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2026
- 🎙️ The Compute 100: Startups vs. Incumbents in Semis, Intel Foundry, Physical AI, and more
Intel’s EMIB vs. TSMC’s CoWoS, prefill and decode disaggregation, 576 GPUs in a rack, edge compute for end-to-end transformers, AI-native EDA
- Is EDA Dead?
GPT-Synopsys and whether model labs can replace EDA tools
- AI With No Decode (Jev), and What It Means for AI Infrastructure
Jev from TypeSafe answers in one pass instead of writing text token by token. Why LLMs are hard to use inside software, how Jev fixes it, and what a model with no decode phase means for AI Infra
- 🎙️The Race to Build the Next Trillion-Dollar AI Chip Company
TechSurge: Deep Tech VC Podcast
- A Billion Agents Need Somewhere to Run
Grok Bot, Meta Muse, and what consumer adoption means for CPUs, accelerators, memory, and advanced packaging.
- Oligopoly Equilibrium
Why most semiconductor markets settle at two to three players
- Open Models & American Diffusion; Nvidia & Poolside
America needs agentic AI to diffuse. Diffusion needs competitive frontier open models.
- NPO State of the Union
When NPO? Who NPO? Where NPO? Why NPO? Winners, losers, and more.
- Build Your Own DRAM Supply Model
Wafer starts, die size, yield, HBM mix, node migration impacts, etc. Simple enough to follow, but detailed enough to learn from.
- AMD on Agentic CPUs, and Why There's No One Size Fits All
Madhu Rangarajan, Corporate VP at AMD, on why there's no one-size-fits-all for agentic infrastructure, and why the workloads under the "agentic rack" label are too varied for one SKU.
- The Hardest Computing Problem Ever, According to Arm's Physical AI Chief
Arm's Physical AI chief on why humanoid robots are the hardest computing problem yet, and why the physical economy still runs on a tenth of the digital side's compute.
- Why Did AMD Buy Taalas?
Does it move AMD stock? Speculation. Helios plus Taalas cluster, what about long-context, who uses it, and why buying a one-model chip is less crazy than it sounds.
- Will ASML Finally Charge for Its Value?
Management hints ASML starts charging for value in 2027. Consensus says it won't.
- TSMC could spend $10B more on N2 capacity. Why won’t they?
TSMC has the cash... Why not build more N2? Implications of not doing so? And more
- 🎙️ PicoJool’s Al Yuen: The Case for GaAs VCSELs in Scale-Up Interconnects
GaAs VCSELs at 200G/lane, unconstrained supply vs. indium phosphide, the 8×200 / 16×100 / 32×50 flavors, WIN Semiconductors, the roadmap to 12.8T, and more
- The Next Trillion-Dollar Chip Company
It might be simpler than you think. Etched, Fractile, MatX, Positron, Rebellions, SambaNova, Tensordyne, Tenstorrent, and more.
- High Bandwidth Flash: The Full Report
Why HBF for inference decode fits, what it does to the DRAM and NAND markets, a worked cost model, who moves first, and risks
- Micron's Blowout and the Case for a Memory Supercycle
Micron's GM hit 84.9%, it booked $10B of take-or-pay through 2030, and supply shortage stretched further out. Peak? When does supply increase? SK Hynix and Samsung too.
- The ISA Doesn't Matter Where It Counts
x86's lock-in is real. It's just furthest from the GPU.
- Are Agentic CPUs a Commodity? It’s Complicated.
Five sockets, different economics. A model for telling them apart, and where each competitor fits. AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Arm, Qualcomm.
