The Chip Letter

I’m delighted to share a post from one of my favourite Substack writers, Jordan Taylor, otherwise known as Incautious Optimism. Jordan covers a wide range of engineering topics from Hypersonic Flight to Nuclear Power and much more, with a unique blend of insight and humour. I highly recommend that you check out Jordan’s writing. Today’s post from Jordan’s archive is on a topic that I’m sure will …

Edward O. Thorp is one of those people who really should be better known. His Wikipedia entry describes him as ‘an American mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack researcher’ before elaborating that he ‘… pioneered the modern applications of probability theory, including the harnessing of very small correlations for reliable financial gain.’ In fact Thorp’s life has been…

All the way back in August 2023, in the midst of a series of posts on the RISC-V architecture, I ran a reader poll on the future of the architecture, with the following introduction:

Readers may have seen the recent post from Dmitri Grinberg RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better which sets out, at some length, his criticisms of the ISA.

One of the reasons for studying technology history is to look for recurring patterns: characteristics of either the technology itself or of firms that are built around it that are repeated time and time again.

A defining moment in the Keynote that launched the original iPhone was when Steve Jobs revealed that it would combine an iPod, a phone and an ‘internet communications device’. I don’t think even Steve Jobs, though, envisaged the range of tasks (and devices) that the iPhone would absorb. Our ‘pocket supercomputers’ have taken on roles big and small; email machines, movie players, instant messenger…

Floating point arithmetic is a crucial part of modern computing. A large proportion of the silicon currently being installed consists of ‘floating point units’ and floating point standards continue to emerge to meet the needs of modern machine learning. But where did floating point arithmetic come from and where was it first implemented? Perhaps surprisingly it can trace its beginnings to the ori…

The latest episode of Supply Chained, the new podcast from Tim Culpan and Jon Y has just dropped and it’s all about Arm. Before we go any further please drop what you’re doing and subscribe to Supply Chained and to Tim and Jon’s newsletters; you can thank me later. The podcast episode is titled ‘Arm might be swallowing its own poison pill’ and most of the discussion is about Arm’s decision to lau…

Intel has bounced back from its, at one point, seemingly existential crisis. When I wrote this post back in August 2024 the situation seemed bleak. Today Intel’s share price has risen to almost $100. Central to Intel’s resurgence is surging demand for the product that has sustained Intel over almost five decades: the CPU or more specifically x86 CPUs. So it seems like a good time then to go back …

I'm a weird British outlier, on this little island here, and I've made my own path. I've followed my passions and tried to stay true to what I believe in. Demis Hassabis The cover of The Infinity Machine, Sebastian Mallaby’s new biography of DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, features a blurred portrait of Hassabis. The effect was probably meant to evoke a Star Trek transporter-like dissolving of the hum…

Please note that the following is not investment advice. This post may be too long for your email client so please read in your browser by clicking on the title. ‘We’ll make chips over my dead body.’ Robin Saxby, ARM Founding CEO It’s one of the things that Arm is most famous for: it’s a chip company that doesn’t make chips. A stance that has been a key part of Arm’s strategy since it was articul…

New architectures pose new challenges but AI may help to provide solutions and break down barriers

At the end of last year following Nvidia’s non-takeover, non-aquihire of Groq we discussed the future of Groq’s technology. There was lots of speculation about the reason for what looked like a very expensive deal. Did Nvidia do the deal just to end a possible challenge to its ‘GPU supremacy’ from a promising start-up? I was sceptical, saying: What is the future of Groq’s technology? … As we’ve s…

Hector Ruiz almost oversaw AMD's end in the 2000s but the risks paid off - eventually!

Everyone is dunking on Intel (yet again) and I really didn’t want to join in … However, with the launch of Intel’s latest mobile design - known as Panther Lake - one feature (or rather lack of a feature) jumped out and had me retracing Intel’s history to understand how historic mistakes can continue to hinder a company for decades. Panther Lake has certain highly respected analysts quite excited.…

Qualcomm has won one architecture battle but is still engaged in another CPU contest

Is this the deal that launched a million blog posts? It certainly feels like a million and, initially, I didn’t want to make it a million and one, but … this Substack is passionately interested in computer architecture and, for reasons that I’ll explain later, this feels like a significant moment in the history of computer architecture. Plus, now that things have settled down a little after the i…

Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, discusses TPUs and GPUs with Paul Kedrosky. No criticism of Krugman intended, it’s great that computer architecture is getting so much attention. All of a sudden, everyone is talking - and writing - about Google’s TPUs (Tensor Processing Units). The use of TPUs to train Google latest, market leading Gemini 3 model together with Google’s decision to sel…

This is a part free and part paid post. The first part, discussing Qualcomm’s recently announced AI200 and AI250 AI accelerators and the history of the Hexagon architecture is free, whilst the detailed look at the Hexagon architecture that follows is paid. None of what follows is investment advice. You can upgrade to a paid subscription and support The Chip Letter using the button below. “Qualcom…

Whilst the world and its money is focused on the possibilities offered by AI, it’s easy to miss interesting events elsewhere. One such development happened this week in the Netherlands. ‘Takes control’ is shorthand for a number of actions including suspending CEO Zhang Xuezheng from his role and his board seat. The rationale for these actions? It’s not the first time that Nexperia has been at the…