[ExI] The Engineering Of The World's Most Important Machine

[John Clark]

*The details of ASML's $400 million chip lithography million machine are
just amazing, for example:  *

*In order to keep chip production high and economically viable the machine
must accelerate a chip several inches at 25G and then stop it at a position
that is accurate to within five silicon atoms. To the eye the movement is
so fast it's just a blur. *

*It needs several mirrors that are so smooth that if they were the size of
the planet Earth the highest mountain would be no taller than the width of
a playing card. *

*Each second the machine needs to blast a stream of **60,000 tiny droplets
of molten tin, that are moving at 160 mph, **3 times with a laser so that
every single droplet becomes 40 times hotter than the surface of the sun
and produces the extreme ultraviolet light required, and it must keep this
blistering pace up 24/7 for months at a time, and it must never miss a
single shot because a laser miss could damage the machine. And all that
vaporized tin is being produced just a few inches away from one of those
very delicate, super smooth, hyper expensive mirrors, so a way needed to be
found to keep the vaporized tin from hitting it. *

*And the list of monumental engineering requirements continues. You would
think ASML could never get it all to work, but after 20 years and nearly
going bankrupt they eventually figured out a way to not only make it work
but make it economically practical. If ASML hadn't figured out how to do
this the AI revolution would not be happening, so I don't think it would be
an exaggeration to say that not only is it the world's most complex machine
it is also the world's most important machine.   *

*The Engineering Of The World's Most Important Machine*
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0>

*On a related topic I also found this to be interesting: *


*Semiconductors made in space could be 'up to 4,000 times purer' than
Earthly equivalents
<https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/uk-company-shoots-a-1000-degree-furnace-into-space-to-study-off-world-chip-manufacturing-semiconductors-made-in-space-could-be-up-to-4-000-times-purer-than-earthly-equivalents>*

*John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>*

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