freeCodeCamp.org: 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:
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