The World's Most Complex Machine
46 points by mellosouls 3 days ago | 8 comments

maxalbarello 43 minutes ago
For anyone interested in the topic I highly recommend this Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
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jasode 16 minutes ago
The Veritasium video is good but their "newscast" style with constant back-and-forth cuts to talking heads can make the presentation a bit disjointed.

The more straightforward video of ASML EUV is from Branch Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg

Because that vid gives an overview of the whole machine, it gives context to what each scientist is talking about in the Veritasium interviews.

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Zealotux 29 minutes ago
Great video and I think the only way to truly grasp the complexity of EUV lithography as a layman.
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ForHackernews 17 minutes ago
They might be the most complex mass-produced commercial machines but the Large Hadron Collider has a plausible claim to the title of "world's most complex machine" https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/103591-la...
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bob1029 13 minutes ago
I think something like this wins that category:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Interconnection

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ForHackernews 7 minutes ago
I suppose it's partly a semantic question that hinges on what you count as a single "machine" and what's a system or a network.
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moffkalast 24 minutes ago
If there's really such a bottleneck around ASML, why not design some extra chips for legacy processes that presumably already have well known design workflows?

I mean we're not talking AMD FX and Core 2 Duo here, it's Raptor Lake and Zen 3, it's perfectly viable and still being sold in droves right now.

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irdc 17 minutes ago
That’s what the likes of AMD with their chiplet design have been doing.

There’s also the issue of older process nodes not being profitable enough anymore, which explaines why at the height of the chip supply crunch older ARM chips were in short supply but there was ample stock of the 20nm feature-sized RP2040.

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