Asianometry

By Jon Y

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

· Technology

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How many episodes does Asianometry have?

The podcast currently has 266 episodes available.

Asianometry episodes:

September 10, 2026 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.
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22min
September 06, 2026 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.
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20min
September 03, 2026 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.
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19min
August 30, 2026 The Little Ceiling Robots Inside a Semiconductor Fab
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.
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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0min
August 24, 2026 Has the Solid State Transformer’s Time Finally Come?
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.
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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21min
August 20, 2026 China Built 700 Waste-to-Energy Plants in 6 Years
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.
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.
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29min
August 16, 2026 How TSMC Uses Old Fabs to Make New Chips
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.
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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16min
August 13, 2026 SK hynix and the HBM Revolution
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.
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.
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39min
August 09, 2026 The Subsea Cables Are Listening
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.
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.
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21min
August 02, 2026 ADSL Made the Modern Internet Possible
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.
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.
...more
32min

FAQs about Asianometry:

How many episodes does Asianometry have?

The podcast currently has 266 episodes available.

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