Scaling Limits to AI Chip Production

Maximilian Negele, Lennart Heim, Peter Ruschhaupt

Keywords: compute governance, chip manufacturing

TL;DR: There are hard scaling limits to AI chip production, but orders of magnitude more production than today is likely possible.

Abstract: We analyze potential limitations to the growth of AI chip manufacturing capacity in the next decade. We find that bottlenecks in human capital imply that manufacturing capacity alone is unlikely to result in a cumulative compute capacity of more than 1e36 FLOP by 2034, which reduces the likelihood of some near-term scenarios for transformative AI. Nevertheless, compared to current levels of production, a significant expansion of manufacturing capacity seems plausible.

Submission Number: 78