YouSaid · the spoken record

Dylan Patel

lines on the record: 170
first: 2024-10-02
most recent: 2024-10-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think the context here is that Moore's Law was predicted in 1965. Intel was founded in 68 and released their first memory chips in 69 and 70. And so Moore's Law was a lot of it was about memory. And the memory industry followed Moore's law up until 2012 where it stopped, right? And it became very incremental gains since then, whereas logic has continued and people are like, oh, it's dying. It's slowing down. At least there's still a little bit of like, you know, coming, right? You know, still more than 10%, 15% a year CAGR, right, of growth and density slash cost improvement. Memory is like literally like been like since 2012, like really bad. And when you think about the cost of memory, it's been considered a commodity, but memory integration with accelerators like this is like something that I don't know if you can be an entrepreneur here though. That's the real challenge is because you have to manufacture at some really absurdly large scale or design something in an industry that does not allow you to make custom memory devices.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, like, and we saw, you know, we have data analysis consulting, et cetera, for anyone who really wants to get deeper into this, right? Like we can talk about like, oh, people are building big data centers, but how many chips is being made in every quarter of what kind for each company? What are the subcomponents of these chips? What are the subcomponents of the servers, right? We try and track all of that. Follow every server manufacturer, every component manufacturer, every cable manufacturer, like just like all the way down the stack tool manufacturer and know how much is being sold where and how and where things are and project out, right? All the way out to like, hey, where's every single data center? What is the pace that it's being built out? This like, this is like the sort of data we want to have and sell. And, you know, the validation is that hyperscalers purchase it and they like it a lot, right? And like AI companies do and like semiconductor companies do. So I think that's the sort of like.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As well, right, X hedge funds as well, right? So you got kind of have like this amalgamation of tech and finance expertise, and we just do the best work there, I think.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can start to build up more and more, and the content got better. And what I followed got better, and then started hiring people in 2020, in early 2022 as well. Or might have been, yeah, yeah, like mid-2022 started hiring, got people in different layers of the stack. But now today, like you fast forward, now today, right? Almost every hyperscaler is a customer not for the newsletter, but for like data we sell, right? You know, most many major semiconductor companies, many investors, right? Like all these people are like customers of the data and stuff we sell. And the company has people all the way from like Ximer, XASML all the way to like X like Microsoft and like an AI company, right? Like, you know, like, and then through the stratification, now there's 14 people here and like the company and like all across the US, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, France, US, of course, right? All over the world and across many ranges of like and hedge funds.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's go, right? Like, you know, over the full course of the year. But no, like, you know, go to every conference, make connections at all these very technical things like international electron device manufacturing. Oh, lithography in advance patterning. Oh, like very large scale integration. Like, you know, old, you know, circuits conference. You just go every single layer of the stack. It's so siloed. There's tens of millions of people that work in this industry. But if you go to every single one, you try and understand the presentations, you do the required reading. You look at the economics of it, you like are just curious and want to learn.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yeah. I mean, I've been to digital nomad since 2020, and I've basically stopped and I moved to SF now, right? But like kind of, kind of, not really.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About photoresist and the developments in that industry, right? Which is the stuff you put on top of the wafer before you put in the litho tool lithography tool did great, right? Like I woke up the next day and I had like 40 paid subscriptions. I was like, what? Okay, let's keep going, right? And let's post more paid sort of like partially free, partially paid, did like all sorts of stuff on like advanced packaging and chips and data center stuff and like AI chips like all sorts of stuff, right? That I like was interested in thought was interesting. And like I always bridged economically because I read all the company's earnings for like, you know, since I was 18 and 28 now, right? You know, all the way through to all the technical stuff that I could. 2022, I also started to just go to every conference I could, right? So I go to like 40 conferences a year. Not like trade show type conferences, but like technical conferences. Like an chip architecture, photo resist, you know, AI nerips, right? Like, you know, ICML.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were like, it was like people who weren't in hardware that wanted to know about hardware. It would be like some investors, right? A couple VCs did it, but some public market folks, there were times where companies would ask about three layers up in the stack, like me, because they saw me write some random posts and like, hey, like, can we, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? There's all sorts of like random. It was really small money. And then in 2020, like it really picked up and I just was like, why don't I just arbitrarily make the price way higher? And it worked. And then I started posting, I made a newsletter as well. And I kept posting, quality kept getting better, right? Because people read it. They're like, this is fucking retarded. Like, you know, here's what's actually right. Or, you know, like, you know, over more than a decade, right? And then in 2021, towards the end, I made a paid post, someone didn't pay and like, you know, for a report or whatever, right? Ended up, that ended up doing like I went to sleep that night.