Asianometry Channel Archive

271121 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. After six delays, 10+ years of development, and nearly $9 billion (1 trillion yen) spent, Mitsubishi announced in 2020 that development on its Mitsubishi Regional Jet or the SpaceJet would be frozen. Since then, the program has yet to be revived. Mitsubishi Aircraft, the subsidiary developing the plane, has cut staff and is now insolvent. It currently operates with a skeleton crew. It is a tough break for Japan's first indigenous commercial aircraft in nearly half a century. In this video we look back at what happened to the Mitsubishi Regional Jet. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

261121 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Silicon is probably the single most studied element on earth. Over the past seventy years, people have researched more ways to cut it, etch it, grind it, clean it, crystallize it, polish it than almost anything else. Engineers have done amazing things to turn this plentiful shiny rock into the century’s most impactful piece of technology. And the wafer industry needs some love for those achievements. So in this video, we are going to talk about the decades of research and stunning engineering that have gone into creating today’s cutting-edge semiconductor wafers. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

070222 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Israel is Intel's biggest location outside of the United States. And the American giant is the country’s biggest private employer. Intel is investing billions of dollars into bulking up its manufacturing capacity and technical prowess. Israel hosts one of the company's few leading edge fabs outside of the United States, and plays a crucial part in their new corporate strategy. In this video, we are going to look at how Israel came to be so important to the semiconductor giant. Errata: 11:23: I meant to say "Israel", not "Intel". The subtitles have the correct wording. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

040222 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In January 2022, Reliance New Energy Solar Limited - a subsidiary of India’s biggest private enterprise - purchased a company called Faradion Limited for about 100 million British pounds. Faradion is a technology pioneer in the sodium ion battery space. These batteries have had a higher profile recently due to sustainability concerns around lithium ion batteries. I've previously done a video about sodium ion batteries. In this follow-up video, let's take a look at this purchase and what it says about this tantalizing technology. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

181121 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In 1968, the British government arranged a shotgun marriage between three computer manufacturers to create International Computers Limited, or ICL. The government envisioned ICL as the United Kingdom’s answer to IBM - a national champion in computers. But the company could not compete against American and East Asian competition and eventually sold to Fujitsu. The United Kingdom pioneered computing technology. So why did ICL fail? In this video, we are going to trace the history of the British computing giant from its punched-card days to its final demise in 2000. Sit back and relax. This is going to be a long one. Hat tip to the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) for some imagery Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

230122 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In 2021, Netflix dropped $17 billion in cash - $13 billion accrued - for its content. A significant portion of that was spent on making its own shows and movies. In 2021, the company spent $5 billion on originals. People aren't going out to see movies in the theaters anymore unless it's for a Marvel movie. Yet the film and TV production businesses are busier than ever before - pandemic shutdowns notwithstanding. All of that is thanks to the streamers. What's the strategy behind all this content spending? Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

140323 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. I recently got an iPhone 13 Pro. I love it. For me, the thing that sticks out most - literally - is the camera. Virtually all of today’s top smartphones can take images on par with anything you can get with a standalone. How does your mobile phone camera work? And how did it get to be so good? In this video we will look at the amazing computer and semiconductor engineering that goes inside this impressive feature. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

210122 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Right now, Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography is working. Foundries are using dozens of these $150 million machines to create amazing patterns nanometers wide. The industry labored for decades on this intricate technology. But there is no time to rest. ASML is already looking ahead at the next generation of EUV: High-NA EUV. The centi-million dollar machine that will be better than regular EUV. In this video, we are going to do a deep dive into what’s next in the world of EUV. ASML's follow-up to the most complicated nanolithography system ever delivered. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

120122 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In 2018, DARPA announced that the United States will invest $100 million in new open source tools and silicon blocks to create SOCs and circuit boards. The goal is to try and bend the cost curve of making modern semiconductor silicon. While an open source EDA software community has been around for several decades, the increasing difficulty of fabbing at the leading edge has caused it to gradually fall behind the commercial industry. But now, open source hardware innovations like RISC-V have been casting a lot of light onto the open source EDA space as well. In this fun little video, we are going to take a look at the ecosystem as it is today. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

100122 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. For a long time, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK has been trying to make itself self-sufficient in food production. Something we might take for granted in other countries, is very hard for this one. Reliable information about the country is hard to come by. The government's official channels are not exactly super credible and so people mostly rely on anecdotes or rumors. But we are going to do our best. In this video, we are going to parse what we know about the DPRK or North Korea (I will use the two names interchangeably), their agricultural instability, and what the government is doing about it. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

060122 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Look at them icebergs. Out there in the open ocean. Just sitting there. Made of freshwater. Melting away. Melting away into nothing. Nobody doing anything with them. What a waste. Look at Australia. Land of desert and thirsty kangaroos. Starving for water. Crying out for it! Is there no possible solution?? Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, members of the Australian scientific community seriously studied the possibility of harvesting Antarctic icebergs out on the open sea and towing them back to Australia. Note: I am suffering from a cold. Forgive me for the audio. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

030122 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Note: Yes, It's thermal runaway, not runway. I am sorry. A little while ago, GM began telling the customers of their Chevrolet Bolt not to use them. This is due to a rash of battery-related fires that have triggered three recalls and cost GM $1.8 billion in warranty costs. GM is looking to pass those costs onto their battery supplier - LG Energy Solution. Sometimes also referred to as LG Chem, of which they are a recent spinoff. LG has acknowledged their responsibility in the whole situation - attributing it to a cell manufacturing quality problem. Lawsuits are probably forthcoming. This kerfuffle illustrates a going concern with this latest generation of high-energy EV batteries: Fires. In this video, we are going to take a look at these high profile electric vehicle events and what it means for the industry. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

