Posts

BWR Episode 16: Upcoming events, Hot Chips preview, AMD Advancing AI, Nvidia Vera, and Astera Labs' Taurus

Image
Joe and I will be at live events in August. Thanks to LightCounting , I will be at the OCP APAC Summit on August 11-12, moderating panels in the Photonics track and the Chiplets & Advanced Packaging track. Joe will be at Hot Chips at Stanford on August 24-25, and I will be attending virtually. We kick off The Byrne-Wheeler Report with a Hot Chips preview. After that, we review AMD's Advancing AI Day disclosures including GPUs, CPUs, racks, and customer announcements. My audience should be interested in Astera Lab's 3.2T Taurus announcement, which includes something new and different. And with CPUs back in vogue, Joe covers Nvidia's Vera disclosures. You can find timestamps on YouTube if you want to jump to items of interest. As always, thanks for watching!

BWR Episode 15: IBM 1nm, Intel 18A-P, Qualcomm data-center roadmap, and more chip news

Image
So much to cover, we split this episode into two segments. Part one covers IBM's sub-1nm technology, Intel's 18A-P process announcement, and Qualcomm's data-center roadmap. Part two covers Etched, OpenAI Jalapeno, Upscale funding, Micron earnings, Oxmiq Labs, and "not dead yet" CXL.

BWR Episode 14: Earnings roundup, Marvell T100, Tensordyne, GTC Taipei and Computex

Image
 Recorded June 15, 2026, Episode 14 covers: NVDA, AVGO, MRVL earnings Marvell T100 102.4Tbps Ethernet switch Tensordyne logarithmic math Huawei Tau scaling (roadmap to 14A-equivalent density) GTC Taipei RTX Spark announcement Marvell keynote at Computex with Jensen cameo Intel+SambaNova AI inference racks plus Clearwater Forest Congratulations to MEXT on being acquired by AMD. Good things come to our sponsors 😀

BWR Episode 13: Astera Scorpio X, Google TPU 8, CPU Earnings, RISC-V

Image
This episode features an in-depth discussion on the latest developments in data-center chips, AI accelerators, interconnect technologies, and RISC-V ecosystem growth. Joe and I analyze AMD and Intel earnings, Google TPUs, Astera Labs, and emerging startups. (Recorded May 6.)

BWR Episode 12: It's All About the DRAM

Image
As I expressed at the end of this episode, memory is a world unto itself. A big thanks to Jim Handy for helping us understand what's going on with DRAM, and to MEXT for being our first sponsor. Bringing an AI engine into memory tiering is a major leap over existing techniques like TPP. Even better is the fact that MEXT's approach requires no new hardware, unlike CXL-based memory expansion. Jim Handy explains why HBM consumes 3x the wafers of equivalent DDR bits, which is known as the trade ratio. Joe and I also discuss TurboQuant and what's happening with AI quantization. An important distinction is that TurboQuant addresses the KV cache, not model weights. Its first application will be for on-device inference, meaning it doesn't take any pressure off HBM demand in the near term.

BWR Episode 11: Eridu Funding, OFC Highlights, GTC Highlights

Image
In this episode, Joe and I tried a little different format, doing some quick-hit news items in the first 5 minutes before diving into items that warranted more analysis. My networking audience may want to skip to 4:21, where we discuss the Nvidia and Upscale AI announcement around Spectrum-X. Next, we discuss startup Eridu's funding and product positioning. From OFC, I cover the new Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement (OCI-MSA) and Broadcom's surprise announcement of Taurus, the industry's first 400G/lane PAM4 optical DSP. From GTC, we discuss the addition of Groq plus new disclosures around Rubin Ultra, Feynman, and the Kyber rack.

BWR Episode 10: More deals, funding, and earnings

Image
Joe and I did another speed round as we tried to catch up with all of the news in the AI chip world. For my networking audience, you can skip to 22:07 to catch Ayar Labs' funding, followed by Nvidia and Broadcom earnings commentary. If you're interested in all the recent hyperscaler deals, you can start at the beginning. We cover Nvidia's Grace at Meta, the 6GW AMD-Meta deal, and OpenAI deals with Amazon and Nvidia. Chip-startup funding rounds include MatX, Talaas, HyperAccel, and SambaNova, as well as Ayar. If you missed Episode 9, you can find a playlist here:  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg8_XIsi4WPd5CAOGgLTfGO7lpXKNjtvf&si=8tQloJuNsIpVs37j