The Asianometry Podcast

In the late 1970s, Exxon - yes, the oil company - declared war on IBM. It is strange. But since the start of the decade, the company had been slowly buying technology startups. Including one very iconic chip company. Then in 1978, they declared their intention to merge those startups together and take on Big Blue. Did Exxon succeed? In this video, we look at that time when the most iconic oil company in modern history took on the office equipment business.

Last month, I had conversations with people up and down the Bay Area as part of my trip to Hot Chips 2026. Then I boarded a flight to Taiwan for Semicon Taiwan. And I had some more conversations there, though not as much as I was getting pretty tired. It has been a year since my last trip to the US. A lot has happened! Year 4 in the AI Boom, yet a string of recent developments has given the boom substantial new energy. The shift to long-running AI agents and agent swarms. The pursuit of RSI, which stands for recursive self-improvement and does not refer to a wrist condition. Cybersecurity and the Hugging Face hack (which I won't talk about here). And the epic fight for compute. Another year, another vibes video about things in the Silicon Valley and Taiwan.

Machining is both an art and a science, trained over the years. Numerical Control can do it faster and more accurately. In the 1960s as NC started to emerge, people argued that this new automation technology will “de-skill” the craftsmen in the machine shops. I touched upon this topic in a prior video but wanted to get back to it here. In today's video, we explore the question of the rise of NC and the fall of the old school machinist.

Over decades, the hard disk drive industry moved its manufacturing to Southeast Asia. Thailand in particular became a central node in that chain. This became an issue in 2011, when massive, unusual rains led to huge floods that brought 40% of the world's hard disk drive supply to its knees. In today's video, a look back at the time floods in Thailand rocked the global HDD industry.

In July 2026, the Chinese AI firm Kimi released their K3 model, and it rattled the markets. One of the sub-rattles was a blurb saying how K3 designed a chip in a single autonomous 48-hour run. Stocks of Synopsys and Cadence fell 9% on this news, though that happened as the rest of the AI market trade was falling too. The name of the game in chip design today is AI. When I visited the US to attend the Hot Chips conference, AI-accelerated EDA was on most everyone's lips. Crowned by OpenAI's first chip, Jalapeno, and the AI-accelerated way in which it was produced. It has never been harder to separate hype from reality. Here is my attempt to make sense of it. In today's video, conversations about the use of LLMs and AI in chip design.

The first things you will notice upon stepping inside a fab clean room are the equipment. Massive, inscrutable, expensive. But the second things you will notice are the little vehicles puttering around on the ceiling above your head. There are hundreds, thousands of them. Stopping, starting, switching tracks, and occasionally dropping and picking up boxes of wafers. These are some of the coolest parts of the fab. In this video, we lift ourselves up to the cute overhead trolleys that run wafers from one end of the fab to the other.

How do you replace a technology that's been battle tested for literally over a hundred years? 1968 saw a new type of transformer, enhanced with power semiconductors: the solid state transformer, or SST. The SST is significantly smaller and adds some special functionality. But despite being “almost ready” for fifty years, hype cycle after hype cycle has passed without much success. Can AI data centers finally be that killer app? In this video, we profile the solid-state transformer.

In 2019, the BBC published a trashy story about one of Mainland China's largest landfills. The Jiangcungou (江村沟垃圾填埋场) in the city of Xi'an, the story goes, had run out of capacity some 25 years ahead of schedule. That year, China had about 400 incineration and waste-to-energy plants. About 50% of the country's municipal solid waste was processed by incineration. Six years later, the Chinese situation is a lot more interesting. In 2025, China has over 1,137 incineration plants and over 80% of Chinese municipal solid waste is incinerated. The country has about 1.2 million tons of daily incineration capacity, but just 700,000 tons of daily waste collection capacity. Thus, mothballed capacity plus counties digging up old landfills. Human history has never seen a more furious span of incinerator building. How did China build 700 incinerator plants in six years? In today's video, a look at China's 2020s incinerator boom.