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those like bullshit multivariable regression, whatever, right? Those simulations of hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfire for like financial reasons, right? Like anyways, you move, I moved up to like, you know, I had a job for three years after college and I was posting and like whatever. I had a blog, anonymous blog for a long time. I'd even made like some YouTube videos and stuff. Most of that stuff is scrubbed off the internet, including internet archive, because I've asked them to remove it. But like in 2020, I like quite quit my job and started shipposting more soon.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it was like obsessive hobby of many years and it pivoted all around, right? Like at some point I really like gaming and then I got moved into like I really like phones and like rooting them and like underclocking them and the chips there and like screens and cameras and then back to like gaming and then to like data center stuff like because that was like where the most advanced stuff was happening so it's like I liked all sorts of like telecom stuff for a little bit like it was like it like bounced all around but generally in like computing hardware right and I did data science you know you could I Said I did AI when I interviewed, but like, you know,”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like meeting someone from the internet in person, everyone else has been genuine, like you have enough filtering before that point. You're like, you know, even if they're like hyper mega like autistic, it's cool, right? Like I am too, right? You know, no, I'm just kidding. But like, you know, you go through like the Know the layers, and you look at the economic angle, you look at the technical angle, you read a bunch of books just out of like, you know, you can just buy engineering textbooks, right? And read them, right? Like, what's stopping you, right? And if you bang your head against the wall, you learn it, right?”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I made friends on the internet, right? That's dangerous I've only ever had literally one bad experience, and that was just because he was drugged out, right? Like a”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before that, but during college, I was still like, I wasn't posting on the internet as much. I was still posting some, but I was like following the stocks and all these sorts of things, the supply chain, all the way from the tool equipment companies. And the reason I like those is because, oh, this technology, oh, it's made by them. You kind of...”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for many, many years, and then I ended up moderating all sorts of Reddits when I was like a tween teenager. And then as soon as I started making money, I grew up in a family business but didn't get paid for working, right? Of course, like yourself, right? But as soon as I started making money at like, and like I got my internship internship sounds like 18, 19, right? I started making money. I started investing in semiconductors, right? Like I was like, of course, this is shit I like, right? You know, everything from like, and by the way, like the whole way through, like as technology progressed, especially mobile, right? It goes from very shitty chips and phones to like very advanced every generation they'd add something and I'd like read every comment I'd read every technical post about it and also all the history around that technology and then like you know who's in the supply chain and it just kept building and building and building college did data science-y type stuff went to work on like hurricane earthquake wildfire simulation and stuff for a financial company but”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nerdy kids, I liked games, but whatever. But then, like, there was no other outlet once I was like, Holy shit, this is Pandora's box. Like, what just got opened up? So then I just shit posted on the forums constantly, right?”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a long line, right? So immigrant parents grew up in rural Georgia. So when I was eight, I begged for a seven. I begged for an Xbox. And when I was eight, I got it, 360, right? They had a manufacturing defect called the Red Ring of Death. There are a variety of fixes. I tried them, like putting a wet towel around the Xbox, something called the Penny Trick. Those all didn't work. Maxbox still didn't work. My cousin was coming next week and he's two years older than me. I look up to him. He's in between my brother and I, but I'm like, oh, no, no. We're friends. You don't like my brother as much as you like me. My brother's more like jockey types. It didn't matter. He didn't really care that I broke that the Xbox is broken. He's like, you better fix it though, right? Otherwise, parents will be pissed. So I figure out how to fix it online. It ends up, you know, I tried a variety of fixes, ended up shorting the temperature sensor, and that worked for long enough until Microsoft did the recall, right? But in that, you know, I stay, I learned how to do it out of necessity on the forms.