[varispeed]

After working at ASML would you get enough knowledge to start competing company? Or is the job so protected with NDAs that basically you wouldn't be able to translate or use the gained knowledge anywhere else? I am thinking, for example, when you realise the working conditions are not great or you are paid not enough, do you have any leverage? If ASML has no competition, then do you have any negotiating power?

[traceroute66]

> After working at ASML would you get enough knowledge to start competing company? Or is the job so protected with NDAs that basically you wouldn't be able to translate or use the gained knowledge anywhere else?

Bit of a strange question ?

Competing with ASML in any sort of serious form would need more than just stealing some IP, it would need $$$ measured in the many billions.

ASML does have competitors, Canon and Nikon being the obvious two. But ASML has better technology than them, which is why continues to dominate the market.

ASML's model is not dissimilar to Apple's. Throw money at R&D like nobody's business, make some quality company acquisitions along the way, reap the rewards.

ASML basically have a 100% market share in EUV, 95% market share in ArF tools, 20% in Dry tools.

My limited understanding of the market is that basically ASML will be untouchable until at least the 2030's.

[nine_k]

To start a competing company, you'll need billions, and an idea of a market niche.

There are about two companies like ASML in the whole world, and there are maybe a dozen consumers of their machines, companies like TSMC or Samsung. ASML is in an effective monopoly position.

It's much like asking if you can open a competing company to build nuclear submarines. Technically you likely can.

[Cthulhu_]

And the accumulated knowledge of decades of lithography from hundreds, if not thousands of people.

That said, it's not impossible; SpaceX came out of left field and within a decade became one of the most prominent space rocket companies, they managed to find rocket scientists and engineers.

[ethbr0]

* came out of left field ... with the support of NASA contracts and knowledge sharing.

Which isn't in any way to take away from the pioneering things that SpaceX engineers have done (and the way they've done them!). But is to say they definitely had help in getting over the "high-capital-investment industry" starting bump.

[skrebbel]

There's non-competes but they're easily circumvented. I know of multiple people who started a sole proprietorship (ie contracting) and took a competing company (for some distant value of "competing") as their customer. Dutch labour law prevents most non-competes in practice.

I once freelanced at a startup that was building a machine that could compete with ASML's 30 year old machines. Those are still being used, resold and refurbished so one of those refurbishing companies (made up of ex ASMLers ofc) thought they could build new ones from scratch.

It worked (after a series of bankruptcies, restarts and acquisitions I might add - it was a rocky ride but not for technical reasons). That doesn't mean they will ever be able to catch up to ASML, or even intend to, but it's clearly possible for ex ASML people plus some young new engineers to build a lithography product. I bet with a few extra years patience you can do without the ex ASML people altogether.

This means that if eg China wants to have their own chip industry, and the US keeps preventing ASML from selling their best machines to China like they currently do, all the Chinese government has to do is encourage a few dozen lithography startups to happen, aimed initially at the low-end of the market. Add some protectionism (eg import tariffs on any chips that could be made by Chinese machines), wait a few decades, and done. I'm pretty sure it'll happen.

[CookiesNCream23]

Not a chance. The machines are so complex that nobody knows the whole thing. People dedicate their lives to one small component.

What I value is the opportunity to be see technology and scale of this caliber.

[testtesttestte]

Some people tried it and got sued for patent infringement (ASML vs XTAL)[1]. ASML patents all EUV-related technology, so you'd have to come up with a brand new way of generating EUV plasma at high energies at constant rate. Even ASML had to buy an American company Cymer to get a working prototype. Then, because EUV radiation doesn't pass through air or standard lenses, you'd have to come up with another optic column system. If you want to go 5nm and below, you need anamorphic lenses/mirrors with almost atomic precision [2]. ASML gets these columns and lenses/mirrors from Zeiss, but probably has patents on their practical application.

The sheer size of the supply chain you need to create to make a working machine is massive. It's one of the reasons why ASML got ahead of the Japanese companies that tried to do everything in-house.[3][4]

It took 17+ years and €6 billion in R&D to get EUV working [5] (as such EUV litography became feasible in the 90s), so ASML's leading position on the market is justified. They have to recoup all the costs, so they will make sure to keep the market leadership through all legal means.

My guess is that if someone would come up with a more efficient EUV plasma generation or better optic systems, ASML would acquire the company and take over the technology.

Regarding the negotiating power, some companies like GlobalFoundries couldn't afford ASML's EUV machines, so they parked their EUV plans [6]. It's only big players like TSMC, Samsung and Intel that can afford this tech and all these companies know their worth and prices. ASML needs money to pay for the R&D and can't afford to lose it's biggest customers that are also buying their non-bleeding edge technologies (DUV litography).

I don't know the business side of things, but it's definitely going to be interesting to see what happens with competition in the EUV litography in the upcoming 10+ years.

EUV litography and silicon-based chips have their physical limits, so there might be other ways to continue improvements.[7]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-xtal-court-i...

[2] https://semiengineering.com/extending-euv-to-2nm-and-beyond/

[3] https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/05007.html

[4] https://youtu.be/SB8qIO6Ti_M?t=673

[5] https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems

[6] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-a...

[7] https://semiengineering.com/making-chips-at-3nm-and-beyond/

[zogomoox]

EUV and higher energy photons are difficult beasts, I would put my money on electrons next, so perhaps the electron microscope companies hold the interesting patents there.

[CookiesNCream23]

E beam lithography in credibly difficult. Recommend chapter 13 in "Principles of Lithography" https://spie.org/Publications/Book/2525392?SSO=1.

My opinions is that this whole comment discussion about creating a competitor is in the wrong direction. It is impossible to recreate and outperform what ASML has.

A better focus would be to tackle problems in the <2nm processes. If someone found a method to stop electron tunneling at smaller nodes, this will net much more revenue and create more value for society.