# eevBLAB 138 - The AI Supply Chain is INSANE!

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** EEVblog
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37vl4TEh5WI
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/39521

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Hi. If there's one thing people don't understand, and that includes the normies and also technical people like us can't fully comprehend supply chains and what it's required to actually produce the technology that we actually have today. Not only like basic stuff like you know the shirt you're wearing, all of the materials and the supply chain required uh to do that to manufacture these um Googles here. um that the supply chains for these are incredible. It's often really hard to comprehend how big and complex the supply chains are even for basic products that you take uh for granted, let alone um you know sophisticated high-tech stuff uh like you're watching this on at the moment. So I discovered this on X. It's from uh Chief of Autism. Love it. Chief of Autism on X. So give Chief of Autism a follow here. and has created this website ais supplychain. verell. app. So I'll link it in down below so you can have a play with it yourself. And it's an interactive supply chain um like dependency chart for in this particular case he's done it for chat GPT. Like every time you type in a chat GPT you know thing or a grock or whatever right it's going through what supply chain does it go through? It's just it's crazy. So we'll go full screen on that. And as it says here, from quartz mine, steel mill, sugarcane to chat, GPT inference. Um, so let's take a look at this. There's 76 nodes, 112 licks, 13 countries, 10 layers, and we can like here's the chat GPT, okay? And this shows all the dependencies. So this is the chat GPT output here. Okay. And then it shows, okay, that's coming from Open AI inference. Oh. Oh. Didn't know we could actually move them around. That's pretty cool, actually. But it just snaps back. Neat. So, as it says, it uses MSG byproducts, Soviet steel, 380 million year old quartz, ultra pure water, and sugar cane. Um, just to produce your chat GPT output. Okay, so let's see how this is possible. Okay, chat GPT goes to a open AI. This comes from Oracle Cloud through the Stargate thing and then call whatever. And that can go back to Microsoft Azour over here. But let's just follow the supply chain for Nvidia because everyone's familiar with like you know the N the Nvidia like in this particular case like the B200 um GPU or whatever. Okay. So they're reliant upon this and you can also do flow, right? So we can turn on and off labels. So I've turned labels on and we can also do flows like this as well. So that's really cool. So we'll actually follow the flow here. So, OpenAI through Microsoft Azour and then Nvidia B200 over here. Okay. And those Nvidia B200 uh chipsets are dependent upon the software mode here which comes from uh you know US core. It shows you the countries it comes from as well. And then it obviously are manufactured from T by uh the processor itself. GPU is manufactured by TSMC and that uses silicon on wafer on substrate. bottleneck number one for AI, 680,000 wafers in 2025. But that also requires uh the company Highix down here to uh do fabrication and packaging and stuff like that. So there's multiple levels to going into producing this B200. Uh what have we got here? It's it's insanely complex. I can't possibly um cover everything here, but basically TSMC that's actually not the chip manufacturer. That's looks like it's the packaging. That's from TSMC. The three nanometer, you know, two nanometer nodes. Mind-blowing, right? Um, this is just absolutely. Look at all the dependencies from TSMC here, right? This is just nuts. Okay, so if we just look at TSMC, it's got something applied metals. Uh, this is all deposition stuff, metrology stuff, right? They've got to supply TSMC, KLA Corporation, no idea who they are, but they do metrology and inspection. Cuz when you're talking about 3 nanometers, it's just insane. When I was a boy, jeez, it was three microns. And then they get photo masks from uh some company over here, that's Japan by the looks of it uh for the photo masks. Um another Japanese company, Tokyo Electron, for coating and developing and etch and deposition and stuff like that. And then famously, it comes from ASML. That's the uh Nether regions company. a lot of my viewers in the Nether regions um that they manufacture the you know the actual chip machines that TSMC uh use for example and they've got then they have CO2 lasers which must come from this company over here from Trump with an F on the end um most powerful pulse industrial lasers because that's how