- Power Moves Into the Package. Empower, PowerLattice, and the IVR Socket
Why did ADI agree to pay $1.5B for Empower Semi? Because XPUs are about to draw 3,000+ amps at 0.7V. Transients and I²R both blow up. Move the regulator into the substrate. ADI, MPWR, VICR, IFNNY, AMK
- An Interview with Nvidia's Deepu Talla About Physical AI and Robotics
Industrial businesses orchestrating across embodied & digital agents, world models, hybrid edge-cloud & "phone a friend," Nvidia Mega, Newton physics engine, Jetson Thor & Orin, the 10-second mark
- Inside the 800G → 1.6T → 3.2T Race
Timing is everything. What the industry said about 800G, 1.6T, 3.2T in recent earnings calls
- An Interview with the Gimlet Labs Team About Heterogeneous Inference for AI Agents
Why most neoclouds can't follow Gimlet's silicon-vendor-neutral model, d-Matrix Corsair + NVIDIA B200 delivering 4× Pareto frontier shifts on GPT-OSS 120B, and more
- Advanced Packaging: Intel's EMIB vs TSMC's CoWoS
Is Intel's EMIB better than TSMC's CoWoS for AI accelerators? A primer on both, an honest look at the trade-offs, and where it goes from here.
- VCSELs + 200G Wall In AI Datacenters?
Decades of short-reach dominance, the supply chain holding it up today, and the problems at the 200G transition
- Rethinking Amazon + Not All SaaS Is Dead
AWS Shows a Survival Path for Enterprise Software
- TSMC's Margins in Uncharted Territory
66.2% in the weakest quarter of the year. The biggest sequential jump on record. And 10 points above the long-term target they just raised.
- An Interview with Meta VP Matt Steiner About Ads Infrastructure
MTIA, co-designed NVIDIA SKUs, LLM-written kernels, a 1T-parameter recommender at sub-second, and more
- Substrate
X-ray lithography worked. The industry chose a different path. Substrate wants to go back. Will it work? What about XLight, ASML, TSMC?
- An Interview with MatX CEO Reiner Pope About LLM Chips
Hybrid SRAM + HBM, MoE interconnect, why frontier labs consider AI ASIC startups, and more
- The Agentic Computer: New S-Curve or Another iPad?
The next device category is here. But will the economics work?
- Coherent's Vertical Integration Strategy
Coherent makes more of the optical stack in-house than any competitor. We walk through the business, the growth vectors, and whether breadth beats depth.
- Agentic AI Needs CPUs. Whose CPUs?
Nvidia Vera, Arm AGI CPU, Meta, x86, more
- The Multi-Silicon Era Is Here
Disagg is out of the bag. What it means for Nvidia, CPUs, XPUs, startups, and more.
- GTC 2026 Keynote Debrief
Scale-up copper & optical, Groq, CPUs, tiered inference economics, SaaS is not dead
- Meta's MTIA Roadmap
Inference-centric design tradeoffs are smart. ROIC is clear. Implications across the supply chain.
- Optics Primer, Part 3: Co-Packaged Optics (CPO)
From EML lasers and DSPs to silicon photonics and external CW lasers. How CPO works and the impact on the optical supply chain.
- An Interview with Rivian’s Mukund Chavan About RAP1
Rivian designed its own autonomy SoC. Why?
- Broadcom Makes Lasers?
Broadcom's InP fab, EMLs at 1.6T, full-stack CPO play, and comparing against Lumentum and Coherent
- Lumentum and the Laser Bottleneck
Lumentum is winning and still can't keep up. Coherent is closing in. Earnings, sell-side sentiment, and the tensions to track.
- xLight. Photons as a Service.
xLight's plan to swap EUV's light source for a free-electron laser and sell light like a utility.
- Arista's Ethernet Bet
Q4 FY2025 earnings scored against the bull and bear cases
- The Nvidia Business Hiding in Plain Sight
And it's bigger than Wall Street thinks
- The $200 Billion Bet
Why Amazon has the hardest ROIC story in tech, and what to do about it
- Meta’s ROIC Strategy: GEM Now, LLMs Later
Meta doesn't need the smartest AI. It needs the most profitable one.
