Semi Doped
A podcast about the business and technology of semiconductors, providing insights for engineers and investors alike.
Episodes
Synopsys’s Amazon Deal and GPT-Synopsys: Ravi Subramanian
The demand for workload-specific hardware is forcing a strategic shift in the semiconductor IP business. Synopsys's Ravi Subramanian joins Austin to discuss why the company is moving to a new royalty-based model for its custom "application optimized IP," starting with a billion-dollar deal with Amazon. Ravi also unpacks Synopsys's partnership with OpenAI and its vision for AI &
Every Muse User Gets 2 CPUs and 8GB in Meta's Cloud. Your Phone Already Has That
The push to run AI agents on edge devices will not be driven by model labs or hardware vendors, but by service providers like Meta whose ad-based business models create a powerful financial incentive to offload massive cloud compute costs onto the user's own powerful-but-idle hardware. Austin Lyons and Vik Sekar break down why the failed "AI PC" push has given way to a new, economic
Flash Hit Its Physical Limit. ReRAM Is the Replacement: WeeBit Nano's Ilan Sever
As embedded flash hits a physical and economic scaling wall below 22nm, a new on-chip memory is needed. Ilan Sever of WeeBit Nano joins to explain how Resistive RAM (ReRAM) is positioned to become the new standard by offering a low-cost, high-endurance alternative. Ilan details how ReRAM's simple back-end-of-line integration, automotive qualification, and future applications in AI in-memory c
Qualcomm's Durga Malladi: HBC vs HBM, Dragonfly AI 250, and Winning on TCO
Qualcomm re-entered the data center inference market late — competitive GPUs, XPUs, and custom accelerators are already out there. Durga Malladi (EVP/GM, Technology Planning, Edge & Data Center) explains why they didn't build another me-too accelerator and instead placed a differentiating technical bet: High Bandwidth Compute (HBC).The difference between HBC and HBM: HBM is stacked DRAM t
Pacing AI Means More Compute, Not Less
The debate over "pacing" AI for safety is a red herring, as the practical outcome of more safety work is not a slowdown but a net increase in demand for compute hardware. Austin Lyons and Vik Sekar unpack Dario Amodei's call to slow down frontier AI development, arguing that the true governors on AI are not voluntary agreements but physical data center bottlenecks and geopolitical r
TSMC Will Buy High NA After All: ASML's New 6x12-Inch Mask
The emergence of user-friendly AI agents is creating massive new hardware demand, which in turn is forcing the semiconductor industry into a complex, multi-year transition to High NA EUV lithography and an entirely new 12-inch photomask standard. Austin Lyons and Vik Sekar unpack the physics and economics of ASML's move to High NA, explaining why it necessitates a shift from 6-inch to 6x12-in
OpenAI’s Jalapeño! Feeling Hot Hot Hot!
Austin and Vik react to OpenAI's Jalapeño announcement at Hot Chips. Plus extra spicy questions like should OpenAI sell it, how much of this was AI-written RTL, and where is Anthropic's chip?Key Takeaways:- The chip's core design philosophy is "dark silicon is cheaper than idle accelerators" — using one balanced chip and power-gating unused blocks is more efficient than a
Grok Bots and How CPUs are used in Agentic AI
The rise of user-friendly agentic AI platforms will create a massive new demand category for dedicated, high-core-count "agentic CPUs" to execute tasks in parallel, fundamentally reshaping the server CPU market beyond just feeding GPUs.Key Takeaways:- The 'Mac Mini Craze' wasn't about having a GPU on your desk — it was also about security, as users needed a sandboxed machi
Tensordyne's R K Anand: HPE Juniper Fabric, Logarithmic Math, MoE Inference, Air Cooling, 3nm
Tensordyne co-founder and CPO R K Anand joins Austin to discuss the company's strategy for disrupting AI inference. RK explains how Tensordyne combines power-efficient logarithmic math with a battle-hardened networking fabric from partner HPE Juniper. The result is a high-density, air-cooled system designed to efficiently run massive Mixture-of-Experts models in existing data centers.Key Take
NEWS TAKE: China's Optical Ban, Volta's $10B Anthropic Deal, AMD's Earnings
Austin Lyons and Vik Sekar break down three stories that hit semis last week. They analyze a proposed US ban on Chinese optical transceivers that threatens to cut off 50% of the global supply, the market's reaction to AMD's surprise $800M CapEx spend despite strong earnings, and how a new company called Volta Infrastructure landed a $10B compute deal with Anthropic by pioneering a new fi
GlobalFoundries Thomas Barber: CPO, Silicon Photonics, 300mm, SiGe, OCI, NRZ
The physical limits of copper are forcing a shift to optical interconnects in AI data centers. Austin sits down with GlobalFoundries' Thomas Barber to unpack why GF thinks it can lead that transition twice over: once with its long-running silicon photonics platform, and again with the specialty Silicon Germanium process the industry needs to drive it."The enemy to me right now is copper.
How Retimers Built an $80B Company: The Story of Astera Labs
A retimer is a small, unglamorous chip. Astera turned it into a high-margin franchise. Austin and Vik cover why copper gives up at PCIe speeds, what a retimer does that a redriver can't, and how one H100 socket became a moat. Then Scorpio: can Astera take switch share from Broadcom?Key Takeaways:- 30cm of PCB trace at Gen 5's 32 GT/s and the signal is gone. Signal integrity is an inside-
News Take: Hyperscaler CDS, SK Hynix Earnings, China's DUV
Austin Lyons and Vik Sekar break down the market's recent volatility. They discuss the rising fear around hyperscaler debt, visible in credit default swap (CDS) premiums, and the counter-argument that GPU ROI is actually understated. They then analyze the paradox of SK Hynix's massive stock drop despite record growth, and explain why China's new DUV lithography tool makes 3D chip st
Datacenter Interconnects: Copper vs. Optics, Nvidia's 78-Layer PCB, Co-Packaged Optics (CPO)
Vik Sekar and Austin Lyons tackle the biggest bottleneck in inference: moving data. They break down the three tiers of datacenter networking — scale up, scale out, scale across — and the core engineering trade-off at each layer: copper vs. optics. Topics include Nvidia's extreme measures to keep scale-up fabric electrical (a 78-layer mid-plane PCB), why Co-Packaged Optics is the "holy gr
PicoJool's Al Yuen: The Case for GaAs VCSELs in Scale-Up Interconnects
Al Yuen, CEO of PicoJool, talks with Austin about using VCSELs for scale-up optical interconnects in AI data centers. Al explains why gallium arsenide (GaAs) supply is unconstrained while indium phosphide (InP) is limited, and how PicoJool can leverage existing supply chains to ship in the millions per month. They cover the roadmap from 1.6T to 12.8T, the trade-offs among 8×200G, 16×100G, and 32×5
WEKA's Val Bercovici: KV Cache, DeepSeek V4, HBF, SLC vs QLC NAND, CXL, NVLink, Tokenomics
Vik welcomes Val Bercovici from Weka to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of AI memory and storage. Val explains how Weka's architecture leverages high-bandwidth networks to make storage faster than motherboard DRAM. They dive into KV cache optimizations, the future of NAND flash tiers, and the role of CXL in AI inference. The episode concludes with a look at predictive memory offloading
Micron's Record Profits, Apple's CXMT Plea: AI is Eating All the Memory
Austin and Vik break down the current memory crisis, where AI demand is driving unprecedented profits for memory makers like Micron, while simultaneously causing inflation and price hikes for consumer electronics. They discuss how even premium brands like Apple are struggling to secure supply, leading them to controversial suppliers. The hosts also explore the long-term implications of AI's i
Qualcomm's HBC Memory, Alphawave, Modular, and more
Qualcomm flew Austin to New York for its investor day, where the communications company laid out a plan to make data center, automotive, and IoT two-thirds of its business by FY29. Austin was in the room and asked Cristiano Amon a question on the record. Vik watched the whole thing on YouTube. Together they break down what actually changed.The technical centerpiece is High Bandwidth Compute (HBC):
Advanced Packaging, TSMC CoWoS, Intel EMIB
New episode: Advanced packaging for AI chips, from wire bonds to TSMC CoWOS and Intel EMIB.Packaging is no longer an afterthought. It is the chip, and Intel's EMIB challenges TSMC's CoWOS.Three CoWOS flavors: silicon, organic RDL, local bridgesEMIB embeds tiny bridges into the substrate, no interposerEMIB-T and EMIB-M add through-silicon vias and power capacitorsGoogle is booking 3M TPUs
Computex Mania 2026: Optics and Power
Austin and Vik discuss their recent experience at Computex, where they met for the first time in person after six months of podcasting together. They share insights about the massive show, the people they connected with, and the exciting developments in AI hardware and interconnect technology. Connect with Vik and Austin via a daily free newsletter:https://www.semidoped.comVik's Paid Substack
Huawei's Tau Scaling Law: Is the "EUV Killer" Real?
