Dylan Patel & Jon (Asianometry) – How the Semiconductor Industry Actually Works

A bonanza on the semiconductor industry and hardware scaling to AGI by the end of the decade. Dylan Patel runs Semianalysis, the leading publication and research firm on AI hardware. Jon Y runs Asianometry, the world’s best YouTube channel on semiconductors and business history. * What Xi would do if he became scaling pilled * $ 1T+ in datacenter buildout by end of decade Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsors: * Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for FPGA programmers, CUDA programmers, and ML researchers. To learn more about their full time roles, internship, tech podcast, and upcoming Kaggle competition, go here. * This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page. Timestamps 00:00:00 – Xi's path to AGI 00:04:20 – Liang Mong Song 00:08:25 – How semiconductors get better 00:11:16 – China can centralize compute 00:18:50 – Export controls & sanctions 00:32:51 – Huawei's intense culture 00:38:51 – Why the semiconductor industry is so stratified 00:40:58 – N2 should not exist 00:45:53 – Taiwan invasion hypothetical 00:49:21 – Mind-boggling complexity of semiconductors 00:59:13 – Chip architecture design 01:04:36 – Architectures lead to different AI models? China vs. US 01:10:12 – Being head of compute at an AI lab 01:16:24 – Scaling costs and power demand 01:37:05 – Are we financing an AI bubble? 01:50:20 – Starting Asianometry and SemiAnalysis 02:06:10 – Opportunities in the semiconductor stack Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe