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- Hacker News
- Regular viewers of Asianometry channel will probably know that this is unlikelyby hasperdi
- Here are two statements from some of the investors: https://www.longjourney.vc/news/cyans-substrate-tattoo
https://www.generalcatalyst.com/stories/our-investment-in-su...
From a VC perspective, it does make sense to invest in EUV equipment tech. Being successful immediately makes the company one of the most important in the world (and opens up a $15B+ market).
by Interesco - Samsung has access to the same ASML tools but has much lower yield than TSMC. Chip making is hard.by sampton
- You know who is going to develop cutting edge EUV+ lithography to rival ASML? It's not this startup (most likely). It's China.
Chipmaking is in a very weird geopolitical state and it has national security interests for most of the world. A Dutch company produces the machines to make chips and sells them to Taiwanese companies. The US still has the power to dictate who ASML can sell to and China is restricted.
This system has a number of flaws:
1. With this administration torching US influence at a never-seen-before rate, the US may no longer be able to dictate terms to ASML. At some point, it's all going to be too much for the EU;
2. Taiwan is disputed territory. This statement tends to make people mad but it's true. China claims it as China but, more importantly, the One China policy is official policy of the US [1] and the EU. Yet the US also has a defence pact with Taiwan. Not that it matters because China simply doesn't have the military capability to invade Taiwan and I honestly don't think they would anyway; and
3. The US has basically lost the ability to fab chips. Yes, Intel exists but they are a shadow of their former selves. The CHIPS Act tried to rectify this but even if this administration hadn't basically abandoned it, I don't think the US can see this one through regardless of administration. It's too long term. Any US company now that gets government aid just uses it on more executive compensation and share buybacks. Everything is now so financialized that any ability to produce anything is really just inertia from a bygone era.
China has the exact same national security concerns except it has a proven track record of investing in and delivering long-term projects.
[1]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-us-one-china-policy-and-w...
by jmyeet - Chip making is one of the unique tech which is at the farthest end of humanity's engineering capabilities. Not just ASML, its entire supply chain is full of extremely precise components which 1 or 2 companies have mastered. e.g. the mirrors used are so precise that if scaled to size of earth tallest mountain will be 1cm high. Sure China will make it one day and maybe will beat rest of the world, it is not given to be in near future.by blackoil
- The issue with x-ray lithography has always been... the cost. Just the cost of making a mask for one of these systems makes it unusable in industry. Would be interested to hear what they did to get costs down.by RhysabOweyn
- stratechery had an interview w the founder, an interesting Brit but also a Thiel acolyte/investee, for better or worse. Ben also has tended a little too ...uncritical of tech boosterism these days, but I suppose the interview is good databy caycep
- Somewhere along the line people have to realise most of the cost in chip design goes to software. So while it is nice to have some competition to ASML, it wouldn't change the cost equation as much as people expect.
And yes, ASML also have their own version using X-Ray in the pipeline.
by ksec - this has 0 to do with price and if they win the fact that the US will choose its local competitor over them wouldnt be because of priceby DeonRob
- You mean the cost of EDA software directly (paying Synopsys/Cadence for the software used to design, verify, and synthesize your own chips)? Or the actual R&D cost to design the chip itself? Or paying for prepackaged IP blocks (major ones like CPU cores, or lesser ones like I/O)?by taldo
- They seem to have learned a lot from Theranos. I wonder if they will have the same fate.by glimshe
- Just a few days ago this company came up on HN as part of a substack post which pointed out the numerous warning signs that this company is likely a scam, so its crazy to see them given so much credulous reporting from mainstream media.
After persuasively demonstrating an inability to ship a fancy alarm clock even with 100MM in funding at his last startup, the founder has now decided to turn his attention to easily surmounting the decades of insane hard science and engineering that forms ASML's moat. Of course if this goes the way of the alarm clock startup there's also the fusion startup he's running that could form a fallback...
by jgon - It's not crazy. It's routine. That's what the mainstream media does best. Remember just a couple months ago when the mainstream media bought the line that a standard SMS fraud operation was actually a terrorist thread against the UN?
- > the decades of insane hard science and engineering
Don’t forget the Century of engineering knowledge at Zeiss who deliver the mirrors in the ASML machines. See below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45745536#45813952
by smartbit - Japan has also made some strides in this area, reported here a few months ago.
"Professor Shintake aligned two axis-symmetric mirrors in a straight line and used a total of only four mirrors instead of ten.
"Because highly absorbent EUV light weakens by 40% with each reflection, only about 1% of the energy from the light source reaches the wafer when bounced off ten mirrors while more than 10% does when only four mirrors are used."
https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/japan-on-edge-of-euv-lithograp...
Edit: "Substrate said that it has developed a version of lithography that uses X-ray light."
by chasil - "X-ray light" sound a bit like beer soda.by giva
- IBM also worked on X-ray lithographyby MangoCoffee
- This doesn’t seem plausible. Leading edge lithography requires you to be at (or beyond) the cutting edge in many realms - even with a breakthrough in one realm, I don’t understand how a startup could expect to catch up to ASML across the board in a few years.
Their website is light on technical details and heavy on nationalistic fluff, which does not lend much confidence.
by cowthulhu - I don't know much about the technical details of lithography, but I do know that EUV lithography is very new tech that has been in production for less than 10 years and the current machines are basically rube goldberg devices. Given my lack of technical knowledge here, I can't say whether or nor this startup in particular is legit, but it does seem very much like the type of thing that could be disrupted by someone who comes up with a new and massively simplified design.
- Their website is that way because the goal is to attract the attention of the administration.
- > investments from the Central Intelligence Agency-backed nonprofit firm In-Q-Tel
The CIA has stolen trade secrets in the past and the only thing that stopped them in recent history is their own policies. The CIA has a new director that has been violating international law more openly than ever.
by deckar01 - It is actually relatively easy to make a lithography machine that can etch features beyond what EUV can do. You simply use an electron scanning beam rather than photons.
It's what the industry uses to create the masks used in lithography machines, but it could just as easily be used to make the actual chip. The problem is that it doesn't scale, at all. A scanning process is way too slow to be useful in mass production.
Thus you should always be skeptical when someone says they've built a machine that beats ASML's machines, because that's actually the easy part. The hard part is scaling it up.
by armada651 - The same guys who couldn’t develop a sleep tracker?
https://open.substack.com/pub/foxchapelresearch/p/i-think-su...
Edit please note the comments in the linked post by SemiAnalysis below who have lots of reports that the tool is legit but who are skeptical. They have clearly progressed somewhat since the tracker project!
by klelatti - Already in bed with Peter Thiel, and by his twitter, ingratiating himself with Vance, Trump and Lutnick.
Breathless branding with the word "America" in every other sentence.
How long before the Trump admin decides to throw federal funds into the grift so these "investors" get paid?
by dashundchen - It is wild that the founders have very little experience in the space, and that their claims are based on sparse research. That said, the Substack article doesn't seem any more credible. Other than the name DC Fusion LLC, I missed any indications that the founder was working on a fusion startup. The article correctly identifies as an opinion piece but doesn't seem worthy of credible referencing.by dskhatri
- Wow, total scam. Sad.by seandoe
- This news article is a week old, meaning this post was clearly upvote-brigaded by reputation management software to try to bury the post about Substrate being a fraud.by BergAndCo
- This is 100% a scam or vaporware. What a waste of investment dollars.by ugh123
- Thanks for this. I now know anyone supporting these guys are either dumb, getting scammed or part of the scam.by wnevets
- For balance here is SemiAnalysis - who really know what they are talking about - on Substrate
https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/how-to-kill-2-m...
by klelatti