The Curious Engineer

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Vik's Newsletter

viksnewsletter.com

AI infrastructure research across photonics, memory, interconnects, power, and packaging. Engineering depth translated for professionals and investors. Click to read Vik's Newsletter, by Vikram Sekar, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

CPU / microarchitectureElectronicsAI / MLTech news / industry

’23’24’25’26
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200 from 31 Dec 2023 to 30 Oct 2026
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weekly (86 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 71

  1. What a Marvell-Lumentum Deal Means for DSPs, Lasers, and Modules
  2. OCP 2026: MicroVCSELs are gaining attention, but microLEDs still have a case
  3. The PAM4 vs PAM6 Dilemma for 448G Copper Interconnects
  4. TEF and OCP Global Summit 2026: Game Plan
  5. 800VDC: Mapping the Power Semi Space for Sidecar Deployments
  6. How Many CPUs Do Personal AI Assistants Need?
  7. ECOC 2026: Important Product Announcements Around Optical Scale-Up
  8. A MicroLED Field Trip to Avicena
  9. The AI Buildout Will Continue
  10. Lasers for CPO/NPO: Part 3 – Master Oscillator, Power Amplifier
  11. How Custom Base Die Drives HBM Bandwidth, and Who Stands to Benefit
  12. Hot Chips 2026: Tuning into Memory Vibes
  13. 2026 OCP APAC: Full Conference Report
  14. How Coherent Can Earn Investor Confidence
  15. OCP APAC: Copper vs. Optics Contradictions
  16. [Post-$] Astera Labs is a Switch Company in Connectivity Clothing
  17. Astera Labs: From the Tray to the Rack, and What Comes After
  18. The AI Trade Burned Down: Let Round 2 Begin
  19. HBM is the Ugly Baby: What Now?
  20. Lasers for CPO/NPO: Part 2 – Lumentum’s Technology and Moat
  21. Lasers for CPO/NPO: Part 1 – The InP DFB Laser
  22. Kyber Midplane Design, Making NVL72x2 Work, and All Roads Lead to CPO
  23. Qualcomm's High Bandwidth Compute and the Packaging Problem It Moved
  24. 🍪 TWiC: Jalapeno, Modular, and Gatekeeping of Frontier Models
  25. What AI Inference Actually Demands From a NAND SSD
  26. 🍪 TWiC: AMD-MEXT, 200G VCSELs, INTC 🚀
  27. Battle for Advanced Packaging: TSMC Monopoly, Intel Challenge, and Amkor Arms-Dealing
  28. 🍪 TWiC: Controversial Packaged Optics
  29. Computex 2026 Debrief
  30. 🍪 TWiC: What Light Source Does CPO Really Need?
  31. Huawei's Tau Scaling Is Really a Hybrid Bonding Bet
  32. How Rack Power Density Is Opening a New Market for Active Copper
  33. 🍪 TWiC: What's Up With Orbital Compute?
  34. Inside SambaNova's Inference Architecture