- The MI450 Waiting Game
AMD delivered its best quarter ever. Yet the market wants to know why to own it right now.
- This Month in Review (Jan '26)
Infra Economics, Post-GPT Architectures, Autonomy & LiDAR, Intel, Semi Doped
- Intel Q425: Back to Reality
Continued supply constraints, advanced packaging timing, and why Q1 2026 will be more of the same
- An Interview with Microsoft's Saurabh Dighe About Maia 200
The why behind Maia 200. SRAM–HBM balance, scale-up without scale-out, 30% lower TCO claims, and more.
- Optics Primer, Part 2: LRO & LPO
LRO and LPO move signal processing out of the transceiver and into the switch, saving power at the cost of tighter system coupling. An incremental step toward co-packaged optics.
- Why LIDAR Is Consolidating Now
Innoviz CEO Omer Keilaf on the L4 Gold Rush, the L3 Unlock, and Why the Music Has Stopped
- Right Systems for Agentic Workloads
Why Etched and MatX may be better positioned than Cerebras and Groq for long-context coding agents.
- LiDAR, Explained: How It Works and Why It Matters
Autonomy, 905nm vs 1550nm, ToF vs FMCW, market dynamics, and more.
- Credo’s Reliability Thesis
Can Credo Reach Beyond AECs?
- Intel's Product Marketing at CES: B-
Back to real value props, but the AI case was unconvincing.
- When Frontier AI Goes From Cloud to Desk in Five Years
Implications of running yesterday's frontier models on today's local supercomputers. Rhymes with Minicomputers in Mainframe Era. Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Dell, TSMC, Micron.
- Lithography Economics
The Problem With Lithography. ASML, xLight, Substrate.
2025
- Right Tool for the Job
Adding a hyperspeed SKU to Nvidia's portfolio
- Optics Primer, Part 1: Traditional Pluggable Optics
Optical interconnects, pluggable transceivers, optical and electrical engines, DSP overhead, power and latency trade-offs
- GPU Networking, Part 4: Year End Wrap
Where Scale-Up, Scale-Out, and Scale-Across Stand at Year End 2025
- Nvidia, AMD, Amkor, Arista @ UBS Tech Conference
XPU vs GPU longevity and replacement cycles. Arista's AI opportunities & Broadcom. Amkor Arizona & TSMC.
- Rivian's Silicon & Physical AI
Silicon everywhere, autonomy, GPUs, product experience, Rivian’s multibillion-dollar CapEx bet, and more
- Nvidia Q3 Earnings
Great print, Trailing indicator of AI bubble, Value capture, AI lab profitability concerns, Networking business, Meta, China & Taiwan, Google, and more
- Intel is "All In On 14A"
Takes from Intel at RBC's TIMT conference
- Understanding SkyWater
Deep Dive on $SKYT
- AMD & Apple Earnings
What to make of AMD until MI450 is here? And a vintage Apple quarter, but what about AI?
- The Four Horsemen: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Earnings
Wall Street favors quick cloud returns. But Meta’s betting on turning tokens into high-margin dollars. It’s a playbook it’s already run successfully and investors seem to be overlooking it.
- When Broadcom’s Customers Start Buying Chip Startups
Will these acquisitions disintermediate Broadcom?
- Intel Q3 2025 Earnings: Doing Fine
18A Progress, 14A Gambit Worked, Supply and Demand Problems
- SerDes Matters!
What Is SerDes, Why It Matters, Which Companies Have SerDes Chops
- TSMC Earnings and Intel Foundry
Record revenues, accelerating demand, and what it means for Intel Foundry
- An Interview With Mohamed Awad About Chiplets
Arm's Chiplet Ecosystem Announcement
- Right-Sized AI Infrastructure. Marvell XPUs
Diversity in AI workloads demands diverse AI datacenters. Sometimes, custom silicon is the answer.
- Credo AECs
Why Active Electrical Cables are a Billion Dollar Industry, and Why Credo is Dominant.
