ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

I work in the industry and have worked in a fab. Here is some insight.<p>We are taught that fabs are not treated as factories but as hazardous chemical storage plants. On top of that, we work with high pressure and high power systems.<p>Fires have accounted for the most damage to fabs over the years; however, this situation is different.<p>The site is not a fab, it is a ASML manufacturing plant. This plant does not produce chips. It produces parts for the ASML machines. It makes the tables the wafer moves on and the frame the mask moves on.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jH6Urfqt_d4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jH6Urfqt_d4</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikichip.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;mask" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikichip.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;mask</a><p>Downstream effects of this fire will reduce the uptime of the machines and the delivery of promised machines to our customers.<p>To plug ASML. Speaking as a new grad. If you are in hardware, physics, nanoscience, simulations. ASML is the best company to work at if you want to learn. I get exposure to maybe the most complex engineering system is the world. The scale, complexity, details, and just hardcore technology is mind-blowing. I am plugging ASML because it is not widely know and I would love if fellow engineers had the opportunity to work here. I absolutely love the work I do.

Berlin news (rbb) say that<p>Many things are still unclear including:<p>- how big the damage is - how long it takes to operate again - how it was possible to happen&#x2F;how it happend<p>The linked article basically says the same.

At a broader level, this accident again shows how vulnerable the semiconductor supply chain is, and it&#x27;s not just because of geopolitics. I like the analogy by Willy Shih at HBS - &quot;semiconductor supply chain is like a transcontinental relay race with hidden hurdles&quot;.

This might delay new fabs all over the world that needs EUV equipment. That is bad for people living in 2024 but in 2022 it will change nothing for us pesky consumers. So future people i&#x27;m sorry :( the silicon shortage didnt end faster.

Tech giants seem to have fire problems in Germany lately

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. <i>Every single country</i> that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so.<p>This infrastructure doesn&#x27;t have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country&#x27;s basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage.<p>It&#x27;s insane for humanity to continue putting their eggs in one or two baskets.

As a single source supplier for the global semiconductor supply chain this is concerning.<p>Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war?

One of the fun parts of working in Silicon Valley is that there&#x27;s... industrial stuff everywhere. At one office building, not only did we have the usual fire evacuation plan, but we had extra instructions because of one of our neighbors, who had storage tanks with the usual fab chemicals. Yow.

After hours share price is stable as of 10:30 PM EST.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;market-activity&#x2F;stocks&#x2F;asml&#x2F;after-hours-trades" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;market-activity&#x2F;stocks&#x2F;asml&#x2F;after-hou...</a>

I think we might not be good at building resilient systems.

The HN headline says &quot;large fire&quot;, but the article does not.

is this like when refineries say there is a fire but they just want to cut production .

It&#x27;s peculiar how many fires and major incidents there have been in European factories, plants, and buildings owned and operated by large European companies the last couple of years.<p>ASML manufacturing, OVH data center, and even Astra Zeneca&#x27;s largest vaccine manufacturing site, which is perhaps one of the largest in the world, costing them enormous sums in lost contracts in the early stages of the COVID vaccination effort.<p>The best question to ask is, who benefits? It seems that more often than not it is a large American company or conglomerate.

China sabotaging ASML profit on to prevent decentralization of chip production from Taiwan and maintain leverage over the US in Taiwan sovereignty struggle.

Berlin is surprisingly backward compared to the rest of Germany. I don&#x27;t know why tech companies have established themselves in Berlin.

Google Streetview of the location: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@52.4504667,13.4327515,3a,75y,226.47h,120.91t&#x2F;data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1s2uPT3eKmOS0nmgSg-gPYQA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i25!5m1!1e3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@52.4504667,13.4327515,3a,75y,22...</a><p>It&#x27;s as close as one can get, with about 200m missing because, I guess, the driver decided nobody would care about the rest of this godforsaken industrial area. Or they got a call at exactly that moment that Google would stop gathering photos to spite the criticism of data protection advocates that was annoying them at the time.