  35. 🍪 TWiC: GaN vs SiC, Wolfspeed, Semtech
  36. Cerebras IPO and the Four Bottlenecks in Its Custom-Everything Architecture
  37. 🍪 TWiC: GF-SCALE, Apple-Intel, IREN, Optics, Cisco
  38. Power Delivery As The Next Physics Wall In AI Datacenters
  39. Personal Update
  40. 🍪 TWiC: TPU v8, Intel Rises Up, Marvell-Polariton
  41. XPO vs CPO: The Trade-offs Between Speed, Power, and Modularity in Next-Gen AI Networking
  42. 🍪 TWiC: Credo eats Dust, CPU and NAND shortage, Largan → CPO, Nuvacore
  43. Tokenmaxxing and the Token Value Chain
  44. 🍪 TWiC: Intel with TeraFab+Sambanova+Google, Samsung and Anthropic 🚀, AGI CPU in China
  45. MicroLEDs vs. Lasers: The Linewidth Tradeoff
  46. 🍪 TWiC: Samsung SiPho, Mobile Demand, Nvidia+Marvell, Intel Fab, Claude Leak, ++
  47. Why the DRAM Structural Floor in the AI Era Makes This Time Different
  48. 🍪 TWiC: TurboQuant, AGI CPU, GF Sues Tower, CPU Price Hikes, 400G SiPho, AAOI, ++
  49. TurboQuant: Inner Workings and Implications
  50. Grating Coupled COUPE for CPO, and Himax's Fragile FAU Moat
  51. 🍪 TWiC: MU HBM4, OCI MSA, Credo Optics, VCSEL Scale-Up, DGX GB300, NBIS $27B
  52. Beyond GTC: A Deep Dive into Compute, LPX, and the Untold Story of SpecDec
  53. 🍪 TWiC: MTIA x4, AVGO 400G, UMC, Nebius, SiPho Readiness++
  54. Why Optical Circuit Switching is Arista Networks’ Long-Term Problem
  55. 🍪 TWiC: Nvidia $2B, The Hock Shock, Credo's A(E/L)C, Ayar Series E, Intel Changes, Memory
  56. GTC 2026 Preview | Implications of Nvidia's SRAM-Decode Hardware on the Inference Market
  57. 🍪 TWiC: AMD+Meta, New AI Chips, Citrini
  58. The AI Datacenter CPU Yellow Pages
  59. 🍪 TWiC: Meta+Nvidia, AI Toilet Play, AI EDA SaaSocalypse?
  60. The CPU Bottleneck in Agentic AI and Why Server CPUs Matter More Than Ever
  61. 🍪 TWiC: HBM4, SiPho's Rise, Memory eats All, 2nm Mo-Contacts,++
  62. AI Datacenters Drink More Water Than You Think
  63. 🍪 TWiC: Google/AWS CapEx, NVIDIA GPUs, SaaS, TXN+SLAB
  64. Lumentum: Laser Demand, OCS, CPO and Optical Scale-Up
  65. Newsletter Update: Semi Doped Podcast, Jan Articles and Feb Plans
  66. 🍪 TWiC: Maia 200, H200 in China, Micron's $24B Fab, Meta is ↑, MediaTek ASICs ++
  67. High Stakes Advanced Node Poker: TSMC Goes All-in, Intel Folds
  68. Context Memory Storage Systems, Disruption of Agentic AI Tokenomics, and Memory Pooling Flash vs DRAM
  69. Errata: A Close Look at SRAM for Inference in the Age of HBM Supremacy
  70. A Close Look at SRAM for Inference in the Age of HBM Supremacy
  71. 2025 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM): Detailed Conference Report

