Unveiling High NA EUV | ASML
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN links it to show the sheer complexity of EUV machines, especially when discussing whether competitors can challenge ASML.
What it is
ASML's short promotional fly-through of its High NA EUV lithography platform, the TWINSCAN EXE, which supports 8-nanometer resolution. It shows the machine's internals including advanced anamorphic optics.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2024 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec ta12653421 · 2025-11 · on “US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML”
LOL, I recommend highly to everyone who thinks a startup can challenge ASML this 1.38min video: [this video] Its an industrial flight video through a ASML TWIN Exe HighNAV. Here is also a presentation of ~45min at CCC / Germany (in English language) which I highly recommend to watch: [LINK] Especially the explanation how they use two milisecond laser shots to first molt the tin and then distribute it symetrically(!!!) with a second shot across the surface. There IS NO chance that this startup will be able to somehow compete, if even Chinese state actors cant do it (yet).
Cites chasil · 2024-09 · on “China's chip capabilities just 3 years behind TSMC, teardown shows”
I just found this one. [this video] Edit: I didn't realize that the droplets are hit twice by different lasers. [LINK]
Cites danparsonson · 2024-11 · on “ASML Twinscan EXE:5000 Lego Set”
Fly-through promotional render of the real thing: [this video] Incredible technology - the light-source works by generating droplets of molten tin, firing them through a chamber at around (IIRC) 200mph, and hitting each droplet with two laser pulses... at 50kHz. How they achieve that using Lego is beyond me.
Cites danparsonson · 2025-01 · on “Dutch Align with US Export Controls on Some ASML Chip Tools”
The rest of the machine is no less incredible - the EUV light is reflected off a series of mirrors (the largest weighing, IIRC, somewhere in the region of 300kg, and the largest that Zeiss have ever made) onto a mask of the target pattern, which is rapidly shuttling back and forth, onto another series of mirrors, and finally focused onto the wafer stage, which is also moving precisely in step with the mask, to expose the photoresist on a single die which is on the order of 10mm square. And each wafer goes through multiple cycles of this, so not only does the machine rapidly create features at the nanonmetre scale with incredible accuracy, but again and again in exactly the same place after r