So then why would Terafab need a Free Electron Laser, and why wouldn’t they just use what ASML does currently, laser-tin droplet ablation? To answer this we should start at the beginning: the fundamental physics of semiconductor photolithography.
Laser-tin droplet ablation has low efficiency, requires one light source per scanner, and yield quality is limited by available photon power:
The last one is a real doozy – as an example, for Intel chips i5, i7 and i9 all come off the same silicon wafers using the same masks, the difference is in the statistical error rates induced by limited or irregular photon power during the masking process.
EUV light contributes ~40% of overall fab costs. Using an alternative light source can reduce the EUV cost by 50% which would contribute to a 20% reduction in overall fab costs. And yields would be much better.
Returning the United States to dominance in semiconductor fabrication
The United States must create a new type of more vertically-integrated foundry to continue pushing Moore’s Law in both performance and cost. And we’re finally on our way.
Substrate was founded to return the United States to dominance in semiconductor fabrication on three core beliefs:
The cost of semiconductor fabrication is out of control, and it will only continue to trend upward without radical new technological innovation
The United States is dangerously reliant on sources of geopolitical and supply chain risk that we do not directly control
The only chance the United States has to return to dominance in semiconductor production would be to create a new type of more vertically-integrated foundry, one that continues pushing Moore’s Law in both performance and cost
To achieve this, Substrate is building next-generation semiconductor fabs to return America to dominance in semiconductor production and will use our technology—a new form of advanced X-ray lithography—to power them.
Earlier this year, SpaceX and Tesla announced Terafab – the most epic-chip building effort in the world – combining logic, memory and advanced packaging all under one roof. In April, Tesla broke ground on a new research fab on the North Campus of Giga Texas – the precursor to Terafab. And today, we are announcing that Terafab will be built in Grimes County, Texas. The facility will be an advanced semiconductor fab that will bridge the divide between current global chip supply and the compute demand of the future.
[…]
The initial phase of Terafab is estimated to require approximately $16.8 billion in capital investments from SpaceX and Tesla, with potential future expansion phases bringing total investment much higher. This facility will employ at least 3,000 people, many of whom will be from Grimes and nearby Brazos County — continuing the trend of our other Texas sites where between 60% and 80% of new hires are local residents.
[…]
SpaceX and Tesla also take our role as being good stewards of the environment seriously. The Terafab site is committing to the use of Gibbons Creek Reservoir water for industrial operations rather than local groundwater; planned on-site wastewater treatment facilities; water reuse and conservation efforts; compliance with all applicable environmental and pollution control laws; and management of hazardous materials, chemicals, and industrial byproducts in accordance with all applicable regulations—while striving to exceed them.
In our laser-produced plasma (LPP) source, molten tin droplets of around 25 microns in diameter are ejected from a generator at 70 meters per second. As they fall, the droplets are hit first by a low-intensity laser pulse that flattens them into a pancake shape. Then a more powerful laser pulse vaporizes the flattened droplet to create a plasma that emits EUV light. To produce enough light to manufacture microchips, this process is repeated 50,000 times every second.
Unlike the laser-produced plasma source used in EUV photolithography today, a free electron laser (FEL) can produce EUV light with a fraction of the power requirements and with greater light output.
Here’s how a FEL EUV light source can transform photolithography:
As Elon says, “FEL FTW” — you can expect a next generation light source inside Terafab.
Substrate plans to use a next generation light source:
The team at Substrate has designed a new type of vertically integrated foundry that harnesses particle accelerators to produce the world’s brightest beams, enabling a new method of advanced X-ray lithography. Our accelerators create and power beams that generate light billions of times brighter than the sun, directly into our lithography tools, each using a completely new optical and high-speed mechanical system to produce the smallest of features needed for advanced semiconductor chips.
While current approaches are reaching their limits, leading to increasing costs and complexity, all of our inventions are designed to work together to extend Moore’s Law for years to come.
Our light source begins with radio-frequency cavities accelerating pulses of electrons using powerful electric fields. The electrons ride each successive wave, gaining energy and increasing their velocity to near the speed of light. To produce light, these charged, highly energetic electrons traverse a gauntlet of strong alternating magnetic fields, which force them to release their energy as bursts of brilliant, intense light. These bright pulses of light are transported and shaped by a succession of perfectly polished optics all the way to the silicon wafer.
