Semi Doped
The business and technology of semiconductors. Alpha for engineers and investors alike.
Episodes
13 episodes
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*
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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1:01:42
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 als...
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46:08
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...
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58:53
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 o...
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40:38
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 fro...
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54:27
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.
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47:34
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...
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52:41
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...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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38:02
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 ac...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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46:41
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 b...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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35:40
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...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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47:16