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My general take is all of The GPU design efforts are going toward Enterprise / datacenter graphics cards. They are just skipping a generation or two of consumer.

To Nvidia the biggest threat is a capex cut from big tech not another company in the same domain, maybe some Chinese companies but people aren't going to be moving off of Nvidia for large deployments in the short term even if some TPU/Tranium etc is used it's not close to Nvidia.

I have no explanation other than people, researchers are comfortable with it and don't want to switch.

A 4% stake doesn't even make Nvidia one of the top 3 holders of Intel stock... They'd be crucified for changing strategy for a 4% stake.

Also Nvidia arguably needs Intel more than vice versa, Intel now has SOTA fabs on the newest EUV technology, TSMC is at max capacity and they need to fight Apple and others for allocation...

> There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands.

This is a wildly ignorant comment. The R&D lab in NY State if anything is an effort to copy IMEC, the world's leading research organization when it comes to semiconductor R&D. They essentially set and define the roadmap for node advancements and then the industry follows by actually implementing their innovations at scale in their fabs. I guess they are technically not in the Netherlands, being located about 50 miles south of the Dutch border in Belgium. And they have in fact have an EXE system of their own, and have had access to ASML's high-na tools since before they were even commercially available

The US is currently aggravating practically every other country on the planet and writing like this only pisses everyone else involved all the more.

I'm not sure if it's wise to minimise the contributions of everyone else in the current climate tbh.

> There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands. The same reason that Cymer is still in San Diego instead of being relocated to Europe.

Why is the Netherlands government even allowing this?

> The actual EUV light source is developed and produced in California by Cymer, which ASML acquired in 2013.

Cymer was one of multiple vendors (Gigaphoton, XTREME) providing this sort of light source, and ASML acquired it because it couldn't achieve what they wanted (they needed 100+W and Cymer could only achieve 15W). ASML needed to control and fund the company, and add engineering talent, to achieve what they actually needed.

Oh and ASML bought Cymer because Gigaphoton (another company at basically the same stage of development as Cymer), being a Japanese company, objected to foreign control. Though if ASML knew the protectionist, insular direction the US was going to go they probably would rethink their past decisions.

So this retconning that Cymer is really the secret magic of ASML and the Netherlands is just stealing US ingenuity is hilarious stuff.

And for that matter, it is amazing how so often we hear about "American" tech that is actually overwhelmingly combining acquisitions and manpower from abroad. Like is an iPhone an "American" creation? LOL, no.

The most absurdly biased and inaccurate take on ASML I've ever seen, congrats.

If the machines are so easy to build and integrate, why isn't it happening in America?

ASML is the only real tech company in the EU. Just let them have this one :)

Also Japan has a monopoly on essential EUV materials like photoresists and mask blanks and pellicles. Japan is also the only country in the world that can produce a number of highly specialized ancillary machinery like the actinic light systems used to inspect EUV photomasks. ASML also acquired its e-beam inspection tech from a Taiwanese company. There's also no way ASML could run anything at production if it wasn't for TSMC and Samsung.

Not to mention the critical role of the US in its development. The core EUV light source was invented in San Diego!

LOL, no Mention of IMEC(Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre) in the EUV development process and the only reason that the US can restrict the ASML EUV equipment is the EUV Light source and mirror optics for that is partially US produced and the IP there falls under US IP/Export restrictions!

From ASML:

"ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source was developed and is manufactured at its facility in San Diego, California. Acquired from the US firm Cymer in 2013, the R&D team here developed the laser-produced plasma (LPP) system that fires lasers at tin droplets 50,000 times per second to generate EUV light."

ASMLs machines can easily be "one of the most sophisticated" without stepping on LHC or ITERs toes. I'm not sure ISS qualifies anymore. I would have went with JWST.

Can’t buy and ship those.

I love how ASML machines are shaped to the contours of a jet fuselage for this reason!

no.

neither of the observations gp made is dependent upon the definition of machine, nor is it dependent on the inclusion of the examples you brought up in that definition.

Then Apple M series is also a joint European-American effort, no? Since ARM is European?

Weirdly enough it never seems to work that way in discourse.

In that case the internet is mostly due to the Brits (invention of packet switching at the NPL by Donald Davies). Cheers!

Not even that, the company happens to be Dutch but it's employees are from everywhere. A company doesn't make anything, the employees do, especially in a sector like this.

The companies job is to hire well and create strong teams that work together.

Intel does not have their own version of this machine. This ASML machine is a component in a very large system of machines from many manufacturers that runs wafers automatically from machine to machine until a month later a chip comes out the other end. That system is “18A”. Intel designs, builds and operates that system. Intel does not make the machines, they buy them and figure out how to configure and operate them as a part of the system.

As I understand it, the machine also needs lots of 'normal parts' and can be designed differently to fit the factory and the automation. Like if you need a pipe, instead of buying it from ASML, you can buy it from a local hardware vendor. And parts of the ASML also break, and those parts would be directly shipped from the vendor that makes the part. ASML manages the integration between these parts and each part can have multiple vendors that makes them according to the specs.

Only the optics is an ... interesting way of phrasing it.

There was a great Economist article a while ago that talks about this. ASMLs moat isn't just the know-how to build the machines themselves. It's a network of suppliers all across Europe, specialized businesses doing one little part better than anyone else in the world.

This is the type of thing that Europe is still leading in, and it'll be incredibly hard to reproduce elsewhere.

You don't just need to figure out how to build an High-NA EUV machine. You need to figure out how to build or procure all of the parts that go into it. Many of these suppliers have exclusive contracts with ASML.

Here's the article, de-paywalled: https://archive.ph/jP1HX

Until they are built, it's all talk.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/21/foxconn-mostly-abandons-10-b...

TSMC also AFAIK is forbidden from setting up bleeding-edge fabs outside of Taiwan?

> as already happened with Intel I guess

In which sense? Intel is neither a full monopolist (AMD, ARM) nor has progress stalled (we're still getting a regular cycle of new generation CPUs which improve on the previous).

Intel Panther Lake is a serious improvement over the previous Intel CPUs, both in energy efficiency and in GPU performance. The good energy efficiency is a good sign for Intel's 18A CMOS fabrication process.

Nevertheless, it is worrying that the computers with Panther Lake CPUs have become much more expensive in comparison with their equivalents of last year with Arrow Lake, and this before adding the hugely increased costs for DRAM and SSDs.

It is also confusing for buyers that the 300-series Panther Lake part numbers that appear to be replacements for the previous 200-series Arrow Lake in most cases correspond to lower technical specifications, i.e. a much smaller GPU and lower clock frequencies.

The Panther Lake models that have the new big and very good GPU are extremely expensive and also hard to find, despite the fact that the GPU continues to be produced by TSMC. Perhaps TSMC has raised its price and prioritizes other customers, so Intel cannot get enough big GPUs, but even the Panther Lake models with the very small GPU (much smaller than Intel has used in many years for its mobile CPUs) have become far too expensive.

Because Panther Lake introduced a few important new features that could have been interesting for experiments in software development (e.g. FRED), I intended to buy some mini-PC with Panther Lake, but I gave up because even one that would cost double in comparison with the mini-PC with Arrow Lake H from last year that I have (i.e. around $1000 as barebone, instead of around $500) would be a downgrade in specs, instead of being an upgrade.