The AI Silicon War

"The AI Silicon War" traces how ChatGPT's 2022 launch triggered a unprecedented demand shock that transformed GPUs from gaming components into the most critical infrastructure of the 21st century. The book reveals why memory (HBM), networking (InfiniBand/NVLink), packaging (CoWoS), and foundries (TSMC) are now more strategically important than the chips themselves, documenting the shift from selling GPUs to selling integrated "AI factories." It examines all major players—Nvidia's CUDA moat, AMD's second-supplier strategy, Intel's failures, and radical innovators like Groq's LPUs and Cerebras' wafer-scale engines—while exposing how hidden winners (SK hynix, TSMC, ASML, utilities) capture outsized returns. The narrative progresses through cloud providers' custom silicon (TPU, Trainium, Maia), the trillion-dollar training-versus-inference economics, and geopolitical tensions over CHIPS Act, Taiwan, and rare earths. The book concludes that future economic power will be measured not by oil reserves or manufacturing output, but by the capacity to convert electricity into intelligence at scale.