ASML unveils EUV light source advance that could yield 50% more chips by 2030

[et1337]

This video is a really cool dive into EUV for the uninitiated (me) https://youtu.be/MiUHjLxm3V0?si=kEPSicC2WXYhcQ6L

[eddyg]

Or this video, which came out before Veritasium's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg

[hinkley]

The whole “exploding tiny drops of metal” in the middle of this is just Loony Toons. This machine is literally insane and two of the companies I am long-long on would be completely fucked without it.

[seanalltogether]

The thing I didn't understand after watching that video was why you need such an exotic solution to produce EUV light. We can make lights no problem in the visible spectrum, we can make xray machines easily enough that every doctors office can afford one, what is it specifically about those wavelengths that are so tricky.

[jpfromlondon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw

Asianometry has lots of videos on ASML, this one is specifically about the light sources.

[culi]

Here's your link without the surveillance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0

[throw0101a]

> https://youtu.be/MiUHjLxm3V0

PSA: the si (along with pp) parameter is used for tracking purposes:

    ?si=kEPSicC2WXYhcQ6L

consider cutting whenever possible.

[greggsy]

Asianometry has half a dozen or so videos of you want some really deep dives on the tech and industry (with sources, since we’re on HN)

[hinkley]

Okay this is weird.

> The key advancements in Monday's disclosure involved doubling the number of tin drops to about 100,000 every second, and shaping them into plasma using two smaller laser bursts, as opposed to today's machines that use a single shaping burst.

This is covered in that video. Did they let him leak their Q1 plans?

[ghxst]

Highly recommend this video as well, he has a bunch more worth watching. https://youtu.be/rdlZ8KYVtPU?si=wgjkkNDSzuuS3lVK

[apexalpha]

One of those odd moments where a YouTube title looks like clickbait but is actually, factually correct.

+1 for this video, and the Branch education one. Well done to both teams.

[xnx]

> The company's researchers have found a way to boost the power of the EUV light source to 1,000 watts from 600 watts now.

> "We see a reasonably clear path toward 1,500 watts, and no fundamental reason why we couldn't get to 2,000 watts."

[exabrial]

Why this is a big deal:

Right now the only way to make "bright" EUV (100-200 watts) is to spray fine drops of a metal in a stream, then target and blast each drop with a laser.

pretty wild way to make light.

[TheJoeMan]

And they’re now going to hit each drop three! times instead of two, and increase to 100,000 drops per second. Very hard to imagine.

[onjectic]

> SAN DIEGO, California

> to help retain the Dutch company's edge over emerging U.S. and Chinese rivals

Great news, but what a strange attempt to equate the U.S. and China in this and build a narrative. Cymer was founded in San Diego.

[petcat]

Yeah it's an interesting angle in the article. The EUV light source technology is completely designed, developed, and manufactured by Cymer in California, which is a US company that ASML acquired in 2013. If export control agreements were not in place then ASML would have never been permitted to acquire Cymer. And if they are not enforced then the US would almost certainly require ASML to sell Cymer back to US ownership, TikTok-style.

The reality is that it's American technology that is used in ASML machines so I don't know why the article tries to frame it like it's a competition.

[christkv]

I think the Japanese are also working on potentially competing technology

[tromp]

The light power increase is even more impressive at 67%:

> The company's researchers have found a way to boost the power of the EUV light source to 1,000 watts from 600 watts now.

with more on the horizon:

> We see a reasonably clear path toward 1,500 watts, and no fundamental reason why we couldn't get to 2,000 watts.

[KellyCriterion]

There is an excellent video from German CCC on how chips are produced from their last convention:

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

I can highly recommend this to everybody who is "somehow in tech or IT"

[throw0101a]

So how small are individual components (e.g., transistors) nowadays? Presumably there's a lower limit: once you're a few atoms across, it seems that you can't go any smaller (?).

[ahazred8ta]

Gates are about 30-50 nm wide, even though they're called '3nm' for marketing reasons.

[whazor]

This is about increasing output per machine via upgrades.

[ranger_danger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

[cyptus]

some gates are only 10-14 nm wide, thats about 50 silicon atoms!

[mschuster91]

End result: the AI industry will get 50% more chips, the rest of us plebs will still be waiting for new GPUs to hit the market...

It's impressive to see that there still was so much room left to improve EUV, but I can't help but be royally pissed off that it will be a looooong time before we the people see any practical benefit of it.

[adrian_b]

Yes, and these days both AMD and Intel have announced that their next generation of desktop CPUs, Zen 6 and Nova Lake, which are expected to have very significant improvements over the current CPUs (including much more cores for both and AVX-512 for Intel), have been postponed for next year, instead of being launched this year, as originally planned.

This delay is presumably caused by both the lack of production capacity at TSMC, which is busy with AI, and by the fear that any launch of a new CPU would be crippled by the impossibility to buy DRAM and SSDs for new computers.

[on_the_train]

This is a steep increase of power to get out of a vacuum system that is highly sensitive to temperature changes.

[pjmlp]

And what hard drives and memory slots would those chips be able to use?