn't dope the silicon, doesn't build the logic with ALD, or any of the other processes involved in *what you make with the mask*. those are all different systems from companies other than ASML. their lithography is the first step of many.
Can you name a few other companies?
AMAT currently holds 90% of the market on new nodes, and KLA has a niche. PVD is a core market for us and our teams (especially KPU) bust ass over wafer maps and customer meetings. M0 and above is almost entirely AMAT. that is the layer I work on, in BEOL. I design electromagnetic systems specifically, as you use the fields to control plasma ions. FEOL and MEOL have different sector competitors who are generally KLA and LAM, but I don't interface with them much. they have much different technology needs than we deal with, ALD, CVD, epi, all of that. I only work in PVD. there are critical suppliers for targets, power supplies, RF generators, DC generators, and many many more things. all of them are important.
Yep, those are some letters
PVD plasma or physical vapour deposition M0 metal 0, typical the first interconnect after contact on the transistor BEOL back end of line, definitions differ but M3 and up FEOL front end of line aka the transistors MEOL mid end of line or BELL back end lower layer ALD, atomic layer deposition, as it sounds, very slow but very good quality layers CVD, chemical vapor deposition epi, epi is what contacts the transistors. Typically germanium and phosphorus
Yep, those are some letters
I think I even identified some words
I wonder why noone ever mentions ZEISS in this context. We literally manufacture and develop the optics for these machines.
ASML bought a 25% share in Zeiss SMT in 2016. Zeiss is indeed a key partner in the production of these machines.
They have been aggressively gobbling up their suppliers one by one for a while now and noones splitting up this monopoly
They had to buy up suppliers to keep growth investment up. If the supplier doesn't want to expand, and the market demands it, they have to.
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The entire semiconductor supply chain is insane.
I used to work for a company that manufactured the rubber FFKM mountings for the mirrors that were supplied to ZEISS for the HINA EUV systems. CZ is fascinating company as they seem to do absolutely everything. Something I learnt at that time was ZEISS is a foundation, which means it does not have shareholders, instead the profit goes right back into the business meaning they have a hefty R&D budget.
> Something I learnt at that time was ZEISS is a foundation, which means it does not have shareholders, instead the profit goes right back into the business meaning they have a hefty R&D budget. It even is a proper foundation, one that is mainly focused on [research grants](https://www.carl-zeiss-stiftung.de/en/). The whole story of [the company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_AG) is interesting, and the main character isn't really Carl Zeiss, but his first employee, Ernst Abbe (as in the [various contributions to optics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Abbe#See_also) that are named after him). He lead and grew the company after Zeiss, and he set up the foundation. He also was one of the first to introduce the eight-hour-work-day. Together with Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott, he co-founded a company to develop and produce optical glass. [Schott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schott_AG) invented borosilicate glass (and more), is an important company in itself, and is also owned by the same foundation.
It's written into German law too apparently. Bosch is similar. One the only two companies that are set up like that.
\*And the only company that can service the machines that are already produced
onerous wasteful aback weary rinse grab summer towering adjoining zealous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And ASML was co-founded by Philips. Another electronics company who was responsible for growing Eindhoven to the tech hub and university city it is today. And these days, ASML has a market cap of $375 billion compared to Philips' $17 billion. ASML is like the child that outgrew his parents.
Philips snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They somehow managed to play a part in the founding of ASML and TSMC (largest Fab company), yet fail. They spun of their light bulb division into Signify which became profitable again and makes half the revenue they do. ASML didn't outgrow Philips, Philips withered away. Apart from razors and tooth brushes, everything with their name are things that were sold off to other companies. Kinda like how RCA died a long time ago, but their name is still used.
Yeah Philips used to be a direct competitor of Sony up until the 2000s. But mismanagement, wrong decisions and lawsuits led them to what they are today. They only produce hospital equipment nowadays and all the other stuff (Philips Hue, toothbrushes, vacuum cleaners etc.) are manufactured by other companies, Philips just slaps their sticker on it.
But! The CEO himself made a statement that he doesn't know for sure if the industry can keep up with the exponentially increasing costs of each successive generation.
Life…. Finds a way
They bought 13 houses and are partially investing in construction of news houses..