- GPU Networking Basics Part 3: Scale-Out
InfiniBand, UEC, Spectrum-X, Surprising Misconceptions
- Building the Chiplet Ecosystem
Arm’s CSA, Neoverse CSS, and Total Design as a framework for multi-vendor chiplet ecosystem alignment
- Eliyan: The Ultimate Chiplet Interconnect
Backed by Every Major HBM and Foundry, Built by Networking Pioneers
- AWS Is Missing the AI Infra Moment
Amazon stock depends on AWS, but AWS is struggling with GPU shortages, power constraints, and slow growth
- Why GenAI is Good for Google
Also: Google vs OpenAI, vs Meta, and risks
- Nvidia's Climb to $4T and the Peaks Ahead
Inference is scaling, autonomy and robotics are trillion-dollar markets, strength of annual cadence + limited supply, China's big future upside & risks
- Intel’s 18A: Misstep or First Step?
RibbonFET, PowerVia, Foundry Roadmap, Potential Write-off, Comparing TSMC
- Thinking Bots + Nvidia’s Robotics Play
Vision Language Action (VLA) Models, Nvidia’s Robotics, Semiconductor Industry Implications, Competition (Google, AMD, Intel, QCOM, more)
- AMD's Strategic Bets
FP6 Advantage, Rack Density, HBM, AI NIC, TCO, Openness, UALink, more. Customer Momentum.
- WWDC25: Apple’s Playing a Different Game
The strategy makes sense. The narrative is missing. Let’s examine Apple’s AI approach from first principles and assess whether WWDC delivered.
- Enterprise AI: Nvidia, Dell, and Implications for AMD
Nvidia vision, Dell validation, AMD questions.
- Chiplets and the Future of System Design
Benefits and trade-offs, and the need for standards and an open ecosystem
- Anticipatory Intelligence and the Return of Windows
How Local Inference Could Revive Windows
- Qualcomm Automotive Primer
Qualcomm’s Next S-Curve?
- The Long Arc of Semiconductor Scaling
The journey from vacuum tubes to transistors, from small ICs to billion-transistor SoCs. Setting the stage for chiplets.
- Intel Foundry’s Cultural Reboot
Rebooting from the outside in. Naga & Kevin showcase cultural progress at Direct Connect 2025.
- Robots That See, Part 1: The Evolution of Computer Vision
Computer Vision, ConvNets, MNIST, ImageNet, AlexNet, Yann LeCunn, Fei-Fei Li
- GPU Networking Basics, Part 2
Front-End & Back-End, North-South & East-West Traffic, DeepSeek Example
- GPU Networking Basics, Part 1
Communication during Training, Scale Out, Scale Up, Network Architectures, Switches, etc.
- Dispelling DeepSeek Myths, Studying V3
Training Cost and PTX misunderstandings. Mixed precision FP8 training, communication optimization wizardry, and more
- Nvidia 4Q25 Earnings
Inference-First Deployments, Refresh Cycles, Ethernet, GPUs vs ASICs, and more
- DeepSeek Mixture of Experts & V2
Rewinding: DeepSeek’s 2024 research and its impact on the semiconductor industry
- AMD's AI Accelerator Business: Puts and Takes
Bears, bulls, and timing. It’s all about the long-term view.
- Reasoning Models and DeepSeek, Semis Implications
Reasoning Models, Compute Demand, Scaling Laws, Competition
- DeepSeek Pulls Forward Copilot+ PC adoption
What DeepSeek means for Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, Qualcomm & Arm, Copilot+ Cloud cannibalization
- Apple's AI Strategy
Apple Can Unleash Consumer AI. Will Apple Intelligence Deliver?
