Lithography machines operate on nanometer precision and require a clean-room environment that makes the standards of medical facilities look like a joke. The machines required are more like ultra-complex projectors operating at wavelengths of light we had to spend decades figuring out how to even produce, not to mention the optics required to be precise enough to construct chips with features so small you can count the atoms they are made out of. The robotic machinery that moves the silicon wafers around is stone-age tech in comparison, and is used because the environment these machines require can’t handle a human existing in the same room, because just the particles from our breath would introduce problems.
Getting some robotic arms welding and screwing metal and plastic together to assemble a car is nothing in comparison.
There are integrated circuits in a Tesla, but they don’t make them. Remember how the car industry completely imploded back in 2022 during a shortage of the chips used in cars? None of them make them. No car company has their own semiconductor fab.
Almost every tech manufacturer, buys fab manufacturing capacity from TSMC or another big fab maintainer.
Not the same thing.
We’re talking about semiconductor lithography.
Lithography machines operate on nanometer precision and require a clean-room environment that makes the standards of medical facilities look like a joke. The machines required are more like ultra-complex projectors operating at wavelengths of light we had to spend decades figuring out how to even produce, not to mention the optics required to be precise enough to construct chips with features so small you can count the atoms they are made out of. The robotic machinery that moves the silicon wafers around is stone-age tech in comparison, and is used because the environment these machines require can’t handle a human existing in the same room, because just the particles from our breath would introduce problems.
Getting some robotic arms welding and screwing metal and plastic together to assemble a car is nothing in comparison.
There are integrated circuits in a Tesla, but they don’t make them. Remember how the car industry completely imploded back in 2022 during a shortage of the chips used in cars? None of them make them. No car company has their own semiconductor fab.
Almost every tech manufacturer, buys fab manufacturing capacity from TSMC or another big fab maintainer.