Huawei dropped a paper claiming 1.4nm-class performance without EUV, and the internet immediately declared ASML dead and US export controls useless. Austin and Vik recorded one day after Memorial Day to unpack what Huawei actually announced at ISCAS 2026 — and why the "EUV killer" headline gets the story backwards.They walk through the tau scaling law (tau is delay, and the idea is to at
Lithography Masterclass
Spend one hour here and you've caught up on the entire arc of semiconductor lithography. Austin and Vik run a masterclass on the technology that decides who gets to make leading-edge chips, and why so few companies can afford to.The thread is economics. An EUV machine runs about $400 million, a new fab needs roughly 15 of them, and the total bill clears $20-30 billion before a single wafer sh
Cerebras IPO
Cerebras IPO is the only thing to talk about this week. 🔥IPO prices at $185/share. Pops nearly 70% right after. The first wafer-scale chip company to make it public — after a 40-year curse killed every prior attempt.A water-cooler-style convo on what Cerebras actually builds, why a 23 kW wafer is a power and cooling nightmare, why 44 GB of SRAM is both the magic and the wall for LLM inference, and
Gimlet's Cross-Vendor Inference Cloud
Gimlet Labs runs an inference cloud built on heterogeneous silicon. Their software traces a PyTorch workload, segments it into its component parts, and schedules each piece onto the best-suited hardware — connecting chips from different vendors on a single high-speed fabric.In this interview, Gimlet co-founder Natalie Serrino and former Intel executive Beltir walk through the architecture (graph t
Power as the Next Physics Wall for AI
What's common to optics and power that ruins everything in the era of AI?Resistance.The same physics that drove interconnects to optics is now driving low-voltage power delivery up to 800V. Austin Lyons (Chipstrat) and Vik Sekar (Vik's Newsletter) unpack it using the Kyber rack as an example.At 600kW and 48V, you're pushing 12,500 amps through a single rack. Power loss scales with I
CapEx is just Memory Tax Now, Deepseek V4 NAND impact
The hyperscaler memory tax quarter.More CapEx? Pssh. We knew flops needed scaling.But $25B at Microsoft alone just to pay higher component prices? A memory tax. That's the news.NAND? Sold out. HBM? Sold out.What we cover:SanDisk revenue +97% sequential.78% gross margin. Guidance above 80% next quarter.Samsung HBM4 first to ship. Demand outstripping supply.DeepSeek v4 goes SSD-centric. KV cach
Masterclass on Google's TPU v8 Networking
Google's Cloud Next 2026 keynote? Fire. 🔥The TPU is now two chips instead of one — 8t for training, 8i for inference — but more interestingly, it's two scale-up networking topologies too.Austin Lyons (Chipstrat) and Vik Sekar (Vik's Newsletter) walk through what actually changed, one day after the announcement. OCS? Yes. AECs? Yep. Copper? Yep. Optics? Yep.We cover Virgo (Google&apo
Meta VP Matt Steiner on Ads Infra, GPUs, MTIA, and LLM-Written Kernels
Matt Steiner, VP of Monetization Infrastructure, Ranking & AI Foundations at Meta, walks through how Meta's ad system actually works, and why the infrastructure behind it differs from what you'd build for LLMs.We cover Andromeda (retrieval on a custom NVIDIA Grace Hopper SKU Meta co-designed), Lattice (consolidating N ranking models into one), GEM (Meta's Generative Ads Recommen
Credo + Dust Photonics, XPO, Nuvacore
Austin and Vik discuss Credo's acquisition of Dust Photonics, XPO as the new standard for scale-out (maybe instead of CPO?) and some thoughts about Nuvacore entering the CPU scene for agentic AI.Gavin Baker's tweet: https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/2044410644301046031?s=20Vik's Substack: https://www.viksnewsletter.comAustin's Substack: https://www.chipstrat.comChapters00:00 Int
Is Intel Finally Back with a $300B market cap? OpenClaw can Dream?