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

they have to manufacture the chips and Zeiss mirrors they have to come from they have to be less than one atom flat that come from Zeiss right so Zeiss have the dependency. And then uh the light sources come from Simar. Never heard of them, right? Oh, they're an ASM ASML subsidiary, tin droplet generator, CO2 laser collectors, um UV light, neon, ultra pure neon gas. Somebody's got to supply the So, where does a byproduct of Soviet steel mills in gas marle Sauron Odessa laser swap? every two weeks you've got to recharge your um neon lasers every two weeks. That's crazy. And then uh rare earths of course seven China have 70% of the rare earth manufacturing, right? So China's a bottleneck there. Speaking of which, you we can actually do bottlenecks up here. Okay, so it highlights. So if we zoom out here, right, I mean we're only going down this path over here. Look at all these other complicated paths. This is nuts, right? So we can do bottlenecks here. Um and then we can do say China bottlenecks right so if you know if you're relying upon China Germany uh for example I guess the critical ones over here yeah Deutseland yeah de right so they're the critical ones critical Chinese suppliers over here critical Korean suppliers critical US uh suppliers critical Taiwanese suppliers of course TSMC's in Taiwan you know China invade Taiwan it's like you sell everything um you know Japanese uh dependencies bottlenecks it's just crazy so anyway where were we over here the photo resists over here uh they come from Japan and they're reliant upon another Japanese company fluuro chemistry for their resists which go on uh top they've got to supply those photo mask blanks uh quartz crucibles single use from spruce pine um there you go yes and here's where the quartz dependency comes in. In fact, we can do a dependency up here. Oh, no. I thought yes, spruce pine, right? So, this spruce pine is not the tree, but uh it's a quartz mine in the US, and they produce practically all of the world's pure quartz to manufacture. So, well, they actually it says 80% here, but I thought it was, you know, it's pretty close to the whole world's depended upon this one quartz mine in the US to produce like this ultra pure quartz. It's just nuts, right? And when Yeah. Hurricane um Helina went through in 2024 that just the whole market just went the market just chucked a wobbly and what are we going to do now? We can't get our ultra pure quartz out of this quartz mine in the US, right? And then they supply polysilicon over here in Deutsland and um Seaman's process at Wacka Hemlock us. So that's a threecountry process 30 times costlier than solar grade quartz and sil and then shinetsu produce the silicon wafers that this is man shinetsu in Japan supply the silicon wafers that go to TFSMC but they're reliant upon the quartz crucibles from this US company and the quartz comes from here and this comes from here the specialty glass is uh in France so we've got a bottleneck in France who produced the um special 17 17% of TSMC cost of revenue. Wow. It's all coming out of France. Look at that. That supply specialty glass specifically to TSMC. This is nuts. And back over to the neon gas. Um that's relying upon um iron ore from Australia. Yay, you little ripper. Australia's in there where we're dependent. You know, you can't do anything without our steel. Best in the world. Um the tin deposits come from China for example that have to supply the light source company over here that has to supply ASM. You can see how ridiculous this is getting and we haven't even scratched the surface of deeper details. This is just very highlevel dependency stuff. Oh EDA software of course comes from um the US um synopsis and cadence right to design the chips and everything else. So look at like three nanometer chip design is a billiondoll business software business. Wow. That's just nuts, right? First time tape out successes 14%. What upstream of everything this is just DM dies for DAM for example for highix. Um this is just this is crazy. Okay, let's go to substrates. What's this? Um bonders. You got to have like the little bonding wires and stuff for dice