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just finished a video about how IBM lost the PC So, right now I'm unstressing about that. But then I'll kind of move right on to like the videos do kind of lead into others. Like right now, this one is about IBM PC, how IBM lost the PC. Now it's Nexus, how Compact collapsed, how the wave destroyed Compaq. So I'll do that. At the same time, I'm dual lining a video about Qupids, I'm dual aligning a video about directed self-assembly for semiconductor manufacturing, which I'll read a lot of Dylan's work for. But a lot of that is kind of like, it's just in the back of my head. And I'm producing it as I go. How do you”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do a video about it. I do. It literally is. I have a long list of ideas. Sometimes it's as vague as Japanese whiskey. No idea what Japanese whiskey is about. I heard about it before. I watched the movie. And then so I was just like, okay, I should do a video about that. And then eventually you get to move that”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes what I'll do is I'll Google a country and I'll Google an industry and I'll Google like what a country is exporting now and what it used to export and I compare that and I say that's my video or I would be like or but then sometimes also just as simple as like I should do a video about YKK And then it's also just as simple as”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My family will be pillaged. He actually gets really stressed about it, I think, like not doing something on his schedule. Yeah. It's very much like I do two videos a per week. I write them both simultaneously.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See, the difference is, Dwarkesh, you go to SF Bay Area Parties constantly. John is like locked in. He's like locked in 24 seconds. And I've got like the...”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two a week. You know how long he had a full time job? Five years, six years while doing it? Or a textile business and a full-time job. Wait, no, full-time job textile business and asianometry until like for a long, long time. I literally just gave up the textile business this year.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the channel, for some reason, people started watching the stuff I do, and I still have no idea why, to be honest, I still feel like a fraud. I sit in front of Dylan and he's, I feel like a fraud, legit fraud, especially when he starts talking about 60,000 wafers and all that. I'm just like, I feel like I should know this. But like, you know, in the end, but that, you know, I just try my best to kind of bring interesting stories out.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was a span of three videos. Oil industry in the 1980s and how it like funded everything, and then when it It was like the next video was like Monopoly in Japan”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or if you don't invest and you lose, it's Pascal and Wager, and that's much worse. Across decades, the largest company at the end of each decade, like the largest companies, that list changes a lot. And these companies are the most profitable companies ever. Are they going to let that list? Are they going to let themselves lose it or are they going to go for it? They have one shot, one opportunity. themselves into the whole M&N song”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh shit, that's that old? Okay. Okay, so Kane said it, right? It's like you can be, yeah. So, this is the world you're operating in, like, it doesn't matter, right? Like, what exactly happens? Or will we ebbs and flows, but that's the world you're operating in.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's the capital is going to flow in, right? Now, whether it deflates or not is like an irrelevant concern on the near term because you operate in a world where it is happening. And what is the Warren Buffett quote, which is like, you can be, I don't even know if it's Warren Buffett.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, sure, possible. Or people can see a badass demo from GPD5, slight release, raise a fuckload of money. It could even be like a Devon-like demo, right, where it's like complete bullshit, but like, it's fine, right? Like, should I should? No, it's fine. It's fine, dude. I don't really care.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lumen, one of the companies that's doing the fiber build out for Microsoft, the stock like fucking 4x last month or this month.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you know the bong At least like finishing up and looping into the next question was prior bubbles also didn't have the most profitable companies that humanity has ever created investing and they were debt finance this is not debt finance yet right so that's the last like little point on that one Whereas the 90s bubble was like very debt financed. This is like”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For private capital? It's like 55, 60 billion so far for this year. It can go much higher, right? And I think it will next year”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“XAI is going to be able to raise 30, right? Easily, right? I think so. You think Sam's tapped out? You think Anthropics tapped out? Anthropics barely even diluted the company relatively, right? Like, you know, there's a lot of capital to be raised in just from call it FOMO if you want, but like during the dot-com bubble, people were spending the private industry through like $150 billion a year. We're nowhere close to that yet. We're not even close to the dot-com bubble, right? Why would this bubble not be bigger, right? And if you go back to the prior bubbles, PC bubble, semiconductor bubble, mechatronics bubble throughout the US, each bubble is smaller. You call it a bubble or not, why wouldn't this one be bigger?”