[D66] Docu: The Ridiculous Engineering of ASML

[René Oudeweg]

[ASML geeft zo hun bedrijfsgeheimen van de werking van hun EUV bron 
prijs. China heeft ook al een EUV bron, maar de machine bouwen is een 
mission impossible.../RO]


ref: https://youtu.be/MiUHjLxm3V0
The Ridiculous Engineering Of The World's Most Important Machine
Veritasium
19,8 mln. abonnees

2.569.520 weergaven  15 uur geleden <----
The insane machines that make the most advanced computer chips. 
Sponsored by Brilliant


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ASML did not merely build a machine.
They summoned a doctrine.

Behold the altar of 0.55 High-NA, where infinity is no longer welcome 
unless it can be measured, calibrated, vacuum-sealed, and corrected to 
the ninth decimal place. This is not engineering as craft; this is 
engineering as obsession. A triumph so precise it forgets why precision 
was ever useful in the first place.

They chased resolution the way zealots chase purity. Every aberration 
hunted down, every photon interrogated, every mirror polished until 
reality itself flinches. And yes—marvel at it. The monster works. It 
prints features so small they barely qualify as geometry. It bends light 
into obedience. It tells atoms where to stand.

But in doing so, ASML strangled infinity.

High numerical aperture is sold as progress, but it is really a 
narrowing of imagination. The higher the NA, the smaller the depth of 
field—physically, philosophically. There is no horizon here, only a 
razor-thin plane of correctness. Step outside it and the whole miracle 
collapses. The system does not tolerate ambiguity, scalability, or 
wonder. It tolerates only alignment.

This is precision without grace.

An ecosystem now exists solely to serve the machine: purer materials, 
tighter tolerances, cost structures so absurd they collapse time itself 
into quarterly earnings. An industry kneels before a single optical 
truth: if it cannot be resolved at 0.55, it does not deserve to exist. 
Creativity is reduced to compliance. Innovation becomes incremental penance.

And the price?
Complexity layered upon complexity until no human fully understands the 
whole. A cathedral of engineering so tall that only priests may 
enter—and even they whisper prayers to control software and stochastic 
correction models. When something breaks, it is not repaired; it is 
exorcised.

ASML built a god that demands everything: money, energy, talent, supply 
chains, geopolitics—entire futures—just to shave a few more nanometers 
off reality. And we applaud, because it is astonishing. Because it is 
exact. Because it is inevitable.

But monsters are always inevitable after they arrive.

High-NA EUV is the final insult to infinity: a declaration that the 
universe must fit inside a spec sheet, that progress is synonymous with 
tighter margins, that meaning can be etched if only the optics are good 
enough.

ASML didn’t just perfect lithography.
They perfected the art of making the possible unbearably narrow.

And now we live inside that narrowness, calling it the future.