TSMC is working hard to build new fabs. In Taiwan, there are simultaneous builds in three cities: Fab 20 in Baoshan, Hsinchu with four phases. One is now done. Fab 22 in Nanzih, Kaohsiung has five phases planned, one done. Two with shells up and moving in equipment. And then there is Fab 25 in Taichung. This site is just dirt right now. TSMC has allocated over $60 billion of capital expenditure in 2026 to build these fabs. Yet AI demand has been insatiable and customers like Nvidia want their chips now. But the hard truth - one mentioned by top management like CC Wei - is that capital expenditure spent in 2026 will not hit the market until 2028. Maybe a bit earlier. Does that mean that the AI Boom is now on pause? Not quite! TSMC has a trick up its sleeve: Cross-node utilization. In today's rather meandering video, what a fleet of little trucks has to do with the AI Boom.

In July 2026, SK hynix raised a record $26.5 billion by listing its ADRs on the NASDAQ, the second-largest offering in US history. The company had always been well-known inside Korea. But now, they are taking a momentous step into the world spotlight. In today's video, how a company long seen as South Korea's semiconductor basket case clawed back from the brink to become an AI memory titan.

There are 5 million route-kilometers of optical fiber around the world, both under the sea and ground. Over the past six to eight years, telecoms and tech companies have laid down over half a million kilometers. Such a broad and growing network of simple boring infrastructure. Now imagine a new technology that can turn all that into a massive network of listening sensors. In today's video, the recent, ongoing rise of Distributed Acoustic Sensing, or DAS.

Other than a few minor size changes, AT&T has been using the same type of copper wire technology since 1887. Millions of miles of copper wire that for decades carried just analog voice calls. Then came along a remarkable technology that takes that decades-old copper wire, and somehow makes it able to carry millions of digital bits per second: ADSL. In the 2000s, ADSL brought fast, always-on internet to millions of people around the world. And did it using their existing telephone lines. What is perhaps most funny about ADSL's rise is that it was never intended for Internet broadband. Many of us might have forgotten it today now that we have fiber, 5G, and Starlink, but ADSL truly helped make the modern Internet. In today's video, the accidental copper miracle.

Gallium Nitride is a remarkable material. Dr. Umesh Mishra - a UC Santa Barbara professor and pioneer in GaN transistors and LEDs - said at a retrospective of the WBGS-RF program (what that is, we will talk about later): “Gallium nitride actually is kind of God's gift to mankind ... [It] just kept cooperating and cooperating and you're like, ‘Why is this material working?'” GaN's physical problems are legendary. Despite those problems, this grumpy material has changed the worlds of light, radio, and power. That's kind of interesting. In today's video, Gallium Nitride's journey from a technical flop to a bringer of light to the gates of power.

DRAM long ago hit the slow curve of lateral scaling. The only real way left for big bit density gains is stacking up. In a previous video, I discussed 3D NAND, the most scalable semiconductor. 3D NAND sparked a scaling revolution in the industry. Can it do the same for DRAM? But stacking DRAM - cells, not dies - is not as easy as stacking NAND cells. In today's video, we talk true 3D DRAM.

In 2015, the French company Alstom sold the world's largest nuclear steam turbine to General Electric. The French government controversially approved the sale. Then spent nearly a decade trying to buy it back. In today's video, that time when France sold off the world's biggest nuclear steam turbine.

Here's an idea. A machine that translates sounds into electrical signals, and then stimulates the auditory nerves to send that sensory data to the brain. Can it work? And can it convey actual words? For many years, people didn't believe it. Eminent auditory scientists like Dr. Merle Lawrence stated that speech comprehension was “not feasible”. The inner ear was too complex. Too many nerves. We knew too little about how it works. And the surgical trauma and electrical stimulation will kill the nerves, anyway. Yet they did it. And now, hundreds of thousands have had their lives improved with this device. In this video, the long and winding road to the cochlear ear implant.

