Elon Musk's TeraFab uses a free-electron laser instead of ASML's tin-droplet plasma for chip manufacturing. The facility is massive enough to be seen from the Moon. Musk tweeted "FEL FTW" to signal this as a cheaper challenge to ASML and TSMC's dominance.
If you're watching this on YouTube, check this out. Here's the TeraFab. It's a monster. It's gigantic, you know, compared to the Pentagon, compared to Apple, compared to the Mall of America, and compared to the Burj Khalifa. You were saying earlier, Alex, you know, you could probably see this from the surface of the moon.
It looks like a buckle on the planet, literally. Like, hand of God could reach down to this TeraFab structure and grab the entire Earth by it. It's beautiful. It's enormous. And as Elon has now confirmed, if you're watching this and looking at the image, the circular structure in the middle is— wait for it— a free electron laser. So not only is, I think, Elon with the TeraFab going after TSMC, he's also going after ASML. And right now, if you want to do extreme UV, which is the polite euphemism for soft X-rays-based lithography, Right now, you're stuck using ASML's approach, which is pretty expensive and requires creating a vapour of tin droplets to ultimately create those soft X-rays. By creating a free electron laser, it's a pretty adventurous approach to EUV lithography, he could radically reduce the cost. And maybe even, even though I've read in public announcements, Elon striking agreements with ASML to purchase lots of ASML equipment. If I were ASML, Again, not financial advice. I'd be looking at the circular structure right here and saying the circular structure is actually a bullseye painted on ASML by Elon.
Oh my God! And here's here's the tweet. This is says looks like a synchrotron. Elon going to build a free electron laser based EUV machine, and Elon tweets back FEL FTW free electron laser for the win.