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have tremendous belief in GBD5. Area because, like, what we've seen already. I think the public signs all show that this is like very much the case, right? Beyond that is more questionable, and I'm not sure because I don't know what, I don't know, right? Like, I don't know. We'll see how much they progress. But if things continue to improve, life continues to radically get reshaped for, you know, many people, it's also like every time you increment up the intelligence, the amount of usage of it grows hugely every time you increment the cost down of that amount of that amount of intelligence, the amount of usage increases massively. As you continue to push that curve out, that's what really matters, right? And it doesn't need to be today. It doesn't need to be a revenue versus how much CapEx in anytime in the next few years, it just needs to be, did that last humongous chunk of CapEx make sense for OpenAI or whoever the leader was? And then how does that flow through, right? Or were they able to convince enough people that they can raise this much money, right? Like, you think Elon's tapped out of his network with raising $6 billion? No.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's like basically what all their actions are, or I can spend over $100 billion on chips in 26, and I can spend over $100 billion on chips in 27, right? So these are the actions people are doing and the lag on revenue versus when you spend the money or raise the money, spend the money, built, you know, there's like a lag on this. So this is like you don't necessarily need the revenue in 2025 to support this. You don't need the revenue in 2026 to support this. You need the revenue in 2025-26 to support the $10 billion that OpenAI spent in 2023, or Microsoft spent in 23 slash early 24 to build the cluster, which then they train the model in mid-24, early 24, mid-24, which they then released at the end of 2024, which then started generating revenue in 25-26.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like you look at the data centers people are building, you don't have to spend most of the money to build the data center, most of the money's the chips, but you're already committed to like, oh, I'm just going to have so much data center capacity by 2027 or 2026 that it's, I'm never going to need to build a data center again for like three, four, five years if AI is not real.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct, correct. But then the question is the simple truth is GPT 4 costs like $500 million to train. I agree. And it has generated billions in reoccurring revenue. But in that meantime, OpenAI raised $10 billion or $13 billion and is building a model that costs that much, effectively, right? And so then obviously they're not making money. So what happens when they do it again? They release and show GPT-5 with whatever capabilities that make everyone in the world like, holy fuck, obviously the revenue takes time after you release the model to show up. You still have only a few billion dollars or $5 billion or revenue run rate. You just raise $50 to $100 billion because everyone sees this like, holy fuck, this is going to generate tens of billions of revenue. But that tens of billions takes time to flow in, right? It's not an immediate click, but the time where Sam can convince, and not just Sam, but like people's decisions to spend the money are being made are then, right? Like, so therefore.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sundar said this on the sea on the earnings call. So Zuck said it. Sundar said it. Satya's actions on credit risk for Microsoft do it. He's very good at PR and like messaging, so he hasn't said it so openly, right? Sam believes it. Dario believes it. You look across these tech Titans, they believe it. And then you look at the capital holders, the UAE believes it. Saudi believes it. How do you know the UAE? Blackstone believes it. Like all these major companies and capital holders also believe it because they're putting their money here.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just me ripping. No, no, but this is psychologically what's happening, right? This is if I don't, and Satya said it on his earnings call, the risk of underinvesting is worse than the risk of overinvesting. He has said this word for word. This is Pascal's wager. I must believe I am AGI-pilled because if I'm not and my competitor does it, I'm absolutely fucked.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Super messy thing, but here's the other thing this is Pascal's wager, right? This is a matrix of like do you believe in God yes or no if you believe in God yes or no like hell or heaven right so if you believe in God and God's real and you go to heaven that's great that's fine whatever if you don't believe in God and God is real then you're going to hell this is the”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, just generally as a company. Now, obviously, there's other factors here. Like, what is meta's ad efficiency? How much of that is AI, right? Super meta.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not there. I want a real one, Dam So, like, a few things, right? The return on invested capital for all of the big tech firms is up since 2022. And therefore, it's clear as day that them investing in AI has been fruitful so far, right? For the big tech firms. Return on invested capital. Like financially, you look at metas, you look at Microsoft's, you look at Amazon's, you look at Google's. The return on invested capital is up since 2022.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That doesn't, you know, like this is because Microsoft truly believes in open AI. They may have doubts, like, holy, we're taking a lot of credit risk, you know, obviously. They have to message Wall Street, all these things, but they are not affordable for them because they believe they're a great partner to open AI that they'll take on all this credit risk. Now, obviously OpenAI has to deliver. They have to make the next model. That they can then raise this money and they can raise this capital from the world.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today, Microsoft is taking on immense credit risk, right? Like they've signed these deals with all these companies to do this stuff, but Microsoft doesn't have, I mean, they could pay for it, right? Microsoft could pay for it on the current timescale, right? Oh, their CapEx going from $50 billion to $80 billion direct CapEx, and then another $20 billion across Oracle CoreWeave, you know. And then another like $10 billion across their data center partners, they can afford that, right? next year, right? But then.