We are taught that fabs are not treated as factories but as hazardous chemical storage plants. On top of that, we work with high pressure and high power systems.
Fires have accounted for the most damage to fabs over the years; however, this situation is different.
The site is not a fab, it is a ASML manufacturing plant. This plant does not produce chips. It produces parts for the ASML machines. It makes the tables the wafer moves on and the frame the mask moves on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH6Urfqt_d4
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mask
Downstream effects of this fire will reduce the uptime of the machines and the delivery of promised machines to our customers.
To plug ASML. Speaking as a new grad. If you are in hardware, physics, nanoscience, simulations. ASML is the best company to work at if you want to learn. I get exposure to maybe the most complex engineering system is the world. The scale, complexity, details, and just hardcore technology is mind-blowing. I am plugging ASML because it is not widely know and I would love if fellow engineers had the opportunity to work here. I absolutely love the work I do.
Internal software is messy. Testing is also messy. Lots of things need to be automated. End of the day, it’s a bunch of hardware people.
The exciting stuff are the physics simulations. Modeling how lens aberrations affect the light that passes through and how to correct for that.
And how can the risk managers know so much about potential regressions? Are they a panel of former engineers?!
So many questions
A company like ASML gives me hope. Do you know by chance if there are similar companies (complex engineering, with physics, maths, chemistry, computer science, ...) that are located in Switzerland ?
I've only worked with their products and not a whole lot with the people but Sensirion [0] is very close to Zürich and is ranked one of the best employers in Switzerland while seemingly being at the intersection of the things it seems you're interested in.
Switzerland is also full of manufacturing equipment suppliers (e.g. Schaublin and GF Machining Solutions, the entire "Watch Valley") and manufacturing is full of intersections between physics/maths/chemistry/software engineering.
Plus there's the pharmaceutical companies.
For a small country, I think Switzerland is about the best place for you to be.
AFAIK, Switzerland is full of such companies. Especially since CERN and many top universities and research institutes are there.
The environment is nice, but the area personally didn't work out for me.
We supply the optics to ASML and also make our own semi equipment directly sold to fabs. Lots of growth and interesting challenges at the cutting edge of physics.
Given that it is the factory acquired from Berlin Glas in 2020, surely its capacity would only "just" be coming online at ASML and they have pre-existing capacity elsewhere ?
Bit of a strange question ?
Competing with ASML in any sort of serious form would need more than just stealing some IP, it would need $$$ measured in the many billions.
ASML does have competitors, Canon and Nikon being the obvious two. But ASML has better technology than them, which is why continues to dominate the market.
ASML's model is not dissimilar to Apple's. Throw money at R&D like nobody's business, make some quality company acquisitions along the way, reap the rewards.
ASML basically have a 100% market share in EUV, 95% market share in ArF tools, 20% in Dry tools.
My limited understanding of the market is that basically ASML will be untouchable until at least the 2030's.
There are about two companies like ASML in the whole world, and there are maybe a dozen consumers of their machines, companies like TSMC or Samsung. ASML is in an effective monopoly position.
It's much like asking if you can open a competing company to build nuclear submarines. Technically you likely can.
I once freelanced at a startup that was building a machine that could compete with ASML's 30 year old machines. Those are still being used, resold and refurbished so one of those refurbishing companies (made up of ex ASMLers ofc) thought they could build new ones from scratch.
It worked (after a series of bankruptcies, restarts and acquisitions I might add - it was a rocky ride but not for technical reasons). That doesn't mean they will ever be able to catch up to ASML, or even intend to, but it's clearly possible for ex ASML people plus some young new engineers to build a lithography product. I bet with a few extra years patience you can do without the ex ASML people altogether.
This means that if eg China wants to have their own chip industry, and the US keeps preventing ASML from selling their best machines to China like they currently do, all the Chinese government has to do is encourage a few dozen lithography startups to happen, aimed initially at the low-end of the market. Add some protectionism (eg import tariffs on any chips that could be made by Chinese machines), wait a few decades, and done. I'm pretty sure it'll happen.
What I value is the opportunity to be see technology and scale of this caliber.
