> You can buy a TSMC lithography machine, and it‘ll be delivered to you in much the same way as other equipment.
Each one of these machines costs half a billion dollars and is protected by some of the most stringent export controls on the planet.
It does raise an interesting philosophical question: if I bolt two ASML lithography machines together, is the resulting machine more complicated?
Right but it still gets put into boxes and flown over by a 747. Of course it‘s more complicated than that, but most contenders for complex machines are much more built in-place, and not a complete 'product' being assembled.
I asked the ASML rep at KubeCon who they were there for as nobody I knew had a quarter billion to spare. He told me they were just interested customers, but if I didn't want the newest machine I could get one for 70 million euros.
Also, I think the axis it‘s probably most complex on is precision of individual parts and of their combination. Arguably chips themselves are more precise as their 'parts' are so small, but they are much more homogeneous compared to the EUV machine, where tons of different materials and part sizes need to combine.