Not just the light source, but everything:
Our team has designed, fabricated, and polished optics, formulated marvels of chemistry, machined and assembled tons of metal to produce a new type of advanced lithography built from the ground up for high-volume manufacturing—a feat of engineering no one thought possible for a startup.
Over the past several years, we have invested in building out our supply chain and continue to increase our vertical integration, enabling us to move at speeds usually unimaginable in the semiconductor industry. More recently, we completed our first in-house production-quality 300 mm wafer lithography tool, which operates at the extreme G-forces required to meet the throughput of a leading-edge fab.
An American-made solution to increase domestic wafer production while reducing production costs is needed:
The semiconductor industry stands at a crossroads. China has made advanced semiconductor production a national priority, investing unfathomable sums into domestic tooling and manufacturing advances. We may soon witness a similar tectonic shift in semiconductor production where technological capabilities and leadership ability abruptly change, leaving us as a country scrambling to respond to capabilities we never anticipated emerging so rapidly.
By the end of this decade, either America or China will control the future of computing and the AI industries built on top of it.
For years, many have spoken of the need for a new pure-play American foundry, yet view it as an impossible task. History repeatedly shows that American science and engineering solve impossible tasks. As we rush to build more current-generation semiconductor fabs in America today, we need to start immediate work on building the semiconductor fabs of tomorrow.
The stakes are too high for the United States not to try everything we can to solve both one of our most significant technological gaps and our biggest opportunities to reclaim leadership over the technologies we pioneered. If China surpasses the United States in advanced semiconductor production, it would fundamentally shift global technological and economic power, giving China dominant leverage over critical supply chains that power everything from AI to military equipment.
We stand on the shoulders of the American giants who built this industry. Shockley. Moore. Noyce. Grove. Chang. Huang. We want you to join us in making the next century and future of Moore’s Law an American one.
Substrate continues to make progress with an announcement in April of advancements which reduced costs and improved speed of semiconductor simulation and printing. This is used to reduce process steps and predict and avoid defects like bridging.
Building & Investing in the future
While Substrate is privately held, you can now invest in SPCX. My wife and I are shareholders. We want to see the United States return to dominance in semiconductor fabrication. We bet SpaceX will succeed. I hope Substrate does too. We want to see Americans — yet again — solve the impossible and make the next century and the future of computing an American one.
Apple today announced a new multiyear commitment with Broadcom to design and produce custom silicon components and cutting-edge wireless connectivity technologies for a wide range of Apple products. The new agreement, expected to exceed $30 billion, will lead to the production of more than 15 billion U.S.-made chips and support hundreds of American jobs.
Apple has been working with the administration and businesses across the U.S. to help create an end-to-end silicon supply chain in America, and today’s announcement advances those efforts.
Broadcom will produce advanced radio frequency components — including FBAR filters — and advanced wireless connectivity technologies at the Fort Collins facility.
Thin-film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs) are widely employed in radio frequency filters and duplexers due to their ability to provide high-quality factor operation, low insertion loss, and compact size, making them essential components in wireless communication front-ends.
Duplexers, which simultaneously support transmit and receive paths while isolating them, represent a primary application of FBAR technology, particularly in handset antennas operating at frequencies from 900 MHz to over 5 GHz.
Open source (GPL licensed) macOS terminal with vertical tabs and notifications for AI coding agents. Built with libghostty.
The vertical tabs support agent status and currently running server URLs. The CLI enables automation and scripting of panes. And a built-in web browser is useful for doc reference as well as creating or reviewing PRs.
I had trouble using cmux and Ghostty based terminals for due to a conflict with SketchyVim which took me some time to locate. The conflict caused the terminal to become intermittently unresponsive. After disabling SketchyVim, Ghostty and cmux became usable, and I switched over from iTerm2.
In my experience, cmux builds have recently become more stable — no crashers for the last 2 weeks using the latest builds — so now is a good time to try it out.
Apple Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR), User Privacy, Core Operating Systems (Core OS), Services Engineering (ASE), and Machine Learning and AI (AIML):
Alongside the next generation of Apple Intelligence, today we’re expanding Private Cloud Compute (PCC) beyond Apple’s data centers.
[…]
What’s new with PCC on Google Cloud is the implementation: NVIDIA Confidential Computing with NVIDIA GPUs, Intel CPUs with TDX, and Google’s Titan chip. On this foundation, Apple and Google collaborated to build capabilities that go far beyond a traditional confidential computing deployment.
