@Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works

Feels like you need a security clearance for this episode

Dwarkesh achieved rare lore for getting these 2 guys together. +10k aura.

Hi, HPC guy for a big US semiconductor firm here. There's a point at which John and Dylan talk about how the tech stack for tools in the industry is old, and people are terrified of touching it. I just wanted to come here to say this is absolutely true. We have entire teams that use things as old as RHEL 5 because they're scared if they update, their ancient versions of Cadence and Synopsys software won't work. There's a little bit of truth to this, but the two also speak about how the entire industry essentially runs like a series of apprenticeships, and I'd like to explain what that looks like in practice. The process usually goes something like this: 1. Someone comes in has to come up with some process for doing something, like setting up a toolchain in a specific way 2. That person teaches the people under them to do things their specific way 3. Said person leaves the company after 20 years 4. The toolchain LITERALLY never updates because the people who work at the company now don't actually know how it works so it's essentially magic Other industries have more public documentation on how their processes work (hell, Big Tech often publishes their software as open-source), so people can come in who understand the processes. This is not the case for the semiconductor industry, so things stay black magic. I can't push people off of RHEL 5 because their black magic probably only works on RHEL 5, so we keep RHEL 5 servers around. It's not that we don't update, we do have RHEL 8, but there are all these small pockets of ancient technology that everything else relies on. The Linux greybeards like me can keep ancient servers running, but I don't understand ANYTHING about modern EDA software, as I'm not an EE guy, and the EE people don't know anything about Linux because they're not software people, so we're a bunch of wizards who don't know how each other's magic works but somehow the magic has to work anyway. Guys, this industry is insane

I didn’t expect Jon to look like a Taiwanese uncle who is a high roller at several major casinos

So odd to see Asianometry speaking so casually. Great interview!

I love Asianometry

You know a podcast audience is legit when the sponsor is freaking Jane Street looking for employees

This feels so weird. A: never seen asianometry and b: hes not talking in his expert tone.

Imagine the trade secrets you can get from Dylan when he is drunk.

Please do an episode with Asianometry alone. Jon barely got to speak! I enjoyed the firehose of knowledge from Dylan "delusionally ripping it" Patel but would really appreciate hearing more of Jon's perspective. clarity edit: I'm not calling Dylan delusional; but as he says, "life is just more fun when you're delusionally ripping the bong and feeling the AGI" 😂