The sheer size of the supply chain you need to create to make a working machine is massive. It's one of the reasons why ASML got ahead of the Japanese companies that tried to do everything in-house.[3][4]
It took 17+ years and €6 billion in R&D to get EUV working [5] (as such EUV litography became feasible in the 90s), so ASML's leading position on the market is justified. They have to recoup all the costs, so they will make sure to keep the market leadership through all legal means.
My guess is that if someone would come up with a more efficient EUV plasma generation or better optic systems, ASML would acquire the company and take over the technology.
Regarding the negotiating power, some companies like GlobalFoundries couldn't afford ASML's EUV machines, so they parked their EUV plans [6]. It's only big players like TSMC, Samsung and Intel that can afford this tech and all these companies know their worth and prices. ASML needs money to pay for the R&D and can't afford to lose it's biggest customers that are also buying their non-bleeding edge technologies (DUV litography).
I don't know the business side of things, but it's definitely going to be interesting to see what happens with competition in the EUV litography in the upcoming 10+ years.
EUV litography and silicon-based chips have their physical limits, so there might be other ways to continue improvements.[7]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-xtal-court-i...
[2] https://semiengineering.com/extending-euv-to-2nm-and-beyond/
[3] https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/05007.html
[4] https://youtu.be/SB8qIO6Ti_M?t=673
[5] https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems
[6] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-a...
[7] https://semiengineering.com/making-chips-at-3nm-and-beyond/
Some are however, remote friendly in the way that they do offer WFH options, but that means you live around the office/HQ for legal and security reasons and can WFH every now and then, with the agreemant that you have to show up at the office when required, not you get employed form anywhere in the world you happen to reside in and keep working from your living room, that's a no-go from the start for any established company in the semi field.
Also, most of them believe in a culture where shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration is key to development success and innovation, and having worked in the industry I have to agree. When the industry was forced remote kicking and screaming in 2020 "thanks" to Covid, morale and junior onboarding suffered a lot since the whole processes and culture was built on decades of shoulder-to-shoulder work where the only way to learn was, besides the necessary years in academia, to hang around seasoned graybeards and get your hands dirty with them vs self study with Googling the answers on stack overflow, so this process couldn't (management also didn't want to) suddenly uproot it and convert it to fully remote.
Basically, a material scientist, optics engineer or physicist would be at the core of the main money making products (lithography machines) and therefore be way more valued than SW devs which tend to be treated more as cost center in this industry (in general but can't speak for ASML), so if you like being at the core of the product and be treated like a rockstar, then I'd stay in the SW industry and avoid the semi industry all together (I worked 7 years as a dev in semi, before leaving it for good for the SW industry, but the graybeards I worked with in analog design with deep domain knowledge in RF were making bank and were pampered like rockstars, whereas SW and FW devs were treated like replaceable cogs that could be easily offshored without any losses).
An example I know of is that we use feed forward control to make sure layers are aligned and printed with nanometer precision. Simulations are needed in this instance to model effects like thermal expansion, pressure waves, and much more.
There is also more work in metrology (measurement) with stuff like scanning electron microscopes, lasers, flow, etc.
You can find more about this by looking at the companies ASML has acquired or ASML's job postings.
This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage.
It's insane for humanity to continue putting their eggs in one or two baskets.
My argument is that semiconductor manufacturing must also be added to that list. A natural disaster or a war between two countries shouldn't lead to wide-spread famine or throw humanity back into the dark ages.
Supply chains and globalization should be very much rethought in this century.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
If there is no demand then yes, absolutely. It's normal for countries (inc. the US) to run and subsidize their infrastructure at a loss if it is critical to their national security.
Why not do it for just about every critical part of life? Why only do it for the "being ready to kill adversaries" subset?
Mandatory trade relationsips and closely interconnected supply chains are an important factor in preventing larger wars.
The reality slowly dawning on us is that if goods cross borders, soliders don't have to.
Kinda funny when you consider we literally put all our eggs in exactly two baskets, both on males and females.
Many things are still unclear including:
- how big the damage is - how long it takes to operate again - how it was possible to happen/how it happend
The linked article basically says the same.
I assume making those machines is pretty crazy as well.
Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war?
But since it is stupidity and given the track record of the countries involved, I wouldn't completely rule out that someone might pull a stunt like this.
