Coding, Data Science, A.I. catch-All | DeepSeek - Chinese A.I. needs less power, fewer chips

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WSJ GIFT LINK —> https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/asml-eu...d0?st=5d3js5&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

I know very little about how microchips are manufactured and found this fascinating.

“… It’s the machine that produces the most advanced microchips on the planet. It was built with scientific technologies that sound more like science fiction—breakthroughs so improbable that they were once dismissed as impossible. And it has transformed wafers of silicon into the engines of modern life.

Even today, there are only a few hundred of these EUV machines in existence—and they are ludicrously expensive. The one that Hall maintains cost $170 million, while the latest models sell for roughly $370 million.

But maybe the most remarkable thing about these invaluable machines is that they’re all made by the same company: ASML.

ASML is the glue holding the chip business together. That’s because this one Dutch company is responsible for all of the EUV lithography systems that help make the chips in so many of your devices. Like your phone. And your computer. And your tablet. And your TV. Maybe even your car, too. …”
 
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“… The existential question of the semiconductor industry is how to pack more and more of those transistors on chips to make them faster and faster. The answer: shorter and shorter wavelengths of light. ASML’s first lithography tools created light at wavelengths of 436 nanometers. The current machines have shrunk that number to 13.5 nanometers. That allows them to fabricate chips at resolutions 10,000 times finer than human hair. …

And there are two things I learned about the EUV tool I saw that I can’t get out of my head:

  1. ASML teamed up with a German optical company to develop mirrors so flat that if they were scaled up to the size of Germany itself, their largest imperfection would be less than a millimeter.
  2. The precision of EUV machines is comparable to directing a laser beam from your house and hitting a ping-pong ball on the moon. …”
 
Should you ever want to know way more about this topic, I can't recommend this YouTube channel more:

youtube.com

Asianometry

Video essays on business, economics, and history. Sometimes about Asia, but not always. For general mail: hello@asianometry.com For business inquiries: business@asianometry.com I don't have an Asianometry Telegram. Don't fall for comment scams on YouTube, please.
youtube.com youtube.com
 
Raijin23 said:
Should you ever want to know way more about this topic, I can't recommend this YouTube channel more:

youtube.com

Asianometry

Video essays on business, economics, and history. Sometimes about Asia, but not always. For general mail: hello@asianometry.com For business inquiries: business@asianometry.com I don't have an Asianometry Telegram. Don't fall for comment scams on YouTube, please.
youtube.com youtube.com
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Thanks
 
BUMP to continue discussion of data science and coding that came up in Musk thread.
 
"... Late Tuesday afternoon, the White House is expected to announce a multi-billion-dollar investment in U.S. artificial-intelligence infrastructure from a joint venture of OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. The companies are committing $100 billion to the joint-venture, called Stargate, with a plan for $500 billion over the next four years.

Stargate will start with a data-center project in Texas and eventually expand, according to people familiar with the matter. Top executives from all three companies will be at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. The details were previously reported by CBS. ..."

Cosmos Stargate GIF by stake.fish

 
Trump has announced massive projects before to a lot of fanfare and they've flopped, and the details on this are sketchy at best at the moment, but in really broad strokes, a focus on A.I. is a national security issue and an economic issue, as well.

But I worry that a Trump-backed project like this will have no meaningful guardrails -- I guess at least they didn't call it SkyNet.
 
nycfan said:
Trump has announced massive projects before to a lot of fanfare and they've flopped, and the details on this are sketchy at best at the moment, but in really broad strokes, a focus on A.I. is a national security issue and an economic issue, as well.

But I worry that a Trump-backed project like this will have no meaningful guardrails -- I guess at least they didn't call it SkyNet.
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I worry about it being subject to the whims of the Texas legislature.
 
January 19th: "Our Budget deficits and debts are unsustainable"

January 20th: "WOO HOO!! HOOKERS AND BLOW FOR EVERYBODY!!!"
 
nycfan said:
Trump has announced massive projects before to a lot of fanfare and they've flopped, and the details on this are sketchy at best at the moment, but in really broad strokes, a focus on A.I. is a national security issue and an economic issue, as well.

But I worry that a Trump-backed project like this will have no meaningful guardrails -- I guess at least they didn't call it SkyNet.
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The involvement of SoftBank almost guarantees it will fail.
 
Japan does things differently, I guess. In the US, anyone who pumped that much money into WeWork would have been fired, or at least had their portfolio shifted elsewhere.
 
nycfan said:
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Softbank has definitely had some well-publicized failures but they have hit some Grand slams as well like Alibsba. They do own 90% of ARM which designs and licenses chips. They aren't exactly at the forefront of AI but they are ahead of Intel on a lot of things that AI is linked to like sensors and automobiles.

The weird one to me is Oracle. They aren't really at the forefront of anything on the AI side that I've heard of.

It's possible that Sam Altman at Openai has milked Microsoft for about as much money as they'll give him and is now looking to milk some other cash cows, while Oracle and SoftBank are doing whatever they can to catch up in the AI space.
 
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gtyellowjacket said:
Softbank has definitely had some well-publicized failures but they have hit some Grand slams as well. They do own 90% of ARM which designs and licenses chips. They aren't exactly at the forefront of AI but they are ahead of Intel on a lot of things that AI uses like sensors and automobiles.

The weird one to me is Oracle. They aren't really at the forefront of anything on the AI side that I've heard of.

It's possible that Sam Altman at Openai has milked Microsoft for about as much money as they'll give him and is now looking to milk some other cash cows, while Oracle and SoftBank are doing whatever they can to catch up in the AI space.
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Oracle appears to be gambling their entire future on the hope that Trump will rescue them from the company-destroying fines they are incurring by keeping TikTok alive in the US, in contravention to the clear legislation they’re ignoring.
 
nycfan said:
ASML teamed up with a German optical company to develop mirrors so flat that if they were scaled up to the size of Germany itself, their largest imperfection would be less than a millimeter.
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Spinoza would be proud...
 
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