The emergence of the transistor shook the world. It certainly shook the vacuum tube makers. Some believed that the category was a dead man walking. The transistor was going to replace the vacuum tube everywhere. But the iconic American company RCA believed that vacuum tubes still had a future. And in 1959, they poured all their skill and knowledge into one “revolutionary” tube. In today's video, RCA and the vacuum tube's last stand.

In December 2012, Guan Xiyou, Chairman of Shenyang Machine Tool Group, was honored by Chinese state media CCTV as one of its 2012 China Economic People of the Year. Guan received the award for taking control of a failing machine tool company and turning them around into a $2.8 billion giant. Or so it seems. Even as Guan received this award, his company was on the decline and eventually fall into insolvency. In today's video, we profile the debt-fueled fall of a Chinese machine tool giant.

In 1972, two scientists reported the discovery of a very strong magnet. Their paper said: We found a new magnetic material which has the highest saturation magnetization at room temperature...among those of all the magnetic materials. Not only is this material one of the most magnetic objects known, it is made from two very ordinary elements: Iron and Nitrogen. For forty years, people went back and forth on whether this magnetism was real. In this video, we explore the decades-long mystery of the Iron Nitride magnet.

In early 2026, a British hedge fund sent a letter to the Japanese company TOTO. Yeah. The company making tubs, sinks, and those high-tech bidet toilets. Not because TOTO was doing particularly bad in those businesses. But because TOTO also has an advanced ceramics division that is the world's leading supplier of electrostatic chucks for the 3D NAND industry. Now, I know what you guys are thinking. How did a Japanese toilet company get involved in semiconductors? The answer is that TOTO doesn't see itself as just a toilet company. In today's video, we travel with TOTO, the Porcelain King.

As chips speed up and get more capable, they must also fetch more data and get it faster. Most of the time, that means going off-chip to some external memory module. It slows things down and uses energy. One alternative is to “embed” some memory right alongside the logic circuits on the chip: Embedded memories. For years, two types of embedded memories dominated. But things are changing. In today's video, we take a look at those, plus some of the next-generation memories coming down the pike.

Rice is Asia's single most important food crop. And in the 1950s and 1960s, the fear was that Asians would not get enough of it. In the 1950s, Asia was adding 11 million new people each year. All those people needed calories. They needed rice. But those countries faced a brutal equation: The only way to produce more rice was to make more rice paddies. Then in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of high-yield rice hybrids forever changed the rice production equation. In today's video, we return (yet again!) to my favorite carb and wolf down the Miracle Rices.

In April 2021, the Sri Lankan government banned imports of all chemical fertilizers. They were the first country to do this. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa explained in a speech: If we are to preserve the health of our planet and ensure human sustainability, governments all over the world must not hesitate to adopt bold policies The import ban turned out to be a bit too bold. Amidst plunging farm yields and soaring food inflation, the ban did not last the year. I covered Sri Lanka's economic crisis in a prior video three years ago, but did not mention the fertilizer ban. So let me do it this time. In today's video, the disastrous Sri Lankan fertilizer import ban.

People have been so busy with AI data centers and surging memory prices that they forgot about the EU Chips Act. And to be honest, I did too until I traveled to Antwerp for ITF World 2026 and someone at the media session mentioned that a Chips Act 2 is coming. But second breakfast so soon? In December 2025, the EU Court of Auditors released its special report on the first Chips Act. A quick read of this and other recent events says that Europe's current chip policy must change. It is not working. In today's video, a brief check-in on the EU Chips Act.

We often associate Taiwan with chips. Taiwanese chips. It's their thing right? But Taiwan's strength is actually only in logic chips. In the industry's other big sector, memory and DRAM memory in particular, Taiwan is second-tier. Hardly a player. It's not that the Taiwanese haven't tried to break into DRAM before. In fact, they spent billions trying for two decades. They just keep losing at it over and over again. In this video, we look at Vanguard, TI-Acer, Taiwan Memory Corporation and Taiwan's DRAM failure.

