Inside the AI Hardware Engine – Full Semiconductor Supply Chain Course
Welcome to this comprehensive course on the semiconductor supply chain, where you will learn how a chip moves from design to the data center. You will learn all about semiconductor physics, design, fabrication, memory, packaging, and rack-scale integration. Your instructor, Kian, will guide you through this journey to help you understand the hardware infrastructure powering modern artificial intelligence. Course created by @neuralkian ❤️ Support for this channel comes from our friends at Scrimba – the coding platform that's reinvented interactive learning: https://scrimba.com/freecodecamp ⭐️ Chapters ⭐️ - 0:00:00 Intro & Course Overview - 0:04:21 GB300 Architecture & Scale-Up vs. Scale-Out - 0:08:44 Reticle Limits, Dual Dies & NV-HBI - 0:11:00 High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) - 0:13:28 Caches, NVLink & PCIe Routing - 0:16:15 Inference Walkthrough & Memory Hierarchy - 0:19:55 Hardware Economics & Transistor Budgets - 0:22:41 Vera Rubin & Next-Gen Roadmap - 0:24:46 Part 1: Semiconductor Physics - 0:26:07 Logic vs. Memory & Clock Speeds - 0:28:34 1T1C DRAM Cells, SRAM & 3D TSVs - 0:30:14 Transistor Basics & Scaling History - 0:32:46 What Process Nodes Mean (PPA) - 0:35:28 Planar, FinFET & Gate-All-Around - 0:40:50 End of Dennard Scaling - 0:42:04 Rock’s Law & Fab Economics - 0:43:40 The Great Unbundling: Fabless & Foundries - 0:45:44 4 Modern Semiconductor Business Models - 0:47:16 Part 2: Chip Design & EDA - 0:48:24 SMs, Tensor Cores & Parallelism - 0:50:39 CUDA: The Software Moat - 0:52:16 Nvidia Margins & Market Dominance - 0:53:14 The EDA Flow: RTL to Tape-Out - 0:55:46 Leading-Edge Design Costs - 0:56:56 Synopsys, Cadence & Siemens EDA - 1:00:16 Choke Point #1: Certified EDA Tools - 1:01:00 EDA Export Controls - 1:02:22 Semiconductor IP: ARM vs. RISC-V - 1:04:47 ARM's Move into Custom Silicon - 1:06:59 Fabless: Merchant, In-House & Custom ASICs - 1:08:49 Part 3: Foundries & Manufacturing - 1:10:30 History of TSMC & Morris Chang - 1:12:15 Die Size, Defect Density & Yield Models - 1:14:56 The Fab Scale Flywheel & Capex - 1:16:33 How Apple De-Risked Node Ramps - 1:18:49 5 Pillars of a Dependable Foundry - 1:20:09 TSMC Roadmaps (N2, A16) & High-NA EUV - 1:22:21 Wafer Pricing Trends - 1:23:06 Choke Point #2: Leading-Edge Foundry Capacity - 1:25:20 Geographic Concentration & TSMC Global Fabs - 1:26:23 The Fall & Restructuring of Intel - 1:31:32 Intel 18A / 14A Turnaround Plan - 1:34:56 Rapidus, SMIC & Global Foundry Frontier - 1:36:23 Wafer Fab Equipment (WFE) Overview - 1:37:16 Silicon Ingots & Spruce Pine Quartz - 1:38:21 Photomasks & Reticle Costs - 1:40:27 Inside the Fab: Building a Wafer Layer - 1:44:17 Doping & Annealing - 1:45:51 Inline Inspection & Wafer Travel - 1:48:08 Why Wafer Cycles Take 3–4 Months - 1:50:41 Cleanroom Standards: ISO 1 Air - 1:51:56 ASML & High-NA EUV Colossus - 1:53:14 Optical Columns & Carl Zeiss Mirrors - 1:56:34 The Extreme Supply Chain Behind EUV - 1:58:10 Numerical Aperture & Resolution Limits - 2:00:00 3D NAND Stacking & High Aspect Etch - 2:01:00 Applied Materials, Lam Research & TEL - 2:04:56 Metrology & Inspection: KLA’s Moat - 2:07:54 Choke Point #3: Japanese Materials - 2:10:06 Material Shocks: Neon, Quartz & Embargoes - 2:11:51 The Other 90%: Legacy Nodes & Auto Shortages - 2:13:21 Part 4: Memory Cycles & HBM - 2:14:35 DRAM Economics & Supplier History - 2:17:03 The AI Memory Wall - 2:18:02 HBM3E Specs & TSV Wafer Penalty - 2:20:56 Part 5: Advanced Packaging & Interconnect - 2:22:34 Anatomy of CoWoS-L - 2:24:58 Choke Point #4: Advanced Packaging - 2:26:02 NVLink, NV-Switch Trays & SuperNICs - 2:27:14 Part 6: Geopolitics & Policy Risk - 2:28:20 Escalation of US-China Export Controls - 2:29:30 Nvidia’s Access to China - 2:30:20 Collateral Impact: Automotive Mature Nodes - 2:31:50 China's Counter-Strategy: Yield vs. Power - 2:32:40 Tooling & Domestic Supply Chain Gaps - 2:33:40 Taiwan Conflict Scenarios & Economic Impact - 2:34:20 Diverging AI Hardware Stacks - 2:35:20 Rack-Scale Power Limits (135 kW) - 2:36:00 Conclusion: Core Supply Chain Choke Points 🎉 Thanks to our Champion and Sponsor supporters: 👾 @omerhattapoglu1158 👾 @goddardtan 👾 @akihayashi6629 👾 @kikilogsin 👾 @anthonycampbell2148 👾 @tobymiller7790 👾 @rajibdassharma497 👾 @CloudVirtualizationEnthusiast 👾 @adilsoncarlosvianacarlos 👾 @martinmacchia1564 👾 @ulisesmoralez4160 👾 @_Oscar_ 👾 @jedi-or-sith2728 👾 @justinhual1290 -- Learn to code for free and get a developer job: https://www.freecodecamp.org Read hundreds of articles on programming: https://freecodecamp.org/news