- CPU Server Growth, Enterprise AI Agent Adoption Challenges
A Case for CPU Server Growth, Enterprise AI Agent Usability, Business Model and Process Challenges
- Chipstrat Chat with Jared O’Leary, CEO of SirenOpt
PhD to Entrepreneur, Non-Destructive Metrology, Entering Established Industries, Berkeley Skydeck, Advice for PhD Students, Physics-Informed Machine Learning
- Edge AI at CES 2025
Nvidia Digits, AGX Thor, Qualcomm On-Prem AI, tinybox, Exo Labs
- What Happens If TSMC Controls It All?
Why Foundry Competition is Necessary
- The Power of Nvidia's Systems Thinking Approach
Systems Thinking, AI Engineers as the Primary Customer, Vertical Integration, Beating Competition
2024
- AMD's AI Woes & Trust Crisis
Concerns and Next Steps After the SemiAnalysis Report
- Jensen The Great and His 50% Edge AI Price Cut
Jetson Orin Nano Super Dev Kit and Nvidia's Liberal Interpretation of “New”
- Semiconductor Metrology
Measure What Matters!
- Arm's Edge AI Strategy: Is It Enough?
Can Arm’s NPUs Handle GenAI?
- Meta & Contextual AI at the Edge
Contextual AI, VLMs, custom silicon for edge AI
- Gelsinger Retires; Intel's Future
Creating a Products division is a win, but challenges ahead for Holthaus.
- Why America Must Invest in Intel Foundry
The U.S. needs a private Intel Foundry flush with patient capital
- MatX Prediction
MatX surpasses $100M in funding.
- Tokens Per Second Per Watt: A Useful Metric for Edge AI
A systems-level perspective on performance and energy efficiency
- High-Bandwidth Memory
What is HBM and why is it important for Generative AI?
- GenAI for Gaming, Netflix, CapEx
Could generative video impact CapEx spend?
- X86 Commoditization and Competition
Desperate times call for desperate measures
- Android, AI, and Qualcomm Phones
Does Qualcomm's dependency on Android negatively impact Snapdragon-powered AI phones?
- AI Phones: Qualcomm Gets It
Nuvia, Oryon for Smartphones, Qualcomm's AI Phone Strategy
- Monopsony and TSMC
Monopsony and Oligopsony, Bilateral Monopsony, Market Correlation, Bullwhip Effect, and more
- Groq's Business Model, Part 3: Competing with Google, AWS, Microsoft
Advantages and Disadvantages of Competing Against The Big Dogs
- Groq's Business Model Part 2
Managed Services, Colocation, Traditional Hardware Sales.
- Groq’s Business Model, Part 1: Inference API
Simplifying The User Journey, Business Model Innovation, Customer Benefits
- Follow Ups: Intel AI PC, Qualcomm, Apple Intelligence, Microsoft Recall, Nuclear Power
How Microsoft's Stumbles Erased Qualcomm's Lead, More Nuclear Thoughts
- Chipstrat Chat with Groq's Mark Heaps
API business and "ramp to hardware" model, differentiation, next-gen chip, and more
- Data Center Energy, National Security, Nuclear Power
OpenAI's Training and Inference Scaling Laws Call For More Nuclear Power
- Qualcomm + Intel
The "Inference Everywhere" Angle
- Intel's AI PC Mirage
Hype, Hope, and Harsh Realities
- IDM Death Spiral
Can Intel escape the IDM Death Spiral?
- Intel Skips 20A
Should We Be Concerned?
- ZML's Hardware-Agnostic Distributed Inference
Contemplating the trade-offs and implications
- Understanding Intel, Part 2
Foundry Significance, Intel's Future, Hardware's Bitter Lesson, Does x86 Matter, Are CPUs Dead, What About Gaudi, Client Brand Strength.
- Understanding Intel
Explaining Intel's Strategy, Recent Challenges, and Subsequent Strategy Shifts.
