ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law

Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by bradknowles on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:17AM (#33651405)

Building their machines takes a long time -- like a couple of years. It's also very labor intensive. And space constrained. Once the machine has been built and tested in Eindhoven, it has to be completely disassembled and shipped to the customer, then effectively completely rebuilt from the ground up. And there's a lengthy burn-in process where they have to tweak it for the specific local conditions -- which can vary if the machine has to be moved even just a foot to the left. Or if a truck drives by on a road a few miles away.

So, it's really hard to scale that process for building new machines.

They've got money burning in their pockets and no better place to spend it, so what do they do? Stock buybacks.

Disclaimer: I did a six month contract working for them several years ago, when they were towards the start of developing their EUV process. It was a real eye opener to have the tour of the facility and have everything explained to me.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by pammf on Friday November 18, 2022 @04:00AM (#33652124)

> Once the machine has been built and tested in Eindhoven

Veldhoven :)

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by isoprophlex on Friday November 18, 2022 @10:00AM (#33655655)

Silicon Veldhoven :^)

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by flakeoil on Friday November 18, 2022 @05:23AM (#33652757)

That's maybe exactly why they should spend some money on more production facilities.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by cinntaile on Friday November 18, 2022 @07:49AM (#33653837)

We were in a massive boom before, it is probably in their best interest to not try and increase their production facilities at a too fast pace. Building out facilities that are, after the boom, underutilized is not wise is a capital heavy industry such as this one.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by flakeoil on Friday November 18, 2022 @10:06AM (#33655737)

Sure, but the parent I commented on said "Building their machines takes a long time" as a reason for not building it out. Which I think is a bad reason.

I agree with you that the need maybe will not be there exactly when they have built out.

Also note that TSMC, Intel and a whole bunch of others are currently starting to build, or plan to build, new fabs (partly due to the new Chip Act). And they will need stuff from ASML.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by amelius on Friday November 18, 2022 @09:47AM (#33655463)

Here you see how they ship systems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9Q435KU_Y

I don't think they are "completely disassembled" before shipping.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by monocasa on Friday November 18, 2022 @10:40AM (#33656307)

I don't think that tells you anything about what's in the box; the shipping container is a custom clean room env designed to maximize use of space in a cargo plane.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by amelius on Saturday November 19, 2022 @05:09AM (#33668817)

Harddrives typically come in a vacuum sealed bag, so I wager they could apply the same technique here if the components were small enough.

My point is that the size of the container tells something about the size of the components. "Completely disassembled" would mean every nut and bolt would be taken apart, which I don't think is the case given the size of the container.

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Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law by monocasa on Saturday November 19, 2022 @12:42PM (#33672474)

Hard drives are not shipped anywhere near a clean room env. The inside of that box is probably one of the cleanest places on earth. It even blows other clean rooms like space craft manufacturing facilities out of the water.

And you're missing the fact that the outside of the box isn't a clean room, and it has to mate with the clean room at the customer facilities. A bajillion baggies of parts is a non starter if the outside of those baggies isn't a clean room env.

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