Rick Wallace
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
John, thanks for the question. We've been working on what has been -- what is now called AI and ML for years now. And of course, because we handle so much data in our systems, especially in optical wafer system but also in the reticle system, that we've been having to manage that data and look for a signal in that data for a long time. What ML enables and machine learning enables along with AI is, just extracting more information out of that data. So, as we continue to have more capability to manage it, our work on AI has proliferated across most of our products now in some form or another but we continue to add upgrades. So, I think to answer your question, one way to think about it is we can squeeze more capability out of existing generations by leveraging the algorithms in the AI work. And in the past, where we may have needed to shift [ph] wavelengths for example to get more capability, we can do that with algorithm. So, one of the questions that had been brought up in the past was, for example, the limitations of optical wafer inspection and why EBM was going to maybe take a large prior of the share, that was the thesis a few years ago. But it was through AI and through ML and our advanced optics capability, that we've actually created additional node capability out of the optical systems. So, I think that's another way that we've expanded and lengthened the lifetime of the products, part of why Gen 4 has a longer life now is, we're squeezing more capability out of that, leveraging it. To answer your other question, it is expanding into our other products, those are the first really in the work we do at reticle. But it's also driving some opportunities for us in other segments as we expand the leverage of that capability into both metrology but also some of our traditionally lower-end wafer inspection systems that are applying and trailing edge capability [ph]. So, it's really kind of across the board. And you're right, it's very -- if you can amortize the engineering the way we do, it's pretty accretive to the overall business volume, because you're -- we do make a large investment. We're by far -- we have the most investment going on, no question among our peers because we're doing it across such a broad portfolio. But we're getting leverage as we have multiple products that are leveraging it. So, Bren can speak to how that drives the P&L.