Edit: funny that people here think that this is statement is somehow something that could be considered a contentious topic.
semiengineering has a startup section with investments for people that are more interested in facts than emotions:
1. One side thinks[1] that it will hurt the other side more than it does to itself.
2. Politically it can handle/sell the cost of such an action.
3. There is a leader who is ready to execute it as his agenda.
[1] Only have to think so, it doesn't have to even be true.
(sabotage has so many other risks that it's not a good idea)
If it is, at best only temporarily. The US is perfectly capable of setting up its own complete supply chain if there were the political motivation and do so in a relatively short time frame. China is perfectly aware of this so it will never become a serious issue, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot and cutting themselves off from our (sometimes unwilling) technology transfer.
EUV step and scan systems are roughly the size of a bus, fractal system complexity and sophistication that rivals the LHC, and mirrors with a roughness two orders of magnitude finer than what the JWST space telescope has to work with (namely .2nm compared to 20nm).
Please do not underestimate the difficulty of manufacturing EUV systems, ASML only manages to build a few dozen a year for a reason :)
That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.
Infrastructure is pretty bad (try getting good internet or mobile reception, even as a business), as are labor and tax laws and the motivation of most employees is pretty low as a result (high security, limited mobility - need tenure to retain the security, low impact of actions - both under and over performing), additionally, everything is a bureaucratic nightmare, better get out the fax machine.
On the labour and tax laws side, work life balance is a thing, presenteeism is not. Being comfortable living your actual life is important to people, and while the average person won't get exceptionally wealthy (software developers are well paid, but not exactly millionaires) they will at least enjoy their lives, along with a large portion of the rest of the population.
I can't speak for other people, but career progression is still a thing, aspirations to be better at what you do is possible without a carrot and stick.
Things are bureaucratic, i agree, but there is also some pragmatism to it you don't notice until you're in it.
Labour and tax laws can be an advantage (some people are more productive when not under stress, which is much more of a factor if you can get fired for whatever reason).
Employees at startups are easily 50% international. Someone willing to move to a different country has already shown more initiative and willingness to take risks and forgo the comfort of safety than the vast majority of people will ever do.
News article (only in German): https://www.n-tv.de/regionales/niedersachsen-und-bremen/Bran...
Tesla has a fire incident last year (claimed by leftists)
OVH had a fire incident last summer, but Strasbourg is actually France, who knew!
It later turned out that one container had over-pressure and a chemical escaped trough an outlet... no people were harmed though but every leave in the vicinity turned completely brown...
> Eine automatische Reinigungsanlage sei auf etwa 200 Quadratmetern in Brand geraten.
> According to the fire brigade, only part of the plant was affected by the fire. An automatic cleaning system caught fire on around 200 square meters.
https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/news/Brand-bei-ASML-Folg...
"At this point it is too early to make any statement on the damage or whether the incident will have any impact on the output plan for this year. It will take a few days to conduct a thorough investigation and make a full assessment. "
https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2022/fire-incide...
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/asml/after-hou...
Having said that: Berlin is a very "un-German" city in the sense that it seems unable to get things under control. At first they were broke ("poor but sexy", as the slogan went), then they where overwhelmed by tourists and aspiring artists, and now there's not a single free apartment anywhere. The bureaucracy is slow and everything is forever under construction. The BER airport exemplifies all of this at once.
Having said that, it's one of my favorite places in the world: there's a vibrant, multicultural art community, everything is more laid back, it has plenty of beautiful corners and parks, and you don't need a car at all.
It's a city with a special character, but I can also understand those who would rather live in a more predictable place.
It's as close as one can get, with about 200m missing because, I guess, the driver decided nobody would care about the rest of this godforsaken industrial area. Or they got a call at exactly that moment that Google would stop gathering photos to spite the criticism of data protection advocates that was annoying them at the time.
ASML manufacturing, OVH data center, and even Astra Zeneca's largest vaccine manufacturing site, which is perhaps one of the largest in the world, costing them enormous sums in lost contracts in the early stages of the COVID vaccination effort.
The best question to ask is, who benefits? It seems that more often than not it is a large American company or conglomerate.