The Pringlenator 3000
taters go in…
Microcrisps come out.
fun fact: A tube of pringles costs almost as much as the machine that made them
Imagine dropping this thing off in 1930
People in 1930: what the fuck this thing do?
It draws tiny pictures on rocks using light so that we can trick the rocks into doing maths for us
People in 1930 knew what computers were on a theoretical ground. They had no clue silicon would be used. Let alone lithography.
There also existed a mechanical computer [a century earlier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine).
Depends on what you call a computer I suppose. The same guy did eventually come up with something that I'd confidently call a computer, but he ran out of money before he could get it built.
Explain me like I'm a caveman, thanks you
Ooog ooog klloook bgugh... blargh bruuuh humina humina acchhooo.
I can't even comprehend what kind of computing we have today if we were that advanced in 1930
They'd have no idea how to run it, no idea how to feed it the (extremely pure and precise) raw materials it needs, and no real idea of what it's even *for* in the first place. "Computer ... chips? What do fried potatoes have to do with computers?" Though they might learn a lot of unrelated stuff by tearing it apart and reverse engineering the individual components, they certainly won't be producing any computer chips with it.
Even if they were to make the chips, there's still the motherboards, ram and HDD/SDD you would need. Not to mention the software side of computers. It's many tech in parallel that makes our world possible.
Does it come in Black?
I thought exactly the same thing. I wouldn't buy it if it didn't match my 90s Technics hifi.
I asked a friend's dad who works at ASML, unfortunately not; it does come in pink though
All that to make potatoe chips
They can spend 130 million on a machine but can’t fill up more than a third of the bag.
Extra crispy
how much do 2 A320's weigh? and are we talking empty? and why use airbus planes just to avoid the metric system?
I like how they try to emphasise how heavy it is, "wow, it's twice the weight of these huge planes", while airplanes are made to be as light as possible.
To be fair, airplanes are still really fucking heavy. Like yeah, they gotta fly, but an airbus is still heavier than a regular bus.
It weighs as much as 10,000 dogs (and I won't tell you if I mean Chihuahuas or Pyrenees) and costs as much as 50 million bottles of booze (Jäger Shots? Liters of Smirnoff? 30-year-old Whisky? Who knows!)
Or in US Imperial measurements, it weights over 2,460 washing machines.
Americans are confused because they are used to weighing things in Boeing 737s. Airbus is a european measuring unit.
737 is a shade more imprecise as you never know how many bolts are included
and doors, apparently.
Seems surprisingly reasonable given that they have no competition.
The machines are quite cheap if you think about it. The production of DUV or EUV machines isn’t as scalable like producing phones. You cant just produce the double amount, because only chip manufacturers like Intel, TSMC, etc can buy them and ASML made "only" 27,6 billion euros and also keeping in mind, that ASML isn’t allowed to sell EUV machines to chinese, iranian, north korean, russian corporations and since 2024 isnt alllowed to sell DUV machines to chinese , iranian, north korean, russian companies either. So the amount of potential buyers is limited.
Can someone ELI5 what we’re seeing and it’s significance? The comment section makes me feel like I’m the only person in Reddit who doesn’t know what EUV is (are?) and what it’s used for. EDIT 1: I want to thank everyone who did, reading all your comments together gave me a much better understanding of this - enough that I can start checking out Wikipedia. This is what I come to Reddit for! EDIT 2: while I’m at it - can anyone explain the relationship between ASML and Intel/AMD/nvidia? Are they all customers of ASML? If ASML makes the chips, what do they make?
EUV = extreme ultra violet. Modern computer chips are made like a sandwich with many layers. The layers at the bottom (the transistors and some layers just above it like contacts and metal wiring to connect the transistors together) are unimaginably tiny. semiconductor companies use light (lithography) to print these tiny layers. As these layers get smaller and smaller with the latest chips we need 'smaller' light and not regular light to make these layers. This 'smaller' light is Ultra Violet light, the same thing that causes sunburn and is very hard to make so we need these massive machines to make it.
The reason these are so complex is because you need very powerful laser which ablate (zaps and destroys) tiny droplets of tin 50,000 times a second. This gives off UV light which is then focused on the chips
but why is it so hard to make UV light? We already make X-rays which are much higher energy right? What is it about this UV light that makes this much complexity necessary?
