The data center has become the unit of computation for artificial intelligence, and the integrated circuit has become its limiting factor. AI models scale on one curve, while transistors, interconnects, memory, and power delivery scale on entirely different ones. The widening distance between them now decides what AI can afford to do. Most of the energy an AI data center consumes goes into moving data rather than performing arithmetic on it. That single fact reorders everything downstream: which architectures win, where the capital goes, and how much further CMOS can carry the industry. This book follows that logic from the transistor to the rack, beginning with how CPU, GPU, TPU, and custom accelerator architectures differ. It then traces the chip developments from Nvidia, AMD, Arm, and Intel now serving the AI ecosystem of OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and xAI. Later chapters work through the crossover from copper to light that governs interconnect design, then rise to system-level architecture and data center economics. The closing chapters look past CMOS to hyperdimensional and neuromorphic computing, silicon photonics, advanced materials, and quantum processors, and ask which will run real workloads, and when. Written by leaders from industry and academia, this is a unified playbook for architects, system designers, product managers, and investors who need to translate semiconductor trends into AI performance, cost, and energy efficiency.

Vikas Choudhary is Senior Vice President (SVP) and General Manager of the Connectivity and Storage Business Unit at MaxLinear. He has driven multi-billion-dollar product launches disrupting markets in storage, networking, automotive, and consumer electronics. He has also held leadership positions at Analog Devices, Murata, PMC-Sierra, and STMicroelectronics, working the full physical layer of computing from analog and RF through high-speed connectivity and storage. He holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and an MS from UCLA, and has authored multiple books, refereed papers, and patents.

Krzysztof (Kris) Iniewski is Director of Detector Architecture and Applications at Redlen Technologies Inc. in Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada. Over fifteen years at Redlen he has led development of highly integrated CdZnTe detector products for medical imaging and security applications. Before Redlen he held management and academic positions at PMC-Sierra, the University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Toronto. He has published more than 150 research papers in international journals and conference proceedings, and holds more than 25 international patents granted in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. He has written and edited more than 75 books for Springer, Wiley, Cambridge University Press, McGraw-Hill, and CRC Press. He is a frequent invited speaker and has consulted for organizations internationally.