In 2010, the People's Republic of China banned exports of rare earths to Japan due to a territorial dispute. After that, the Japanese government began developing alternate sources of rare earths - signing deals with Australia and Brazil. The most intriguing potential source however lies beneath the deep sea sediments surrounding a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In February 2026, the Japanese government reported the first successful test extraction of this deep sea mud, thousands of meters under the surface. In today's video, a brief look at Japan's rare earths island.

It is one of Europe's greatest technology startup stories. A young student in 1950s West Germany motorcycling across the country - offering companies a computer. That young student built an empire from scratch. One of Europe's biggest, most famous computer companies. Then it all came tumbling down. In today's video, one of Europe's most well-known computer companies: Nixdorf Computer.

In July 2025, Intel announced that they will be gradually closing their assembly and test site in Costa Rica. End of an era. Intel has been in Costa Rica for almost 30 years. That A&T factory was their only Latin American manufacturing site. In 2000, nearly 40% of Costa Rica's exports were Intel microprocessors. They were a chip export giant! (Kinda) In today's video, let us look back at Intel's tenure in Costa Rica.

For the first few decades of its existence, all lasers were side-firing lasers - meaning the beam comes out of the wafer's side. Horizontally. But in the late 1970s, a new type of semiconductor laser emerged. One that fired out of the wafer surface, vertically. Yes. It sounds a bit weird. At first, nobody had any idea what to do with it. But over time, the technology has been adopted into a wide variety of everyday applications. Today, it literally shines into people's faces. In today's video, the little vertical lasers that everyone uses.

In March 1982, General Motors announced a rapid and aggressive conversion to robotics. By 1990, GM wanted 14,000 robots in their factories doing everything from painting to welding to assembly. Nowadays, we dream of robots in the factories, doing everything end to end. In the dark. Lights out. Guess what, GM dreamed the same 40 years ago. And they spent an estimated $60 billion to try to make it reality. In today's video, we look at General Motors and their dreams of the automated, all-robot factory.

The first electricity systems were Direct Current. It worked, but there was a problem. DC didn't transmit easy. Thus arose a new technology built around Alternating Current. AC. The two sides clashed briefly, but the winner was clear. AC won. Sixty years later, a subsea power link to an island in Sweden transmitted a new message: DC was back. In today's video, the rise, fall, and re-rise of DC power transmission.

⁠ I don't do that many interviews, but when Josh Fisher emailed me after the first VLIW video came out, I figured I had to take a shot and ask. And to my great pleasure, he agreed. Fisher is winner of the Eckert–Mauchly Award and a pioneer of VLIW architecture. I consider him a legend.

The machinist occupies a special place in industry. Using a set of mechanized tools, and drawing on years of experience and vibes, they take something from raw metal to finished form. Machining was part science, part magic. A respected craft that brought pride and a good living to its many practitioners. Then in the 1950s, a revolutionary new technology sought to replace the machinist's capabilities with a string of numbers. One Japanese company arose to take the fullest advantage of this trend. In today's video, the rise of Numerical Control, CNC, and Fanuc.

South Korean President Park Chung-hee believed that steel is national power. He wanted a huge integrated steel mill in South Korea. But the Western powers were skeptical. South Korea was extremely poor, without substantial iron reserves. Their workers, uneducated. For South Korea to go straight to what was then the most capital-intensive heavy industry was to defy economic orthodoxy. Too soon. Too inefficient. But Park Chung-hee believed Korea needed steel. So he pushed his country to build one of the world's most advanced steel companies. In today's video, we go back to the world of steel and recount one of South Korea's most iconic companies: POSCO.

In June 1994, Intel and Hewlett-Packard - two of Silicon Valley's largest and most powerful companies - announced an alliance. From the union of these two giants, will spring forth the next generation of CPUs. The Great Successor. Chosen to unify two architectures under one umbrella. It was named Itanium and by 2002 Intel had spent $5 billion on it. In today's video, we trace one of Intel's most ambitious products.

Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra has 208 billion transistors across 2 dies. Those dies are made in a titanic fab. Using an intricate process with hundreds of steps, dealing in the dozens of nanometers. So dumb question: How do we know it all worked? How can we be sure that the thing being made actually does its job and not be “the other guy”? This is why the multi-billion dollar Automated Test Equipment or ATE industry exists. In today's video, an underrated part of the semiconductor ecosystem.

A gas turbine's high pressure rotor takes on some of the most extreme temperatures in industry. And must do it for 100,000 operating hours. Right now, we are booked out of gas turbines for the rest of the decade. The shortage got me thinking about fan blades. Today, modern gas turbine inlet temperatures can reach an infernal 1,600 degrees Celsius. That's hotter than most lavas. What can handle such extreme conditions? Some of the most special metals you will ever see in your life. Metals tortured to survive things that regular metals never can. And it is still not enough. In today's video, my friends, we study the blade. And the materials that make them.

You are walking down an alleyway late one night, and suddenly behind you, a mysterious dark figure appears and says. Sir, I promise you a computer. A computer up to 20 times faster than what is on the market. You think. Well, what sort of unholy, insane 2-nanometer silicon will this computer be using? No, the dark figure replies. Ordinary hardware. Same as what everyone else is using. Maybe even a bit slower, clock time-wise. So what is the catch? If you accept this computer, then you must also accept some of the most brilliant but maniacal compiler software ever created. Oh. In today's video, we trace a radical idea to a computer 10-30 times faster than anything thought possible. They said it was impossible. An intrepid platoon of geniuses proved them wrong.

For over a hundred years, steam turbines have generated power using water and steam. Over the years, that steam got hotter and more pressurized. It made the turbines more efficient, but also made them big and complicated. Now here comes a different type of turbine. Radically smaller. Drastically simpler. These turbines have CO2 running through their veins instead of steam. In today's video, supercritical carbon dioxide turbines. The waterless wonder that may be 10 times smaller than their counterparts.

It used to be that if you wanted to get good audio on your computer, you had to get a sound card. And if you needed a sound card, there was just one choice: Sound Blaster. The company behind this iconic brand, Creative Labs or Technology, actually came from the city of the Merlion: Singapore. Their fortunes rose and fell with that of their most iconic product. In today's video, a look at Singapore's sound card tech hero.

Mexico City is Mexico's most important city. Today the greater metropolitan area is home to 23 million people, over 17% of the country's entire population. Economically, it is the powerhouse - contributing a quarter of Mexico's GDP. All of the biggest companies are based there. The place is also famously built on top of a lakebed. A sinking lakebed. Sinking maybe an overall average of 35 to 50 centimeters per year. In this video, we look at Mexico City's land subsidence issues and how they came about.

Lumentum makes lasers, fiber optics, and some other stuff. It has a wild history. During the peak of the telecom bubble, this company - with less than $2 billion in revenue - was worth more than GM and Ford combined. After it all came crashing down, the company languished in obscurity for over a decade. But now, thanks to the massive AI data center boom, it is SO back. In today's video, the glorious rebirth of a fiber optic high-flyer. And why. I want to thank Irrational, author of the Irrational Analysis newsletter, for inspiring me to do this video and working with me on the AI and laser section.

Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of bananas - supplying 70 different countries and responsible for a third of global exports. In September 2025, they reported their first official case of Fusarium oxysporum, special form Cubense, Tropical Race 4. The modern banana plague. The Ecuadorean authorities rapidly quarantined the area, and so far it seems to have been contained to small regions. But the fungus has been spreading elsewhere. It has been wrecking havoc in Southeast Asia since it first emerged there in the late 1960s. And in 2019, it entered Latin America for the first time. First in Colombia and then Peru and then Venezuela. Fusarium is one of the most destructive plant diseases ever discovered. In today's video, we discuss the Banana. Ever convenient. Ever delicious. Now in a slow-burn crisis.

