Posted July 27, 2023

In 2011, Marc Andreessen said, “software is eating the world.” And in the last year, we’ve seen a new wave of generative AI, with some apps becoming some of the most swiftly adopted software products of all time. So if software is becoming more important than ever, hardware is following suit.

In this episode – the first in our three-part series – we explore the terminology and technology that is now the backbone of the AI models taking the world by storm. We’ll explore what GPUs are, how they work, the key players like Nvidia competing for chip dominance, and also… whether Moore’s Law is dead?

Show Notes

00:00 – AI terminology and technology

03:44 – Chips, semiconductors, servers, and compute

04:48 – CPUs and GPUs

06:07 – Future architecture and performance

07:01 – The hardware ecosystem

09:05 – Software optimizations

12:23 – What do we expect for the future?

14:35 – Upcoming episodes on market and cost

More About This Podcast

The a16z Podcast discusses the most important ideas within technology with the people building it. Each episode aims to put listeners ahead of the curve, covering topics like AI, energy, genomics, space, and more.

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