The Circuit EP 164: ARM, ARM Earning, Agentic CPU Inflections, A World of Constraints
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May 11, 2026 They investigate a rare anhydrous hydrogen bromide shortage and its geopolitical impact on EUV lithography. They map growing semiconductor supply constraints and how those limits cap industry growth. They unpack a CPU renaissance driven by agentic AI and why high-core-count CPUs are surging. They assess ARM and AMD momentum, Neo Cloud economics, and timing for an optical networking inflection.
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Anhydrous Hydrogen Bromide Is A Compound Global Constraint
- Anhydrous hydrogen bromide is a single, geopolitically risky bottleneck for EUV-grade etch and memory production.
- Jay Goldberg flagged Resinac (Japan) refining limits plus a major Israeli bromine source in the West Bank as a compounded supply constraint.
CPU To GPU Ratios Break Down With Rack Topologies
- The CPU-to-GPU board ratio is obsolete; future designs use rack-level topology with dedicated CPU racks controlling multiple accelerator racks.
- Ben Bajarin explained CPUs will sit in dedicated racks as control points rather than simply increasing on-GPU-board CPU counts.
Agentic AI Makes CPUs Scale Separately From GPUs
- Agentic AI creates a new workload split: GPUs generate code/inference while CPUs must execute and orchestrate the results, scaling on different curves.
- Jay Goldberg stressed execution of AI-generated code on CPUs drives distinct and large CPU demand.