They can't simply choose to do the same thing twice. They might need to double the machines, facilities, and workers trained for the production of those components. Oh, wait. Not just that component, but every other specialized component of the lithography machine, and every specialized input for one of the specialized components. If there's a single one that can't ramp up production and they can't find a substitute for, there's no point in any of them doing that investment.

Presumably a lot of the machinery needed to build these components is incredibly specialized too. That machinery won't be purchasable off the shelf. It will be ordered custom with long lead times, and (again!) could have bottlenecks in production that make it simply impossible to deliver in large quantities.

I'd bet (with no supporting evidence, just a gut feeling) that this industry needs to know five years in advance what the demand for chips in a given process node is going to be just to set up the supply chains to manufacture the right number of lithography machines. If that estimate is wrong, it'll take so long to build up that infrastructure that you might as well not bother, and just try to get things right for the next node.

I got first-hand (virtual) experience with this playing Dyson Sphere. Late-game tech requires a whole web of dependencies. Doubling from 1x <shiny item> per minute to 2x <shiny item> means doubling the entire supply chain all the way down the line. It's not just doubling the factory making the thing, it's doubling the inputs, and the inputs to the inputs.

For example, the mirror might require extremely high purity silica, made in a top-notch cleanroom environment. To produce 2x, you don't just need 2x the raw material, you need 2x the air filtration systems, purifying machines, trained staff.

Which is fine, that large footprint can be doubled! But maybe this whole process is only going to be state-of-the-art for 5 years, and after that won't command top dollar.

Peak HN. Surely a casual brainstorm by a casual reader of the thread somehow unlocks all of the challenges that ASML is facing.

> What in the process wouldn’t work with this method?

Testing of EUV lithography machines is very complicated and slow process. You cannot scale it without magically cloning all the test engineers and technicians.

Doing twice as much of it wouldn't scale.

Making a super-flat mirror is extremely difficult and requires state-of-the-art facilities, and state-of-the-art equipment. And highly trained, experienced employees. And there aren't enough of any of that to scale rapidly.

It's not just about scaling 1 input. You have to scale the entire supply chain.

But then they’d get less money