301221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In 2020, China overtook the United States as the world's largest box office. The pandemic had a lot to do with it, of course, but it is still a sign of the times. Over the past two decades, the American movie industry increasingly leaned on the Chinese market. Producers and studios bent their movies' content to appeal to Chinese audiences. But the Chinese theater market is changing. Chinese studios are making better movies across a variety of genres. And the country is looking to turn its growing movie-making strengths into a massive cultural export machine. Hollywood and the Western movie industry hoped China would mature into a cash cow. But China is actually turning into a competitor. In this video, I want to talk about the industry’s coming Chinese competition. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

261221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. After 20+ years of development, extreme ultraviolet lithography has become a commercial reality. As I write these words, multi-million dollar machines from ASML use EUV light to create impossibly small patterns in wafers. This technological magic requires a powerful heart inside of it. And indeed, there is an amazing system driving ASML's $150 million lithography machine: The EUV Light Source. In this video, we are going to look at the lasers firing pulses at tin droplets to create the powerful, 13.5 nanometer wavelength light for our latest, greatest microprocessors. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

231221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. India's chip design industry is a multi-billion dollar giant. As fabless chip companies emerged as a real force in the industry, the South Asian country captured more than its fair share of the gains. For foreign multinationals, the country still offers amazing, high-class talents at a reasonable cost. But is that really such a good thing? In this follow up video, we will take a look at India's rise in the chip design world, the current state of affairs, and the challenges the industry faces in the times ahead. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

191221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Let me ask you something. You probably have heard all the news about this or that car factory shutting down because of the global chip shortage. That nobody can get the car they want because of a tiny little chip. And you might be wondering. When did semiconductors matter so much to today's vehicles? Why do we need to turn our cars into computers? Why can't things just be simple? What are all these electronics actually *doing* for our cars? In this video we are going to go into the automotive supply chain and their semiconductors. The specific focus will be on conventional cars. But if this video does well enough, perhaps we can do a version for electric and autonomous vehicles. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - The Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

161221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Contemporary Amperex Technologies or CATL is China's leading EV battery supplier. As of this writing, it is the only Chinese EV battery company that has begun to export its products abroad. It is interesting to consider that one of China's most valuable companies makes, of all things, batteries. When we think about high value add, technically complicated things, we think about iPhones or other tech. Not exactly batteries. But as it turns out, batteries are surprisingly complicated to make. In this video, we are going to look at how CATL manufactures one of their EV batteries. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

151221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Meet Global South exhibition in the southern city of Kaohsiung. This show is for showcasing tech opportunities and companies relating to Taiwan's southern regions. In this vlog, I want to report on my experiences at the show, a few highlights, and some of the challenges southern Taiwan’s tech scene faces in the future. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

121221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Machine learning has been in the news a lot lately. Some of the early hype has died down, but the trend still lives on. And now it has really started to make waves in the chip design world. Machine learning and AI in chip design is such a sprawling field that I started to lose myself in all the research. So I figured to just go into a recent breakthrough in the chip design field: Floorplanning. Google has been applying the same AI prowess that allowed them to badly beat the best Go masters to this obscure, but important sub-category of the field. Errata: 4:00 - I misspoke. The graphic is correct. 10 to the 123rd power, NOT 23rd power. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

101221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. On the surface, it makes little sense. Singapore has no oil reserves whatsoever. Despite this, Singapore is today one of the world's biggest players in the petroleum industry. And that role has helped the country's rise from poverty to first-world wealth. In this video we will see how Singapore came to be a hub for almost everything oil-related, without any of their own reserves. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

051221 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In 1997, American chip consortium SEMATECH sounded an alarm to the industry about the chip design productivity gap. They observed that integrated chip manufacturing capabilities were expanding at about 40% a year. At the time. Yet IC design capabilities were only growing at about half of that rate. Thus, a potential crisis was brewing where design capabilities lag far behind manufacturing. This crisis never took place for reasons we will discuss later. In turn, however, a new challenge for the industry has emerged: Verification. In this video, we are going to look at why this previously unheralded step has become a rather big deal in today's competitive chip design world. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

231121 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. In November 2021, American software maker Unity Software announced that it would buy New Zealand-based Weta Digital for $1.65 billion. Weta Digital is one of New Zealand's most well-known technology companies. It provides visual effects services for movie productions. It also produces the computer tools for making those visual effects services. New Zealand is a pretty isolated economy that mostly exports milk and sheep. So the development of a leader in the high-tech visual effects industry is really interesting. In this video, we will look at Weta Digital and what its new owner might want to do with it. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

291121 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment, or SMEE (上海微电子装备) is China’s ambitious project to replace ASML. The company has been around for a while, and they have received a lot of attention and cheerleading in the Chinese media. But recent high profile export bans to China have brought them special focus. In this video, we are going to take a closer look at this under-covered company, what they have been able to produce, and how they are doing so far. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - The Podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/

201121 Like and subscribe. This is an archive, check the link in the end if you are. China's biggest IPO of 2021 so far is not some super-sexy semiconductor play or mobile app, but rather a renewable energy company with a very familiar name. That company is called Three Gorges New Energy (三峡能源) and it is a subsidiary of China's Three Gorges Corporation, builder of the world's biggest dam. In June 2021, the company sold 8.57 billion shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to raise 22.5 billion RMB or $3.5 billion USD. Since I have written before about the Three Gorges Dam and China’s solar industry, this IPO caught my eye. In this video, we will talk about the company, an interesting glimpse into China’s plans for its renewables industry. Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://asianometry.substack.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry https://rumblevideoarchive.wordpress.com/