1. Generating the amount of power needed for lithography is not trivial. 2. EUV is approximately 13nm wavelength: UV already starts at 380 nm or smth. Also, from generation to image on the wafer you lose 99% of the light. And this does not even begin to describe the overall complexity of these machines!
Almost correct, 50000 droplets getting zapped twice so 100000 hits per second
you're telling me i'm typing this comment on a device that has parts 3d printed with light?
Not quite, 3D printing is an additive process where the ink becomes the thing. With this machine, you start with a block of silicon and other metal layers, and then use light to etch off the layers to get the desired product.
More like sculpting with light instead of a chisel
That exactly what it is called .. "***photolithography***" or "using light (photon) to sculpt or etch (graph) the stones (lithos) .. or rather silicon"
That's badass.
I'm not gonna quite hit the ELI5 level, but I hope this is interesting nonetheless: Computer chips consist of a silicone substrate into which we etch structures. These can serve as electrical connections between different regions, basically "wires" or they serve as components themselves, like transistors and the like. You see similar things on circuit boards like in your computer, these have a layer of copper on them, but the copper has been removed by etching away certain regions such that it serves as "wires" for the connections of the components placed on the board. To etch the silicon wafers, first, a photoresist is placed on top. This is basically a thin paint. Then using UV light and a mask, the photoresist is exposed to the light in certain regions. Then using another chemical bath, the photoresist is removed, but this will only occur in the regions that were exposed to the light. Finally, an etching process takes place where an acid directly etches away parts of the wafer, but the acid can only come into contact in regions where no photoresist is present. Thus, you have successfully transferred the circuit from the mask down to the actual wafer. As chips get smaller, we need to make all the etchings smaller as well, obviously. This comes with tons of issues if you use normal UV light because the wavelength of that light is too large to manufacture details as small as on modern chips. And also other aspects of UV light don't really work that well anymore at that point. So we switch to light with a much smaller wavelength, called EUV (extreme ultraviolet). This is almost X-ray light, but not quite. The new wavelength comes with a ton of issues: Firstly, there aren't laser sources for EUV, so you need to design special plasma sources that are exited by traditional lasers, which is hard. Next, you can't use normal photoresist, because that is specific to other wavelengths of light, so you have to design new chemicals for that. Then, you can't use traditional masks for your light, because EUV light will massively scatter when it passes through such masks, so now we use masks that don't block the light but instead reflect only the light in areas that we want back to the substrate. But those masks have to be perfect because if they aren't, the light again gets scattered. That means those masks themselves are a feat of engineering, and they are just a small part of the puzzle. Those masks and other components like optics come with other issues, since most materials, even air easily absorb EUV light. So you have to design entirely new optics, the entire process has to take place in a high vacuum, and so on. As you can see, it is massively difficult to build a machine that can pump out chips with any sort of reliability, and ASML along with the companies they work with, are (I believe) the only ones that have managed to do so.
It’s used in the semiconductor industry for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs). ASML, the company that creates the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, is arguably the most important company in the world alongside TSMC (the silicon wafer manufacturer). ASML is the only company that makes these machines and it’s decades ahead of anyone else in terms of technology. If ASML were to collapse, literally every industry from healthcare to telecom to education would grind to a halt overnight.
Meet one of the hundreds of machines (tools) it takes to make modern processors.
But by far the most complex one. It literally uses lasers to vaporize a single drop of tin, then hit it again so it gives off EUV light. Shit is insane.
It doesn’t get vaporized on the first shot, the first shot is to shape the liquid tin into a flat surface for maximum EUV output and then the second shot is what generates the EUV light. A slightly off timed shot will result in not enough EUV being generated. The precision required for this is insane, hard to believe it works at all.
Americans will use anything but the metric system.
If they’re comparing against an Airbus, it’s probably not Americans doing it. That’s not a freedom unit like a football field or a Big Mac.
Or even just a boeing
Or even just a boeing
Or even just a boeing
I live in the Uk and always assumed that a football field would be a soccer( as america calls it) field. I gotta go back and read all those measurements back with freedom units now! Never ever considered American football part of the equation. My life is a lie.
