[SR2Z]

> You can buy a TSMC lithography machine, and it‘ll be delivered to you in much the same way as other equipment.

Each one of these machines costs half a billion dollars and is protected by some of the most stringent export controls on the planet.

It does raise an interesting philosophical question: if I bolt two ASML lithography machines together, is the resulting machine more complicated?

[tstenner]

I asked the ASML rep at KubeCon who they were there for as nobody I knew had a quarter billion to spare. He told me they were just interested customers, but if I didn't want the newest machine I could get one for 70 million euros.

[Therenas]

Right but it still gets put into boxes and flown over by a 747. Of course it‘s more complicated than that, but most contenders for complex machines are much more built in-place, and not a complete 'product' being assembled.