The semiconductor industry built 60 years of progress on a simple promise: transistors keep doubling, costs keep falling, everything gets faster and cheaper. But that physics-based trajectory is hitting walls that no amount of engineering can overcome. This episode traces how we got here—from silicon's quantum limits to the actual economics of cutting-edge fabs—and why the industry's pivot away from pure scaling matters more than the hype around AI chips suggests. We examine what happens when the foundational assumption driving technology progress becomes false, and how companies are already restructuring around a world where incremental gains require exponential investment. The real story isn't that Moore's Law is dead; it's that we're entering a regime where raw performance gains become a luxury, not a given.

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