Chip Design

OpenAI Didn’t Design a Chip. They Designed a Credibility Play.

OpenAI using LLMs to design its Jalapeรฑo chip feels like a seismic shift, but it’s a masterful illusion. AI didn’t invent a microprocessor; it learned to write fast Verilog. This isn’t a breakthrough in siliconโ€”it’s a credibility play. The hardest parts of the semiconductor industry still resist AI magic. You can prompt your way out of a logic bug, but you can’t prompt your way out of a multi-billion dollar fab. The AI semiconductor war will be won in clean rooms, not in prompts.

AI Is a Disaster for Chip Design. That’s Why Samsung Is Betting Billions on It.

Samsung’s use of Claude for chip design verification is a messy mix of massive productivity gains and terrifying hallucinations. The tension between AI’s speed and its non-deterministic errors reveals the real future of engineering: not replacement, but high-speed human-AI editing. The shotgun is here. Learn to sort the pellets.

The 4Hz Computer That’s More Valuable Than Your 5GHz Beast

A 13th gen i5 laptop simulates a 1970s 6502 processor at 4.1 Hz. That’s slower than a snail, but it’s the most enlightening computer experience you can have. The gate-level simulation reveals every transistor’s state, turning the black box of modern computing into a transparent window. Slow down to speed up your understanding.