Compute per joule
Feedstock, lithography consumables, thermal materials, and the firms that make them — what decides how much computation a watt can buy.
Does this make a thought cheaper to have?
Open-source research · Materials desk
The chokepoints between here and the singularity, written down in public.
Substrata is an open-source research firm covering the physical chokepoints between here and a technological singularity. The research is free and the map is the product. There is no trading desk and no position in anything covered here.
A node enters coverage only if it passes two tests: it moves one of three curves — compute per joule, joules delivered, or actuation — and it genuinely gates that curve, on concentration, substitutability, lead time and demand inelasticity. A node can be a material, a machine, a company, a process or a person; the tests do not care, and a tool with one supplier gates a curve as hard as an element does.
Where the research stands
- Materials covered
- 15
- Producers identified
- 92
- Non-material chokepoints
- 14
Each one a chokepoint, not a commodity.
Across 85 distinct companies.
Tools, capacity, queues and know-how that gate the same curves.
Coverage
Producer rows confirmed against a primary source0%
0 / 92
Phase 1 completes when these match. The bar is drawn from the same data the map is drawn from, so it cannot flatter the work — an unfinished phase looks unfinished here.
The two tests
A node enters coverage, or the book, only if it passes both. Failing either is a decline — and we decline every week.
Joules delivered
Transformer steel, conductors, superconducting tape, the cryogens that keep them cold, and the interconnect queue. A datacentre that cannot be energised is a shed.
Does this get power to where the compute is?
Actuation
Permanent-magnet feed, precision drives, additive manufacturing — the step where a model stops advising and starts doing physical work.
Does this give intelligence hands?
The chokepoint screen
On a curve, and a chokepoint. Fail either test and it does not enter coverage.
- How few suppliers actually qualify?
- Qualified is not the same as capable — a producer nobody has certified is not supply.
- What happens if it disappears — a workaround, or a stop?
- A material with a drop-in replacement is a price story, not a chokepoint.
- How long from order to delivery, and from decision to new capacity?
- Large power transformers gate more datacentres today than chip supply does.
- Can the buyer walk away at any price?
- If the machine does not exist without it, the demand curve is a wall.
Running now
Two phases at once. A desk is not one of them — see Disclosure for what this firm does and does not do.
- Phase 1 — the producers of the fifteen
- Map every qualified producer of the fifteen materials under coverage. Mostly private, mostly uncovered: the sell side writes about chip designers, not about who fires crucible-grade quartz.
- Phase 2 — the chokepoints that are not materials
- A material is only one kind of chokepoint. A tool with one supplier, packaging capacity allocated years ahead, a transformer order book, an interconnection queue and a process that lives in people rather than equipment all gate the same curves. These enter coverage on the same two tests, and the universe has already started admitting them.