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You that Sam's going to raise $50 to $100 billion because he's telling people he's going to raise this much, right? Like literally having discussions with sovereigns and Saudi Arabia and the Canadian pension fund and like not these specific people, but like the biggest investors in the world. Of course, Microsoft as well, but like he's literally having these discussions because they're going to drop their next model or they're going to show it off to people and raise that money. Because this is their plan.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I truly believe that people can innovate when given the need to. It's one thing if it's like this is a shitty industry where my margins are low and we're not growing really and like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to all of a sudden, oh, this is the sex. I'm in power and I'm like, this is the sexiest time to be alive. And like we're going to do all these different plans and projects and people have all this demand. And they're like begging me for another percent of efficiency advantage because that gives them another percent to deliver to the chips. Like all these things or 10% or whatever it is. Like you see all these things happen and innovation is unlocked. And you also bring in like AI tools. You bring in like all these things. Innovation will be unlocked. Production capacity can grow not overnight, but it will on six months, 18 months, three-year timescales. It will grow rapidly. And you see the revitalization of these industries. But I think getting people to understand that, getting people to believe because, you know, if we pivot to like, you know, I'm telling.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of total US. When you think about, like, as a percentage of US power, that's not that much, but when you think U.S. power has been like this, and now you're like this, but then you also flip side, you're like, oh, all this coal's been curtailed, all these like, oh, there's so many different things. So like power is not that crazy on a national basis, on a localized basis it is because it's about the delivery of it. Same with the substation transformer supply chains, right? It's like these companies have operated in an environment where the US power is like this or even slightly down, right? And it's like kind of been like, you know, like that because of efficiency gains, because of, you know, you know, so anyways, like there have been humongous weakening of the industry. But now all of a sudden, if you tell that industry, your business will triple next year if you can produce more. Oh, but I can only produce 50% more. Okay, fine. Year after that, now we can produce 3x as much, right? You do that to the industry, the US industrial base as well as the Japanese, as well as like, you know, all across the world can get revitalized much faster.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, things will get like cloudy because, like, the moment you unlock one, oh, like only 10% higher, the next one is the thing. And only 20% higher, the next one is the thing. So today, like data centers are like four to five percent. The total U.S.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More so, like TSMC needs to see NVIDIA volumes continue to grow straight up, right? And, oh, and Google's volumes continue to grow straight up and go down the list. Chips in the near term, right, next year, for example, are less of a constraint in data centers, right? And likewise for 2026, the question for 27-28 is like, you know, always when you grow super rapidly, like people want to say that's the one bottleneck because that's the convenient thing to say. And in 2023, there was a convenient bottleneck, co-as, right? The picture's gotten much, much like cloudier, not cloudier, but we can see that HPM is a limiter too. Koas says as well, CoASL especially, right? Data centers, transformers, substations like power generation, batteries, like UPSs, like CRHs, like water cooling stuff. Like all of this stuff is now limitations next year and the year after. Fabs are in 26-27, right? Like.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“25 26 TSMC is like definitely there and then on the longer timescale the industry can be ready for it but it's it's going to be a constant game of like you must convince them constantly that they must do this it's not like a simple game of like oh you know if if people work silently it's not going to happen right like there has they have to see the demonstrated growth over and over and over and over again on across the industry”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, no, I think the plans of TSMC on 2nm and such are quite aggressive for a reason, right? Like to be clear. Apple, which has been TSMC's largest customer, does not need how much 2 nanometer capacity they're building. They will not need A16. They will not need A14, right? Like you go down the list. It's like, Apple doesn't need this shit, right? Although they did just hire one of Google's head of system design for TPU. But, you know, so they are going to make an accelerator. But, you know, that's besides the point, an AI accelerator, but that's besides the point. Apple doesn't need this for their business, which they have been 25% or so of TSMC's business for a long time. And when you just zone in on just the leading edge, they've been like more than half of the newest node or 100% of the newest node almost constantly. That paradigm goes away, right? If you believe in scaling and you believe in that models get better, the new models will generate, not infinite, but like amazing productivity gains for the world and such on, so on and so forth. And if you believe in that world, then TSMC needs to act accordingly and the amount of silicon that gets delivered needs to be there.”
2024-10-02 · Dwarkesh Podcast · @Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source