Top all-time · #1747
Dylan Patel
Personal blog · semianalysis.substack.comhardwarebusiness
Dylan Patel writes SemiAnalysis, a personal blog at semianalysis.substack.com about hardware and business. Since 2021, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 48 times, most often “Intel Cuts Fab Buildout by $4B to Pay Billions in Dividends”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this Substack by Dylan Patel for its semiconductor and hardware industry analysis, including die shot and architecture breakdowns, fab buildout news, and advanced packaging.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Bridging the gap between the world's most important industry, semiconductors, and business.
Most-linked posts?
- Intel Cuts Fab Buildout by $4B to Pay Billions in Dividends4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-07-29
- Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-06-10
- Apple to move to RISC-V from Arm for supporting cores3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-16
- Arm China Has Gone Rogue3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-27
- China and USA Are Officially at Economic War – Technology Restriction Overview2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-10-08
- China’s SMIC Is Shipping 7nm Foundry ASICs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-07-20
- Rivos – high performance RISC V startup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-15
What Hacker News says?
> This means, the after ARM gets owned by a US company, the US can possibly just cut-off ARM supply to China Good thing ARM China already decided to go its own way [0]. 0: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-...
Comment linking /p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century
on “Nvidia prepares to abandon $40B Arm bid”Submitted Arm China Has Gone Rogue as a story · 995 points
HN discussionThis is whataboutism. "The US does bad thing x, therefore you can't complain about China doing bad thing y." Not valid. Moreover, IP theft is not remotely comparable to diplomacy or sanctions. The latter are normal ways of doing politics and negotiations. The former is theft, and is immoral under most moral systems (hopefully including the mainstream Chinese one itself). Category error. > It is pure politics and hav…
Comment linking /p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century
on “U.S. to open program to replace Huawei equipment in U.S. networks”Submitted Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM as a story · 343 points
HN discussionOuch. Very sorry for those affected. I worked at Intel for >8 years, and I still have a lot of friends there. I have little faith in Intel's management. They apparently plan to continue increasing their dividend payouts, while cutting back on investment in fabs according to https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/intel-cuts-fab-buildout-... ... and in the context of the recently-passed CHIPS Act... I wish they'd be more…
Comment linking /p/intel-cuts-fab-buildout-by-4b-to
on “Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown”Submitted Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP as a story · 237 points
HN discussionHuge fan of SemiAnalysis run by Dylan Patel https://semianalysis.substack.com/ I have yet to find a better in-depth source for hardware ongoings.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What hyper-focused industry newsletters do you enjoy?”Submitted Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt as a story · 87 points
HN discussionLooking at another article from the same author[0], we'll have a pretty solid answer to the impact in September with the release of the A16. Apparently the A15 had very minimal CPU gains clock-for-clock over the A14. To quote from that article: "SemiAnalysis believes that the next generation core was delayed out of 2021 into 2022 due to CPU engineer resource problems. In 2019, Nuvia was founded and later acquired by…
Comment linking /p/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and?s=r
on “Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP”Submitted Intel Cuts Fab Buildout by $4B to Pay Billions in Dividends as a story · 81 points
HN discussionThis is not the case. All 8 physical cores of the M1/2 can be utilized simultaneously, since each is a full physical core, independent of the others. The statement about only being able to use 4 at a time is true of threads, such as those found on SMT enabled processors that have core/thread counts like 4c/8t. In those systems, the threads share logic and decoding circuitry with each other, which would make your sta…
Comment linking /p/apple-m2-die-shot-and-architecture
on “Apple M2 vs. AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U Performance in Nearly 200 Benchmarks”Submitted Why America Will Lose Semiconductors as a story · 53 points
HN discussion> Apple M2 (Linux/8gb/4c) This is an error on Phoronix's part. The M2 has 8 physical cores with no SMT which makes it 8c/8t. You can see all 8 cores in the die shots https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/apple-m2-die-shot-and-ar...
Comment linking /p/apple-m2-die-shot-and-architecture
on “Apple M2 vs. AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U Performance in Nearly 200 Benchmarks”Submitted China’s SMIC Is Shipping 7nm Foundry ASICs as a story · 49 points
HN discussionThis is a two paragraph, highly speculative "summary" of [0] which was posted earlier [1]. But even reading the original article, it barely mentions Apple and CharlesW highly editorialized that submissions title: The Apple bit: > For example, Apple’s A15 has more than a dozen Arm-based CPU cores distributed across the die for various non-user-facing functions. SemiAnalysis can confirm that these cores are actively b…
Comment linking /p/sifive-powers-google-tpu-nasa-tenstorrent
on “Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V”Submitted As Moore’s Law slows, Apple is forced to use cheaper chipsets in non-pro iPhones as a story · 36 points
HN discussionThere is some debate over the actual price, discussed here: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/micron-sells-3d-x-point-...
Comment linking /p/micron-sells-3d-x-point-lehi-utah
on “Micron to Sell 3D XPoint Fab to Texas Instruments for $900M”Submitted Apple to move to RISC-V from Arm for supporting cores as a story · 15 points
HN discussionIntel is going to use that money to spend on buybacks and dividends. I'm 100% against tax payer funded chip fabs. It's just a handout to huge corporations. Already happening: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/intel-cuts-fab-buildout-... Also, look for huge executive bonuses in the near future.
Comment linking /p/intel-cuts-fab-buildout-by-4b-to
on “Intel expands Oregon Fab building; 18A Node now 2024”Submitted Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP as a story · 15 points
HN discussionLook at the in depth analysis I did of the die shot and SOC floorplan. Or even read the article I originally wrote I was right on the CPU architectural gains. Apple pushed clockspeed up slightly, but IPC was less than 5%. https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/apple-a15-die-shot-and-a...
Comment linking /p/apple-a15-die-shot-and-annotation?s=w
on “As Moore’s Law slows, Apple is forced to use cheaper chipsets in non-pro iPhones”Submitted China and USA Are Officially at Economic War – Technology Restriction Overview as a story · 14 points
HN discussionThey may be making a finer point here, I’m not an expert on packaging, but generally speaking there are packaging processes that support using only “known good die”. You still have the issue of testing the final integrated product, so the packaging process itself needs to have high yield. For more info check out Dylan Patel’s series on advanced packaging: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/advanced-packaging-part-.…
Comment linking /p/advanced-packaging-part-3-intels
on “Smaller chips, bigger packages, even bigger headaches (2021)”Submitted Ada Lovelace GPUs Shows How Desperate Nvidia Is as a story · 12 points
HN discussionWhen you upvote a link, LinkLonk tries to extract the feed url from the metadata of that page. So most of the time you only need to submit a link to the content you found useful and LinkLonk will start tracking the source feed and will bring you recommendations from it. Here is an example of a Substack newsletter issue: https://linklonk.com/item/2348076191098765312 which has this feed url: https://semianalysis.subst…
Comment linking /feed
on “Show HN: LinkLonk – information discovery with aligned incentives”Submitted Rivos – high performance RISC V startup as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted China’s SMIC Is Shipping 7nm Foundry ASICs as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted Morgan Stanley Just Reduced TSMC’s Value by $25B as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted Intel Cuts Fab Buildout by $4B to Pay Billions in Dividends as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Nvidia in the Hot Seat? as a story · 10 points
HN discussion
