Currently, only one company in the world – ASML – has the technological capability necessary for the creation of photolithography machines which are sufficient for the production of modern semiconductor devices. What I’m wondering is at what point does semiconductor manufacturing become practical, or even feesible for small organizations, or independents? One must be able to surpass the cost of the machines, and the resources necessary to manufacture them. I presume that a company like ASML is also extremely picky – willfully, or by regulation, or otherwise – about who they lend their technology to.
I’m not sure if this is the right community for this sort of post. Please let me know if not, and if there is a more suitable place to put it.
Theres plenty of smaller, lower volume silicon fabs doing larger scale work, like Cmos 1micron and some doing sub micron down to what was cutting edge ~15 years ago.
Honetly kinda crazy that only one manufacturer can do the current modern stuff, but barely anything other than high end CPU need to be that small.