Asianometry

By Jon YTechnology

Asianometry episodes

October 04 The Fall of Brazil’s Armored Vehicle King
In the 1980s, Brazil was the Third World’s largest arms exporter - exporting over a billion dollars worth of weapons. And arguably its largest exporter company was the armored vehicle and weapons maker, Engesa. In 1985, its president and founder told the press: “There is always money for arms. In two or three years’ time we’ll overtake Britain and France as exporters and the market is infinite”. It was not to be, thanks to changing times, high debt and a particularly pricey tank. In today’s video, a Brazilian vehicle manufacturer that tried to take the next step, and failed.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
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30 min
October 01 EUV Photomasks Are Getting Bigger
TSMC and ASML recently announced that the Taiwanese fab will adopt High-NA EUV for high volume manufacture in 2030. In order to make this economical, the two giants will push the industry to adopt larger, 6-inch by 12-inch rectangular photomasks. The plan is to have a pilot line by 2031 and full high volume production in 2033. Assuming AI doesn’t kill us all by then. Big masks are a Big Change. In today’s video, I want to talk about TSMC’s big new commitment.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
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18 min
September 27 The Dramatic Birth of the DVD Boom
It could have been a disaster. In the mid-1990s, two opposing camps faced off over the future of digital video discs. On one side, the creators of the Compact Disc: Philips and Sony, with a CD for movies. On the other, a disc from Toshiba and Warner Brothers. Was one better than the other? For some time it looked like VHS and Betamax all over again. In today’s video, the dramatic birth of the DVD boom.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
26 min
September 24 High Bandwidth Flash Is Coming
I have to be real with you. Before traveling to the Bay last month, I never heard of the words “decode”, “prefill”, or “KV Cache”. Then I go to Hot Chips, and I took a full blast in the face with these terms. And now, just like 11:11 (make a wish), I see it everywhere. It’s Baader-Meinhof to the max.
But Prefill, Decode and KV Cache relate to major technical challenges associated with serving these ever-growing models. The memory makers - flush off the HBM bonanza - have brought forth a new thing with a slick name to meet these challenges: High Bandwidth Flash or HBF. HBF is cool but ... what is it going to be used for? In today’s video, a potential challenger and/or companion to HBM: High Bandwidth Flash.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
21 min
September 20 Intel’s Optane Memory: A Promise Unfulfilled
In late July 2015, Intel and Micron Technology announced what they called the first new memory category in over 25 years. They dubbed it 3D XPoint. And the two silicon giants said that it could revolutionize fast access to large sets of data. 3D XPoint is a nonvolatile memory like NOR or NAND flash. So unlike DRAM, it doesn’t forget its data if the power goes out. There were big claims. It had read and write speeds 1,000x faster than NAND. And its endurance was 1,000x better. And it had up to ten times the density of conventional memory. A single individual die can store 128 gigabits of data. 3D XPoint would evolve into the Intel brand Optane. It promised to be the next great memory. In today’s video, we take a look at Intel and Micron’s attempt to introduce a whole new memory category.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
30 min
September 17 Exxon’s Office Fling
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.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
26 min
September 13 Silicon Valley’s Got That Energy (But No Compute)
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.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
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21 min
September 10 Did Numerical Control De-skill Machinists?
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.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
22 min
September 06 The Flood that Wrecked the Hard Disk Drive Industry
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.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
20 min
September 03 AI, EDA, and Chip Design
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.
Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year.
Listen to Stratechery.
Listen to Dithering.
Listen to Sharp China.
Listen to Sharp Tech.
Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.
19 min

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Newsletter for the Asianometry channel. Studies on Asia - Financials, semiconductors, history, demography, development and other stuff.

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