Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Reiner Pope is the co-founder and CEO of MatX, designing specialized chips for Large Language Models. A former Google TPU architect, he joins John to discuss why the current generation of AI hardware is hitting a wall. They cover the "uncomfortable trade-off" between latency and throughput for current chips, why MatX is betting on combining HBM and SRAM to solve it, and the massive logistical challenge of manufacturing chips at scale with TSMC. Reiner also shares his predictions for AI in 2027, why he prefers Rust for hardware design, and why the best iteration loops happen in your head before writing a line of code.
Full transcript on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/reiner-pope-of-matx-on-accelerating
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2IHbGJJMpiFoz5YrvRfTFw?si=a2e54003fd084884
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cheeky-pint/id1821055332
Substack: cheekypint.substack.com
Key moments
00:00:15 Google’s AI revival
00:07:54 MatX
00:17:11 AI supply chain
00:21:48 Designing chips
00:37:11 TSMC
00:44:17 Token pricing
00:44:55 RL-ing chip design
00:49:26 Design to production
00:56:05 MatX culture
01:02:57 Rust
01:05:21 Cuckoo hashing
01:09:35 Unexplored model architectures
Reiner Pope is the co-founder and CEO of MatX, designing specialized chips for Large Language Models. A former Google TPU architect, he joins John to discuss why the current generation of AI hardware is hitting a wall. They cover the "uncomfortable trade-off" between latency and throughput for current chips, why MatX is betting on combining HBM and SRAM to solve it, and the massive logistical challenge of manufacturing chips at scale with TSMC. Reiner also shares his predictions for AI in 2027, why he prefers Rust for hardware design, and why the best iteration loops happen in your head before writing a line of code.
Full transcript on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/reiner-pope-of-matx-on-accelerating
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2IHbGJJMpiFoz5YrvRfTFw?si=a2e54003fd084884
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cheeky-pint/id1821055332
Substack: cheekypint.substack.com
Key moments
00:00:15 Google’s AI revival
00:07:54 MatX
00:17:11 AI supply chain
00:21:48 Designing chips
00:37:11 TSMC
00:44:17 Token pricing
00:44:55 RL-ing chip design
00:49:26 Design to production
00:56:05 MatX culture
01:02:57 Rust
01:05:21 Cuckoo hashing
01:09:35 Unexplored model architectures
