From the Gate Up

How Chips Actually Work, from Logic Gates to AI Silicon

A journey through the hidden physics of AI hardware — starting with a single AND gate and building up to why GPUs, TPUs, FPGAs, and the human brain each look the way they do. Based on the Dwarkesh Podcast conversation with Reiner Pope, CEO of MatX and former TPU architect at Google.

Download: EPUB

Contents

• Introduction: The Chip in Your Hands
• 1Chapter 1: The Multiply-Accumulate Machine
• 2Chapter 2: The Hidden City of Data Movement
• 3Chapter 3: The Amortization Trick
• 4Chapter 4: The Great Synchronization
• 5Chapter 5: The Flexible Frankenstein
• 6Chapter 6: The Two Kinds of Memory
• 7Chapter 7: The Bloat of Brains
• 8Chapter 8: The Wet Chip
• 9Chapter 9: A Bunch of Tiny Everything
• 10Afterword: What "From the Gate Up" Teaches Us
• Sources