Asianometry

By Jon YTechnology

Asianometry episodes

August 30 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.
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0 min
August 24 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.
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21 min
August 20 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.
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29 min
August 16 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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16 min
August 13 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.
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39 min
August 09 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.
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21 min
August 02 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.
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32 min
July 30 Gallium Nitride: From Light to Power
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.
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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25 min
July 26 True 3D DRAM
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.
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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21 min
July 19 France Sold Its Nuclear Steam Turbine Champion. Then Bought It Back.
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.
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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26 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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