In this episode, Austin and Vik discuss if Intel is finally back with CPU partnerships with Google, and heterogeneous inference with SambaNova, while market cap soars above $300B. Vik tries to get his OpenClaw instance to dream every night.Chapters00:00 Anthropic's New Direction: Chip Development02:30 Navigating Subscription Changes and Token Costs05:25 Exploring Alternative AI Models08:10 Th
Reiner Pope (MatX): Designing AI Chips From First Principles for LLMs
Reiner Pope is the co-founder and CEO of MatX, the startup building chips designed from first principles for LLMs. Before MatX, Reiner was on the Google Brain team training LLMs, and his co-founder Mike Gunter was on the TPU team. They left Google one week before ChatGPT was released.A counterintuitive throughput insight from the conversation:“Low latency means small batch sizes. That is just Litt
$300M for 70K Viewers | Intel x Elon, OpenAI x TBPN, Citrini's Strait of Hormuz Stunt
Intel Foundry just partnered with Elon Musk’s Terafab. What is Terafab anyway, why vertically integrated fabs make sense but the economics don’t (yet!), and what Intel is doing here (hint: no idea).Then: OpenAI acquires TBPN for an estimated $100-300M. Not sure why, but the more interesting thing is the value of niche audiences when five companies control a trillion dollars in AI capex.And finally
NVIDIA's Marvell Strategy, Is Memory Different This Time?, Intel's Ireland Fab
In this episode, Austin and Vik analyze NVIDIA's $2 billion investment in Marvell NVLink Fusion, exploring its implications for AI infrastructure, interconnect protocols, and the broader chip ecosystem. They also discuss the current memory market surge, DRAM pricing, and Intel's strategic fab buyback, providing deep insights into industry trends and future directions.On SubstackVik: http
ARM AGI CPU has entered the chat, TurboQuant thrashes memory stocks
In this episode, Austin and Vik analyze recent developments in GloFo patent lawsuits, the impact of TurboQuant on AI inference, and ARM's strategic move into silicon for agentic AI workloads. Read Vik's substack: https://www.viksnewsletter.comRead Austin's substack: https://www.chipstrat.comChapters00:00 Patent Wars in Semiconductor Industry07:14 Understanding TurboQuant and Its Imp
MicroLEDs Ain’t Dead, Micron Snags Vera Rubin
Austin and Vik break down a packed week in semiconductors, covering GTC, OFC, and Micron earnings. The conversation kicks off with Jensen Huang's bold claim that engineers should spend $250K/year on AI tokens, and whether companies will buy tokens or token generators (i.e., on-prem hardware like the Dell Pro Max with GB300). They dig into the CapEx vs OpEx tradeoffs, data security concerns, a
Quick Takes: Nvidia Keynote at GTC
Vik and Austin unpack the Nvidia GTC keynote with fresh, top-of-mind takes while trying to breakdown key announcements, what matters and what doesn't. They discuss Groq's LPX, optics+copper for scale up, new CPU requirements, CPO for networking, and what agents means for software, and much, much, more.Check out Austin's substack: https://www.chipstrat.comCheck out Vik's substac
Meta's Inference Accelerator & Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI)
Austin recaps moderating an agentic AI panel at Synopsys Converge, then gives an in-depth technical breakdown of Meta's MTIA custom silicon. Why they're building it, how chiplets let them ship a new chip every 6 months, and how the roadmap is shifting toward gen AI inference. Vik digs into Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI), the vertically integrated Texas laser shop whose stock went from $1
The Great Optics-Copper Crossroads
This week, Austin and Vik break down the optics vs. copper debate that rocked semis this week. Nvidia dropped $4 billion on Lumentum and Coherent, Credo posted a blowout quarter betting on copper, and then Hock Tan shocked everyone claiming 400G per lane works over copper in Broadcom’s labs — potentially pushing CPO out to 2030+. Plus, Vik’s 4D chess conspiracy theory on why Hock Tan is talking up
Optical Supply Chain: What would you buy?