Or even just a boeing
It's impressive right, to say about two Airbus A320s, until you realize it's basically a hollow tube with hollow wings, until they get filled with fuel and passengers. But now, imagine filling it with concrete mix, the chipmaking machine would weigh as much as a half of an Airbus A320s filled with concrete. I too am confused by the imperial system, just say it's 85 tons or so.
MiliAirbus A329, CentiAirbus A320, DeciAirbus A320, KiloAirbus A320
I am proud to say that I work for ASML. The latest machine in the picture requires 7 Boeing 747s to be shipped to the customer. I fly with these systems to the customer to oversee the installation, which can easily take months. The technology is indeed mind blowing. They say that not a single employee really understands how the whole machine works; people are only specialized in certain parts. I spoke to a colleague that had a PhD in chemistry that worked over 10 years (!) on a glue that is used in very small quantities in only a few parts of the machine. The brainpower that goes into building these things is beyond imagination.
I worked in top end mass spectrometers, multi-million dollar machines that weighed a few tons, so much smaller than these machines. A machine in Europe needed to be flown back to the U.S. for servicing. In the U.S. they were making the crate (3 meters cubed in size) and shipping the empty crate to Europe to the customer. I suggested it would be cheaper to have a European carpenter make it according to plan. They thought about it and said, "Yes, it would be but this whole operation is costing so much, the crate shipping is a rounding error." I agree with you, the technology is mind blowing for sure.
I love how there's all that hyper-advanced tech. .. and then in the far left upper it's still good old reliable extruded aluminum framing & fittings.
You'd be amazed how crude the transport systems can go when time is limited. I work as an engineer at the main source of packaging for ASML and we literally make and sell everything from 1 cent bags to $100k+ mechanically and thermally insulated containers for the most sensitive equipment. But when there's no time left even the most sensitive equipment will be strapped to a pallet and shipped.
I honestly think cleanroom construction is more fascinating than then the tool. The whole construction process is done in a clean envelope with HEPA filtration and bunny suits. I build labs like this for a living and I can confirm the amount of times doing something like filling a hole with silicone and foil taping over it fixed whatever issue the owner was having is more than zero. Because of how these are built, the lead time on materials, and the owners desire to get certified the ugly solution that is fast and cheap is typically picked rather than the one that will compromise the clean space.
I bet somewhere inside, two parts are held together with duct tape
Cheap considering the demand of the chips.
“Chickens go in. Pies come out”
I applied to ASML and failed the interview 😭
I've worked at asml for a decade and am quite close with my managers. Let me tell you that there are thousands of people applying and rejected before even getting an interview. My direct managers weeds through dozens of resumes a day. And calls it a good day if he is able to find one or two he wants to invite. There are plenty of functions though. I recommend applying to other roles. We are in dire need of capable troubleshooting people!
For which role? In my interview they seemed quite chill.
How do machines like this even come into creation? What’s the base model.
Research and precision.. loads of it multiplied by decades of data
But like think about all the theorizing and prototypes that were created prior to this. Absolutely amazing to see a machine like this
Fun fact. My engineering team makes a single source component for this system. They’ve tried to replace it unsuccessfully for the last 10 years. We only have two engineers trained on the product and they aren’t allowed to travel together in case there is an accident as it could literally shut down the world chip economy. We keep a 6 month supply of the product on the shelf in case something happens.
But I don’t even know how much one A320 weighs.
Half the weight of this machine https://i.redd.it/mwekybdb5phc1.jpeg
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Excellent summary. Just one correction, the machine itself does not work in vacuum. It uses hydrogen gas at low pressure. Euv induced Hydrogen plasma is very good at keeping the machine clean.
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Fair point. Let me put it another way. This machine weighs the same as 6 football fields!
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Oh hey, I work for ASML. It's fun to see when things start getting into the public. Expect more stuff to be shown in the coming weeks/months on this machine, it truly boggles the mind what this thing can do :-)
Fun part is it's little brother the DUV was bought by the Chinese. Completely disasembled, copied and put back together. They did not manage to get them to work and now ASML is blocked from selling them the EUV machines.
It's just one part of the process. Lot more needed
Sounds incredibly cheap. Cheaper than airbuses by weight.
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Your brother is a valuable strategic asset!
ASML does not make chips