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Comment by TechDebtDevin | Hacker News Reader

EUV lithography might as well have been invented at Hogwarts as far as I'm concerned.

We use invisible light to draw patterns on crystals to control the power of lightning. Definitely magic.

Don't forget the cavernous structures which people are forbidden to enter, buzzing with the activity of objects controlled by those enchanted crystals, like the magic brooms in Fantasia, performing myriad arcane rituals with rare and exotic materials to make more enchanted crystals.

And the high priests guarding the knowledge.

Ah yes, the sandbenders. [0]

0: http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/sandbender.html

They perform elaborate cleansing rituals on any item brought into the crystal-writing room. When they enter, they wear special clothing, lest the impurities of the outside world taint the crystals.

And the scribes designing the incantations using magical tools, ever more complex, eagerly working towards stronger and faster magic crystals

Those magical tools being self-referential incantations written in the weird and decidedly non-human language of the crystals themselves, containing deep magic [0] derived from the secrets of life itself [1] exploited to solve problems of intractable complexity in creating the next set of incantations.

Disturbingly, using the magical tool twice on the same incantation never produces exactly the same result.

0: https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/deep-magic.html

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm

Those EUV lasers are themselves insanely crazy, and unlike the semiconductors they are part of producing, the EUV gear has lots of expensive short-lived consumables — like mirrors!

Yeah Zeiss makes a lot more than eyeglass lenses!

I think of Zeiss as a lens company but indeed, EUV lasers can’t use lenses but instead mirrors which only last a couple of weeks

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