2025 81

  1. NVIDIA-Groq: The Occam's Razor Explanation
  2. 2025: The Year in Review
  3. Interview: Indium Phosphide Lasers and Photonic Integration with Prof. Martijn Heck, TU Eindhoven
  4. CPO Fears, Credo, and Role of AEC in 1.6T Networking
  5. Executive Brief: How d-Matrix's In-Memory Compute Tackles AI Inference Economics
  6. How d-Matrix's In-Memory Compute Tackles AI Inference Economics
  7. Is Optics Really the Next Memory?
  8. Executive Brief: A Complete Guide to Optical Transceiver Nomenclature
  9. A Complete Guide to Optical Transceiver Nomenclature
  10. The Four Horsemen of the AI Infrastructure Buildout
  11. Executive Brief: Why Co-Packaged Optics Uses External Lasers Instead of Integrated Sources
  12. Why Co-Packaged Optics Uses External Lasers Instead of Integrated Sources
  13. Executive Brief: An In-Depth Look at the Viability of X-rays as an Alternative to EUV Lithography (Discussion on the startup Substrate)
  14. An In-Depth Look at the Viability of X-rays as an Alternative to EUV Lithography
  15. QCOM AI Accelerators, NVIDIA in 6G, X-Ray Litho as EUV Killer?, Skyworks-Qorvo Merger
  16. Executive Brief: The Boring Chips That Brought Europe to Its Knees
  17. The Boring Chips That Brought Europe to Its Knees
  18. Executive Brief: Role of Storage in AI, Primer on NAND Flash, and Deep-Dive into QLC SSDs
  19. Role of Storage in AI, Primer on NAND Flash, and Deep-Dive into QLC SSDs
  20. A Practical Roadmap to AI Fluency for Hardware Designers
  21. Why Memory Defines AI Hardware Supremacy
  22. When Semiconductor Manufacturing Went East and Chip Design Followed
  23. Why Faster PHY Design is the Low-Hanging Fruit in Custom HBM4 Base Die
  24. How AI Demand Is Driving a Multi-Year Memory Supercycle
  25. Nvidia Buys Into Intel, Apple’s Modem, Corporate Jobs, and the Billion-Dollar Cable Race
  26. High Bandwidth Flash: NAND’s Bid for AI Memory
  27. The Hidden Art Inside Your Microchips
  28. Plastic Cables for AI Clusters: Can Point2’s E-Tube Disrupt Copper and Optics?
  29. My 100th Post and a New Experiment
  30. A Beginner’s Guide to Interconnects in AI Datacenters
  31. Why Documentation is the Missing Link Between AI and Chip Design
  32. Why is High Bandwidth Memory so Hard to Manufacture?
  33. What Chip Design Can Learn from Supersonic Jets
  34. The Manufacturing Challenge Behind Nvidia’s Plan to Mount AI Chips Directly on PCB Platforms
  35. How to Escape the Corporate Rut for Midcareer Chip Engineers
  36. A Primer on Transformer Architecture: Model Parameter Calculations, Estimating GPT-5 Architecture
  37. The Decline of MATLAB: What Engineers Should Learn Instead
  38. 🍻 Semi Pub Quiz #1 Answers
  39. 🍻 Semi Pub Quiz #1
  40. Why the Future of RF Amplification in Satellites is Solid-State Devices on GaN
  41. Understanding High-Voltage DC Power Architectures for AI Megafactories
  42. A Detailed Playbook to Leveling Up Your Meetings, Mentorship, and Career Conversations
  43. Passion versus Practicality in Engineering Careers
  44. Why Building Smarter EDA Tools Is Key To Winning The AI Era
  45. How Cracked Engineers Recreated World-Class RF Research in 30 Hours on Social Media
  46. IMS 2025: AI for RF, Heterogenous Integration, 100 GHz+ Systems, RF GaN
  47. Has RF Lost Its Spark? Rethinking Innovation in the AI Era
  48. IMS 2025: Why LEO Satellite Markets Are Brutally Exclusive and What to Do About It
  49. Are You Quantum Ready?
  50. 7 Unwritten Rules for High-Impact Engineering Careers
  51. Using AI to Break the Black Magic of RF Design
  52. New? Start Here.
  53. A Comprehensive Primer on Advanced Semiconductor Packaging
  54. Upcoming Long Post, Summer of Protocols Talk, 2025 International Microwave Symposium
  55. Why Earth's Best Optical Fiber Can Only Be Made in Space
  56. How Edge-AI Chips can Solve the Cocktail Party Problem
  57. Why Getting a Semiconductor Job Is Harder Than It Should Be
  58. Why 50 Ohms Became the RF Standard
  59. A Comprehensive Guide To Installing Open Source Tools For Integrated Circuit Design
  60. Secrecy in the Sistine Chapel
  61. Carrier Diffusion, Generation and Recombination in Semiconductor Devices
  62. SiliWiz, Short Posts, and Discount Plans
  63. How to Learn Chip Design With Open-Source EDA Tools
  64. Why the Chip Industry Is Struggling to Attract the Next Generation
  65. Can You Vibe Your Way Through Chip Design?
  66. The Engineer’s Guide to Measurement Precision
  67. NVIDIA CuLitho and the Future of Inverse Lithography
  68. How Electrons Move in Semiconductors: The Science of Carrier Drift
  69. The Silicon Photonics Moonshot: Group IV Integrated Lasers
  70. Why Fathom Light uses LiDAR in Long Range Airborne Applications
  71. The Gigabit Wall: No More Need for Speed
  72. First Impressions from 2025 ISSCC
  73. Why Citing Yield Without Die Area is Meaningless
  74. The Rise of 800V Electric Vehicles and Role of Silicon Carbide
  75. Semiconductor Doping, Electron Affinity, Work Function and Anderson's Rule
  76. Understanding Energy Bands in Semiconductors
  77. The Joy of Semiconductor Devices
  78. January 2025: Margin Notes on Optics
  79. How Dennard Scaling Allowed Transistors to Shrink
  80. Ruthenium: The Next Step in Interconnects for Advanced Logic Nodes?
  81. Introducing paid subscription plans

