Dwarkesh Patel 
Dylan Patel runs Semianalysis, the leading publication and research firm on AI hardware: https://www.semianalysis.com/
Jon Y runs @Asianometry, the world’s best YouTube channel on semiconductors and business history.
Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/dylan-jon
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dylan-patel-jon-asianometry-how-the-semiconductor/id1516093381?i=1000671564456
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6q1XODE2L5bqqBwe7434S7?si=seXQ6K_LQZeAV6776H6MhQ
Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp
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: https://jane-st.co/dwarkesh
– Stripe builds financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Learn more here: https://stripe.com/
Timestamps:
0:00:00 – Xi’s path to AGI
0:05:05 – Liang Mong Song
0:09:10 – How semiconductors get better
0:12:01 – China can centralize compute
0:19:35 – Export controls & sanctions
0:33:36 – Huawei’s intense culture
0:39:36 – Why the semiconductor industry is so stratified
0:41:43 – N2 should not exist
0:46:38 – Taiwan invasion hypothetical
0:50:06 – Mind-boggling complexity of semiconductors
0:59:58 – Chip architecture design
1:05:21 – Architectures lead to different AI models? China vs. US
1:10:57 – Being head of compute at an AI lab
1:17:09 – Scaling costs and power demand
1:37:50 – Are we financing an AI bubble?
01:51:05 – Starting Asianometry and SemiAnalysis
02:06:55 – Opportunities in the semiconductor stack
If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise
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About The Author
Feels like you need a security clearance for this episode
Xi is definitely "scale pilled". I'm taking that term
"if you're Xi Jinping and scale pilled" is now residing in my brain rent free
This is some sage career advice! "it's really about: what are you good at, where can you vibe, enjoy your work,, and where can you make an impact in society…what engages you? Because if you're interested in it, you"ll work harder" Dylan
You guys insecure or something?
Dude. I only clicked on this video to see asianometry's face and this dude …
I'm sure you guys are wonderful people, but you all have the rich af techbro psychopathic vibes, especially the brown brother with the permanent smile. Really informative tho.
Bitcoin mining never went 10 GW from China alone.. 14:40
Dwarkesh, amazing stuff, yet again. But you should make it clear that this was recorded prior to the release of o1-preview.
why is he covering his face with mask
What the heck is half Taiwanese and half Chinese? Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese. You speak Mandarin. That makes you ethnically Chinese. Hell, the Dais, the Miao, the Uighurs and the Inner Mongols all don't speak Mandarin but they are sure as hell Chinese.
In stead of invading Taiwan, China should just buy off all the peeps from TSMC to build a new super Silicon Valley.
What I thought Asianometry was a deer 🦌. I am disappointed 🙁
Transformer with Chinese characteristics
You know a podcast audience is legit when the sponsor is freaking Jane Street looking for employees
Miller Donald Wilson Larry Gonzalez Helen
Almost didn't recognize him without the antlers
Big cheers to dwarkesh, throughout the interview with these two giants he´s clearly done its research, yet he´s constantly pushed to the edge of his knowledge, while still keeping them to getting into semiconductor cloud nine.
Heard of "Terrance Tao", you dumbos? He's ethnically Chinese. Have the CIA/FBI harrass him a few times and he'll be off to China, to join the rest of the Chinese Americans that were treated like WW2 Japanese Americans living in America.
Your 'speculation' is weak, sons. Level up. Much more insightful podcasts in China that have more realistic analysis of the situations.
Thanks for introducing dylan to me
I LOVE IT
Does this Dylan Patel have an YT channel ?
Promote Conspiracy theory . Pathetic . Who the hell told you guys Huawei is PLA company ? Shame on those who spread lies !
Like Like Like!
There's no path to AGI. There's just doing more ridiculous amounts of matrix calculations, and then a big question mark.
Interesting discussion. However, I could share in my network only if professional language was used throughout the podcast.
Asianometry is sneaky coward and gutless to face the public.
i do love the content, but whew… fellas, less “likes” and “rights” to fill your sentences.
a most fascinating story of human collaboration mechanics!
Sick interview propps
china can build better AI chips than what the west can sell them?
DOUBT! lmao…
I like the fact that he called that Devin demo bullshit 😂
"successful sanctions mean they stop"
coooome oooon… thats bullshit…
when has ANYONE ever just given up when they were sanctioned?
dylan patel is way too smart to accidentally repeat chinese propaganda…
i really wonder why he is rooting for china and downplaying them as a threat, and uplaying their capabilities…
I'll never understand why guys like Dylan drink coffee. Bro, you need meditation, not stimulants.
Wow very educational and information packed. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I am still dont understand. The use massive amounts of GPU is for build base LLM. Now is about RLHF , GPT 01 is reasoning is loopback from level 4 (according to AndreKarpaty 2023 microsoft presentation). Groq with they LPU work base on inference with different design. Is too much hype building thousand GPU pumping AI and chip stock
Amazing episode, I had no idea how opaque the semiconductor world is. Great original content 😁
this ep is gold in so many levels – combine this with CHIP WAR and you have a great understanding of whats going on.
I kinda feel lucky to have the background that I have. Power Systems/Electronics, Digital IC design, Analog circuits, Control/Signals Systems, and lastly AI design. This episode is such an overload that it is giving me anxiety.
This is amazing 😂
Is it not open sourcing EDA tools a possible blockneck? On SW side, so many tools are open sourced node.js, compilers, nosql/sql DBs, caching solutions etc?
Okay dumb question, would a "folding at home" style distributed compute among consumer hardware work for AI training? I don't know if there's any way to make a large training set into something like a packet to essentially break down training into smaller segments or if the model has to be trained all at once.
I would think an AI recommender system consisting of say 7B SLM models would be able to split off large problems into smaller ones. If you have the ability to pull essentially any PHD level specialized discipline AI for any given topic, you could then just use a bunch of SLM agents to reduce your compute overhead instead of this massive model trying to encompass all information. As humans we work as a bunch of experts trying to collaborate with other human experts to accomplish a complex task. I would think creating AI systems that mimic this behavior would be much more effective than trying to train one large model to do everything. So instead of one model responding to a prompt it would offload the response to a domain specific model after analyzing the prompt for specific keywords. For example any coding related question would be answered by a different model trained only on code instead of natural language, hence the need for a massive amount of different but smaller domain specific models.
What is this fucking channel and how is this motherfucker getting these insane interviewees but not cracking 1m views on more than one video??? Bruh, is it thumbnails or something? Interview someone who intimately knows about the YT algos or something and fix your shit because this is wild stuff.
This was such a cool podcast! Just dudes chillin out and also talking intellectual sh!t😀😍
Kids! Stop yapping and get a ee degree and u will get the whole fam stack
@zerbaxa599 its total misinformation the dam already completed and it doesn't have any security issue unless Egypt planned to be weeped out of the map; for your surprise there is billions of dollars coming in
@Dylan as you are analysing the whole sectors and scope sometimes birdseye view info will mislead and misinform; recheck Ethiopia's potential