- Semis Funding Heats Up, Groq, Block and China
Money is flowing into logic chips, Groq's Series D, Chinese sanctions play into Block's 3nm ASIC strategy
- AMD's Earnings: Playbook Strength and New Strategic Update
Strategy update, Microsoft wins, Llama 3.1 assist, Demand concerns, Training worries, Client flex, Semi-custom drag
- Jack Dorsey's Bitcoin Push: A Noble Effort, But Will It Matter?
Block’s Bitcoin Mining Rig, Self-Custody Wallet, Aspirations, and Bitcoin Adoption Challenges
- Hardware as a Differentiator: Block's Unique Approach to Financial Services
Hardware as a Core Competency, The "Apple Ethos" in Payments, Business Model, Ecosystems and Playbooks
- Memory: From Caches to Commodity Cycles
Memory Hierarchy, Memory Wall, HBM, Commodity Cycles, Historical Perspective, Beyond Silicon
- Arm's Journey to Value-Based Pricing
Overcoming pricing strategy missteps
- Etched: Silicon Valley's Speedrun
A Novel Semiconductor Startup Fundraising Framework, Etched's Unconventional Approach, and a MatX Prediction
- Intel CPU follow-up, Nvidia Superchips, AMD MI300A
Intel Inside (AI data centers), Grace Hopper & Grace Blackwell, MI300A
- Is Intel's CPU Role Diminishing In The Age of AI?
Is Intel's Datacenter AI Tailwind Slowing? What Pat G Says.
- Lisa Su - Steady As She Goes
Lisa Su's Recent Stratechery Interview And Computex Keynote
- The Rise of Groq: Slow, then Fast
Distractions, Business Model Pivot, Return On Luck, and Looking Ahead
- 🎧 Chipstrat + The Circuit - Episode 70 - NPUs
Why NPUs exist, consumer impact, the trouble with TOPS, predicting the future, and more
- Qualcomm’s Opportunity
Consumer Device AI, Hands-Free UX, Meta Ray-Bans, Apple, Arm, QCT and QTL, Developer Economics, AMD
- Rethinking AMD
Modular vs integrated, "right tool for the job" value prop, rethinking the org chart
- The Future of Edge Inference Hardware
NPUs, GPUs, ASICs at the edge. LLMs, iOT. Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel, Google, Hailo, and others.
- FPGAs - Speed of Hardware, Flexibility of Software
Deep-dive on FPGAs - Basics, Economics, Trade-offs, AI & LLMs
- Can AMD Bridge Nvidia’s Software Moat?
Transient Moats, Betting on Generative AI, AMD's Path Forward
- 🎧 Chipstrat + The Circuit Podcast
AI Chips: Adoption Challenges, Startup Opportunities, Groq, Hyperscaler Custom Silicon, AWS' Strategy, Legacy Architecture Baggage, and more
- Nvidia and Microsoft - The Impact of LLM-Powered Copilots on Microsoft's Hardware Strategy
Running Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot on Nvidia GPUs ain't cheap. CapEx and OpEx will continue to rise, compelling Microsoft to explore a switch from GPUs to AI ASICs.
- Amazon's Nvidia Entanglement
AWS will continue buying Nvidia GPUs even as competition improves. AMD and AI ASICs like Groq can compete for a spot in AWS's portfolio.
- Nvidia’s Risk
Nvidia's overly concentrated revenue is at risk. Could a custom ASIC business help?
- GPU Bloat Stifles AI
Why Jarvis won’t run on GPUs, and how AI silicon startups like Etched can help
- ASICs: Custom Chips to Improve Performance
The benefits of ASICs. How custom silicon can make a company's "beer taste better". AI accelerators. The rationale behind Broadcom and Marvell's ASIC design service.
- GPUs: General-Purpose Parallel Computing
A Gentle Introduction to GPUs and Insights into Leading GPU Companies
2023
- CPUs: Hardware, Yet Infinitely Adaptable Through Software
A Beginner's Guide to CPUs and the Top Companies Shaping the Future
- Welcome to Chipstrat
Comprehensive yet accessible insights into the semiconductor industry