2024 47

  1. 2024: The Year in Review
  2. Holiday Reading Guide, Annual Survey
  3. Understanding How Electric Vehicles Convert Battery Power Into Propulsion
  4. Why We Can't Build Lasers on Silicon
  5. Starlink D2C, Tower Si-Pho, LLMs for Chip Design, Ionosphere Maps with Cellphones, Symmetry in IC Design
  6. A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology
  7. Tesla’s Big Bet: Cameras over LiDAR for Self Driving Cars
  8. A Brief History of Timekeeping: Part 2
  9. A Brief History of Timekeeping: Part 1
  10. Star Wars: SpaceX vs AST SpaceMobile
  11. The Promise of Terahertz Technology
  12. Phase Change Materials: Is it the Future of RF Switch Technology?
  13. A Brief History of RF Switch Technology
  14. How Foundries Calculate Die Yield
  15. The Extraordinary Properties of Artificial Metamaterials
  16. How Origami-Inspired Phased Arrays are Reshaping the Future of Antennas
  17. ABCs of Power Amplifier Classes: Class AB and C
  18. ABCs of Power Amplifier Classes: Class B
  19. ABCs of Power Amplifier Classes: Class A
  20. ABCs of Power Amplifier Classes: Foundations
  21. 8 Strategies to Speed-Run Graduate School
  22. The Graduate School Dilemma
  23. Exploring State-of-the-Art Commercial Automotive Radar Solutions
  24. How Automotive Radar Measures the Angle of Arrival of Objects
  25. How Automotive Radar Measures the Velocity of Objects
  26. How Automotive Radar uses Chirp Signals for Sensing
  27. The State-of-the-Art in RF Filter Technology
  28. A Practical Guide to Making Vector Network Analyzer Measurements
  29. Understanding Compact Models for MOS and Bipolar Devices
  30. How I Write an Engineering Newsletter
  31. Noise in Cascaded RF Systems
  32. The Image Problem in Superheterodyne Receivers
  33. Python Resources for RF Engineers
  34. Applications of AI/ML to Analog and Mixed Signal Circuit Design
  35. The Semiconductor Apocalypse No One Would See Coming
  36. The Ultimate Guide to Accurate RFIC Simulations
  37. A Beginner's Guide to the Process of RFIC Design
  38. A Guide to Noise Sources in MOS Transistors
  39. An (almost) Equation-Free Introduction to Compression and Nonlinearity Metrics
  40. How Tuning, Filtering and Switching helps your Smartphone deal with 50+ Unique Frequencies
  41. The Dark History behind Radio Communication
  42. How does a Phased Array Antenna work? Types of Beamforming Architectures
  43. We've hit 1000 subscribers!
  44. A Preliminary Guide to Antenna Arrays
  45. Understanding Two Port Amplifier Power Gains
  46. What's cool about WiFi 7
  47. Absolute basics of Transmission Line Theory

2023 1

  1. Envelope Tracking for Efficient Power Amplifiers