Episode 28: A Whole Lot of Custom Going On

The Circuit · 7 Aug 2023 · 40m · Episode 30

What this episode covers

Ben Bajarin and Jay Goldberg discuss the hidden growth of custom silicon, highlighting Amazon's aggressive push with Graviton, Inferentia, and Trainium chips to achieve performance parity and energy efficiency. They explore how hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and AWS are developing semi-custom networking chips (e.g., Nitro) to reduce latency for AI workloads, while noting that automotive OEMs in China are increasingly licensing RISC-V IP for critical systems like ADAS and sensor fusion. The hosts analyze why these custom efforts remain under-reported and how consumer electronics marketing strategies may eventually drive automakers to brand their own silicon.

Mentioned

Companies
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, NXP, Apple, Tesla, Ford, Broadcom, Marvell
Products
Graviton, Inferentia, Trainium, Nitro
Chips
RISC-V

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