Topic
CXL
Semi Doped
How Retimers Built an $80B Company: The Story of Astera Labs
Astera Labs built a huge business by solving a mundane but critical problem: keeping high-speed copper links alive inside AI servers with retimers. The episode explains the engineering behind PCIe signal conditioning, then follows Astera from Hopper/H100 wins into switches, cables, and CXL.
Semi DopedVal Bercovici
WEKA's Val Bercovici: KV Cache, DeepSeek V4, HBF, SLC vs QLC NAND, CXL, NVLink, Tokenomics
Val Bercovici argues AI inference is becoming a memory-and-token-economics problem, with KV cache compression, network-attached memory, and NAND tiering reshaping system design. He also makes a blunt case that CXL is losing relevance, HBF will likely need SLC-like endurance buffering, and SaaS economics are being upended by token OPEX.