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

stacking. Um they're the primary supplier to um Heinix over here which then filters up the chain for the memory. And what have we got? Uh Osat here. That's um outsourced um testing packaging and assembly and testing. That stands for um that's you know that's a US TSMC Amazon partner, right? So they're all tied in there. Then you've got the PC advanced PCB substrates. You still need your PCBs, right? Up to 80 layers. And that's copper foils. And that requires your copper foils. You get that's come from Mitsu. You can 1. 5 micron electro deposited foil for IC substrates, right? Not convertible from battery foil. Um there's a deficit there. Then that requires copper cathodes which come from um CL. Who's CL? Ah CL is Chile. I had to look that up. Um, sorry to all my uh Chilean viewers. Um, anyway, you look they're dependent, right? Copper ore and copper like that comes from Chile, right? And then you've got power transformers. You've got all the like power supply stuff that is required for all this, right? Worst DC bottleneck 30% short for lead times 128 to 144 weeks. If you think you had lead time problems, oh my goodness, 10 suitable rail cars in the US. There's only 10 rail cars in all of the US that can carry this stuff, right? This is nuts. And goes Steel in Cleveland, Ohio. Prices have doubled since 2020. This is crazy. Switch gear and breakers from AB and Schneider Electric and Eaton and right all those right that go into the power grid. Of course, I mean forgot the power grid for to run this whole thing, right? And all the D that run the data centers and everything. diesel gas generators as the backup systems and then liquid cooling and then backup power systems. Uh oh, we're back to glass again. Glass fiber for all the fiber optic interconnects and everything. It looks like they come from Japan. A company called Nobo dominates plus 20% price increase last year. And then quartz sand has to come from XX. Uh abundant globally. Everyone's got quartz. Everyone's got sand. Australia has the best sand though. Do you know that beaches in Hawaii, they import the famous sand from Australia cuz their sand sucks. Our sand's the best. Then you got natural gas for the turbines. This is getting and nuclear power plants, right? And then you got the geranium. Yes, there is a geranium bottleneck up here. So if we hit the geranium bottleneck. So if the germananium doesn't come from China, 80% of the global geranium is from China. Critical for fiber optic glass export restrictions since 2023. Retaliations for the US EDA ban. There you go. So the US banned the ED, you know, the high-end EDA tools from China. China went well screw you. You need our geranium. So um we're going to export restrict the geranium. Right. It's and then you've got like the um varnish and then you've also got this dependency coming from the once again the substrates like the silicon and copper substrates and stuff and that requires um film from a Japanese a varnish from a um Japanese company. Look at this. And there's this whole varnish um infrastructure here. And then epoxy resins. Um that's Mitsubishi chemical. They have to supply that. And then that comes from sugarcane. I actually tied that up the top. Where does sugar cane come from? Well, here it is. It's It come from Brazil. B I Yes, it comes from Brazil and Thailand. Most absurd link in the chain. That's what the he claims here. So yeah, cane sugar cane goes to molasses which goes to fermentation which goes to amino acids and then goes to and then they get byproducts from that and that produces the ABF film for GPU substrates. How mad is that? And that comes from Brazil. And if we don't get that, then you don't get your CH GPT output. It's just And then epoxy resin. Yeah. Japanese. Like it's just it's mad, right? Look. So we got the steel bottleneck there. We got the geranium sugar bottleneck there. Right. Just that Yeah, that is the weirdest bottleneck, right? That is just crazy. The spruce pine bottleneck. Look how interconnected that is. Um, this is just this is nuts, right? And as I said, we haven't even scratched the surface. This is just top level stuff, let alone go into every layer below this, right? Um, manufacturing all of the electronics that controls all this. Just a simple resistor. Going to the supply chain for a simple resistor. There's probably 30 companies, 30 processes in the supply chain to manufacture a resistor or a

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 17:00) [15:00]

capacitor or something like that. Let alone more advanced electronic uh components that go into all the electronics and then all the other materials and you know stuff that go into manufacturing all the technology that we take for granted. It is crazy. It is absolutely nuts and it's reliant upon all these countries and that is just to get a chat GPT output. This is why and I've done this in I've mentioned this in a previous video on Mars and colonizing Mars and having Mars as a backup for planet Earth just in case we all explode and we go extinct. Oh, the Mars colony will just happily carry on. Will it? No. I'm sorry. It won't. Even if you had hundreds of generations of people and doing stuff and living on Mars, it still wouldn't be able to supply the you would have to terraform all of Mars. Make it absolutely just like Earth before you even stand a chance of even uh producing all of the supply chain stuff that we have to make stuff that we take for granted. I'm not saying that we're going to be manufacturing a 3 nanometer, you know, GPU on Mars or whatever in like a 100, you know, like stuff like that, but just basic things that we take for granted, not just necessarily technological, but just everything else um that we take for granted has massive supply chains. Hundreds, thousands of companies and thousands of different mines around the world. Thousands of different factories, tens of thousands of different factories supplying all this stuff. We're just so used to be able to order something now. You've got this great idea for this new wonderful world widget I want to manufacture. And you're just so used to being able to buy everything. Like it's just But even when you're living on Mars, you don't have that, right? You wouldn't even survive. they would just go extinct until all their spares run out and then you know until you know you can manu recycle stuff maybe. Um and but no, you're eventually going to come a guta and you're going to go extinct because you just don't have the supply chain stuff and it's not just for technology just for basic stuff you take for granted. So yeah, that's um you know the Mars backup colony thing. It's all BS. Um it won't happen in 100 generations. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that and found that interesting as I did cuz it's just a lot of work has gone into this. So, hats off to Chief of Autism on X. Um, you can give him a follow cuz this is just absolutely phenomenal. So, as always, thoughts and comments are down below and I'll link in the site so you can have a play around with it yourself. This is great. Catch you next time.