This week, we move from optics technology to optics companies. We walk the AI optical supply chain from bottom to top. Main debate: Who has a moat? Who is already priced for perfection? *Not investment advice, do your own due diligence*AXTI - Indium phosphide substrate supplier. Critical bottleneck in the laser stack. Major China export-control risk. Massive stock run vs thin earnings.Tower Semic
Optical Networking Supercycle - ALL the Tech You NEED to know
Austin and Vik delve into the evolving landscape of optics and networking, particularly in relation to AI and data centers. The conversation covers various scales of networking, including scale across, scale out, and scale up, while also addressing the demand-supply dynamics in laser manufacturing and the future of optical circuit switches. The episode highlights the technological advancements and
Memory Mayhem & AI Capex Madness
In this episode of the Semi Doped podcast, Austin and Vik delve into the current state of the semiconductor industry, focusing on the memory crisis driven by increasing demand from AI applications. They discuss the implications of rising memory prices, the impact of hyperscaler spending on the market, and the strategic moves of major players like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon in the AI lands
The future of financing AI infrastructure with Wayne Nelms, CTO of Ornn
In this episode, Vik and Wayne Nelms discuss the emerging financial exchange for GPU compute, exploring its implications for the AI infrastructure market. They discuss the value of compute, pricing dynamics, hedging strategies, and the future of GPU and memory trading. Wayne shares insights on partnerships, the depreciation of GPUs, and how inference demand may reshape hardware utilization. The co
A New Era of Context Memory with Val Bercovici from WEKA
Vik and Val Bercovici discuss the evolution of storage solutions in the context of AI, focusing on Weka's innovative approaches to context memory, high bandwidth flash, and the importance of optimizing GPU usage. Val shares insights from his extensive experience in the storage industry, highlighting the challenges and advancements in memory requirements for AI models, the significance of late
OpenClaw Makes AI Agents and CPUs Get Real
Austin and Vik discuss the emerging trend of AI agents, particularly focusing on Claude Code and OpenClaw, and the resulting hardware implications.Key Takeaways:2026 is expected to be a pivotal year for AI agents.The rise of agentic AI is moving beyond marketing to practical applications.Claude Code is being used for more than just coding; it aids in research and organization.Integrating AI with t
An Interview with Microsoft's Saurabh Dighe About Maia 200
Maia 100 was a pre-GPT accelerator.Maia 200 is explicitly post-GPT for large multimodal inference.Saurabh Dighe says if Microsoft were chasing peak performance or trying to span training and inference, Maia would look very different. Higher TDPs. Different tradeoffs. Those paths were pruned early to optimize for one thing: inference price-performance. That focus drives the claim of ~30% better per
Can Pre-GPT AI Accelerators Handle Long Context Workloads?
OpenAI's partnership with Cerebras and Nvidia's announcement of context memory storage raises a fundamental question: as agentic AI demands long sessions with massive context windows, can SRAM-based accelerators designed before the LLM era keep up—or will they converge with GPUs?Key Takeaways1. Context is the new bottleneck. As agentic workloads demand long sessions with massive codebase
An Interview with Innoviz CEO Omer Keilaf about current LiDAR market dynamics
Innoviz CEO Omer Keilaf believes the LIDAR market is down to its final players—and that Innoviz has already won its seat.In this conversation, we cover the Level 4 gold rush sparked by Waymo, why stalled Level 3 programs are suddenly accelerating, the technical moat that separates L4-grade LIDAR from everything else, how a one-year-old startup won BMW, and why Keilaf thinks his competitors are alr
LiDAR, Explained: How It Works and Why It Matters
Austin and Vik discuss why LiDAR is important for autonomy, how modern systems work, and how the technology has evolved. They compare Time of Flight and FMCW architectures, explain why wavelength choice matters, and walk through the tradeoffs between 905 nm and 1550 nm across eye safety, cost, and performance. The discussion closes with a clear-eyed look at competition, Chinese suppliers, and supp
Nvidia CES 2026
Episode SummaryAustin and Vik break down NVIDIA’s CES 2026 keynote, focusing on Vera Rubin, DGX Spark and DGX Station, uneducated investor panic, and physical AI.Key TakeawaysDGX Spark brings server-class NVIDIA architecture to the desktop at low power, aimed at developers, enthusiasts, and enterprises experimenting locally. DGX Station functions more like a mini-AI rack on-prem: Grace Blackwell
Insights from IEDM 2025
Austin and Vik discuss key insights from the IEDM conference. They explore the significance of IEDM for engineers and investors, the networking opportunities it offers, and the latest innovations in silicon photonics, complementary FETs, NAND flash memory, and GaN-on-silicon chiplets. TakeawaysPenta-level NAND flash memory could disrupt the SSD marketGaN-on-Silicon chiplets enhance power efficienc
Nvidia "Acquires" Groq
Key TopicsWhat Nvidia actually bought from Groq and why it is not a traditional acquisitionWhy the deal triggered claims that GPUs and HBM are obsoleteArchitectural trade-offs between GPUs, TPUs, XPUs, and LPUsSRAM vs HBM. Speed, capacity, cost, and supply chain realitiesGroq LPU fundamentals: VLIW, compiler-scheduled execution, determinism, ultra-low latencyWhy LPUs struggle with large models and
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