The soil sample was collected in a remote Indonesian jungle by a Christian missionary. A few grams of dirt scooped into a sample bag and shipped to the United States. Little did anyone know what those few grams would contain. A drug so special that its Chinese characters literally mean “The Antibiotic of the Ages”. It has been nearly 70 years since its market entry. In today's video, I want to pay tribute to an iconic compound. The unique, mysterious, infuriating but life-saving antibiotic: Vancomycin. For over three decades, our drug of last resort.

In December 1957, Business Week profiled a new device from General Electric. The author begins by saying: A new device in a pea-sized package stands a good chance of hitting the electrical industry as thunderously as its older and more famous relative, the transistor, struck electronics How often does a business article hail some new technology like this? And how often does the thing actually live up to such words? The article was talking about the Silicon Thyristor. And it did indeed revolutionize the electric industry. In this video, the discovery and nearly 70 year impact of the first solid-state power electronics device.

In July 2025, a startup called Varda Space Industries raised $187 million to make drugs in orbit. They are not the only startup trying to make stuff in space. Starcloud - formerly called Lumen Orbit - raised $21 million to try and assemble a 5-gigawatt data center in space. And tech giants Elon and Bezos have been talking a great deal about putting AI data centers in space. A few people on the internet have riffed off those trends and ideas to also ask, “Why not do semiconductors in space too?”. Bezos himself said all the way back in 2016: “We can build gigantic chip factories in space”. Sure we can. But it's not going to be practical. In this video, Jon spends way too much time on space fabs.

South Africa's Sasol is the world's only commercial-scale synthetic oil producer. Founded in 1950, they convert millions of tons of oil from coal each year. In 2011, high oil prices turned them into South Africa's second most valuable company - with stock returns of 1000% since 2000. Then they took a massive swing on a multi-billion megaproject in Louisiana. It could have transformed them into an international chemicals giant. Instead, it smashed them to bits. In today's video, South Africa's synthetic oil giant, and the $13 billion US megaproject that ruined it.

In 1993, Japan broke through with the first commercial-scale Ultra-Supercritical steam turbines. For thirty years, turbines operated at mere supercritical temperatures. Limited by the properties of the steel they were produced from. It took nearly two decades of R&D for Japan to develop the technologies to bring that steel to the market. In today's video, we explore a coal-centric technology. The 30-year march from supercritical to ultra-supercritical steam turbines.

Over half of the therapeutic antibiotics used today were discovered in a brief 20-year period. A fortuitous discovery in the 1940s led to a global rush for miracle medicines in the soil. That wondrous method ended in the late 1960s. And unfortunately we have yet to find another. In today's video, let us look back at the golden age of antibiotics when people spanned the globe for the next big drug.

I just want to say one word to you. Are you listening? Microplastics. Starting in the 1950s, plastics got into everything. They were this wonder material. Useful for its flexibility and flame resistance. Then gradually we started using them for convenience. For the experience of using them once and then throwing them away. But what happens to that plastic after then? Where does it go? In the 1960s, we began to find out. In today's video, a brief look at ocean microplastics.

Stratechery has a recent piece out titled TSMC Risk, in which he calls out TSMC's conservatism as costing the American hyperscalers “hundreds of billions” in revenue. Before we continue, I want to disclose that I work with Ben. The Asianometry newsletter runs on his platform Passport, and I am friendly with him. I am not trying to flame him. But I am hearing many similar views in the Silicon Valley Borg. That TSMC is the “brake” or “limiter” on the AI boom. As if they're the reason why we don't have AGI yet. Because they didn't and still don't BELIEVE. If we can ever say that a company that spent $41 billion of capital expenditure in 2025 with another $53-56 billion in 2026 is sitting on its hands doing nothing. And to be clear, I largely agree with Ben's final message. TSMC having 90% share of the AI chip market looks pretty unhealthy. I was supposed to be working on video about bananas, but I had to do this first. In today's video, a few scattered thoughts on TSMC taking away the AI punch bowl.