Deedy Profile picture
Nov 26 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
A single fairly unknown Dutch company makes maybe the most expensive and complex non-military device ($200M) that builds on 40 years of Physics and has a monopoly responsible for all AI advancement today.

Here's the story of ASML, the company powering Moore's Law..

1/9 Image
ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines are engineering marvels.

They shoot molten tin droplets 50,000x/s with a 25kW laser turning it into plasma as hot as the sun's surface to create 13.5nm UV light —so energetic it's absorbed by air itself.

2/9
Each $200M machine contains mirrors that are the smoothest objects humans have ever created.

They're made with layers of molybdenum/silicon, each just a few atoms thick. If you scaled one to the size of Germany, its largest imperfection would be 1mm high.

3/9
This light goes through the mirrors onto moving 300mm silicon wafers at highway speeds (~1m/s) with precision better than the width of a SINGLE SILICON ATOM (0.2nm).

That's like hitting a target in SF from NYC with the accuracy of a human hair.

4/9
TSMC's 4nm process for NVIDIA H100 needs ~15 EUV layers (+80 DUV layers).

Each layer must align within nanometers. One machine processes ~100 wafers/hr. Cost? About $150K of chips per hour.

Other techniques cannot get the quality + throughput + cost to this level.

5/9
Why monopoly?

The supplier network:
— Zeiss (optics)
— Trumpf (lasers)
— VDL (frames)

40 years of co-development, 40,000 patents, 700+ suppliers. They own 24.9% of Zeiss's semiconductor div.

Replication would take decades + $100B+.

6/9
The complexity is astounding.

Each machine ships in 40 containers and takes 4 months to install. The supply chain spans 700+ companies. 100K+ parts per machine, 40K patents protecting it.

One missing component = global semiconductor disruption.

7/9
Only three companies can run cutting-edge EUV:
— TSMC (that makes GPUs for Nvidia)
— Samsung
— Intel.

ASML machines are the only way to make chips dense enough for modern AI. Each H100 has 80B transistors. The next gen will need >100B.

Impossible without EUV.

8/9
Rich Sutton's "The Bitter Lesson" is that general methods that leverage
computation and Moore's Law are the most effective for advancing AI research.

In the iceberg of AI technology, while LLMs are at the top, ASML is at the murky depths.

It has kept Moore's Law alive.

9/9

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More from @deedydas

Dec 4
A small company in the <1M city of Niigata, Japan has a monopoly on the equipment that makes every single modern iPhone and TV display on the planet.

Here's the story of Tokki, the most important company you've never heard of...

1/8 Image
Tokki makes just ~10 ELVESS machines a year.

Each one is a clean room within a clean room, stretching longer than an Olympic swimming pool, and can costs $ 100M+. They're the only ones who can do it.

2/8
These machines deposit layers of organic materials 1/2000th the width of a human hair. One speck of dust ruins everything - that's why they operate in vacuum chambers cleaner than an operating room.

3/8
Read 10 tweets
Dec 3
The middle manager is the biggest culprit of the "quiet quitting" SWE epidemic.

They have 0 incentive to fire. The entire job is bargaining for more headcount so they can get promoted.

They'll say "we are understaffed, we need more people" no matter how little they do.

1/4
If you have multiple levels of this, its often dysfunctional down the entire chain.

The non technical middle manager are the worst culprits. ICs can (and will) swindle them endlessly into their infinite timelines. I've never worked with a good one.

2/4
A competent middle manager should be able to do the job of all their reports and say "if you think that takes 2 months, you need to find another job. It shouldn't take more than 2 weeks." (and be right)

Their managers need to keep them accountable for each report.

3/4
Read 4 tweets
Dec 2
The youth of India spends money they don't have to play status games.

Multiple people making <₹50k ($600)/mo in their 20s are buying
— iPhone & other Apple products (on interest)
— Coldplay / Dua Lipa concerts
— trips to Thailand / Vietnam / Goa

They save little to no money.
I’ve been in India and multiple people have told me they’re essentially broke after multiple years of working.

Income asymmetry amongst similar social groups is high which can force this “suddenly my college buddy makes 90LPA but I’m at 12”

The peer pressure to “fit in” is high
~10M people in India made 20+LPA ($25k/yr)

~10M iPhones were sold in India in just 2023. 70% of them were on EMI (interest). Image
Read 4 tweets
Dec 1
A viral thread about a growing number of "quiet quitting" SWEs was seen 15M+ times (and led to a crack down at Box)

My DMs have been full of ppl telling me that people badge in for 30mins/day and go on 5+ intl vacations/yr at these companies.

Here's what went down..

1/4 Image
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— Stanford researcher concluded ~10% of SWEs are ghosts
— Box Founder / CEO said "fml", his mom texted him, and then he sent a company-wide email
— Karpathy backed it up saying he's heard it happen

2/4 Image
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— Paul Graham hat-tipped Box founder Aaron for dealing with it respectfully
— Alex Cohen had a "never deleting this app" moment
— Marc Andreesen even mentioned mouse jigglers on Joe Rogan.

3/4
Read 4 tweets
Nov 28
Software engineers aren't lazy.

They just have no incentive to be productive at bigCos.

Here's why:
— No reward for simplicity / deleting things
— No prizes for doing it quickly (everyone assumes it was easy)
— Little interesting work. Business needs are often boring.

1/5
— No dearth of alternate career options. Get fired? Just change jobs
— No accelerated career growth.
— No innovation. Middle managers only get fired for rocking the boat.
— No $$ reward. Stock goes up for reasons beyond your control.

2/5
— Not many firings. Cost of hiring and ramping up a replacement feels higher than keeping a mediocre SWE.
— No shareholder duty to fire. Although it happens, layoffs will rarely change the stock price.

3/5
Read 6 tweets
Nov 28
Using light as a neural network, as this viral video depicts, is actually closer than you think. In 5-10yrs, we could have matrix multiplications in constant time O(1) with 95% less energy. This is the next era of Moore's Law.

Let's talk about Silicon Photonics...

1/9
The core concept: Replace electrical signals with photons.

While current processors push electrons through metal pathways, photonic systems use light beams, operating at fundamentally higher speeds (electronic signals in copper are 3x slower) with minimal heat generation.

2/9
It's way faster.

While traditional chips operate at 3-5 GHz, photonic devices can achieve >100 GHz switching speeds. Current interconnects max out at ~100 Gb/s. Photonic links have demonstrated 2+ Tb/s on a single channel. A single optical path can carry 64+ signals.

3/9
Read 9 tweets

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