$CRDO had on display their microLED cable and the wound up cable had 10m length. A lot of interest is around their microVCSELs which they adopted for longer reach. Definitely high interest booth here at #OCP2026#

One way to extend the reach of passive copper interconnect is to switch to PAM6 modulation, from PAM4. While it seems simple in terms of just swapping modulation, the impact of doing so is massive. In this post, we will cover how modulations work from the ground up, in simple layman terms. No technical background required. We will end with discussing what the transition to PAM6 will look like, if we were to make the switch.

I'll be at OCP this week. Here are the sessions I'm attending in Memory/Storage, Networking, and Systems. The ones I won't miss: Mon 5:45pm · Ian Buck, NVIDIA keynote Tue 11:10am · Partha Ranganathan, Google keynote Tue 2:50pm · Samsung on CXL pooling and SSD-backed KV cache offload Thu 8:20am · Marvell on custom HBM, co-designing the base die, D2D power, and package thermals Full schedule in the images.

🎙️ NEW EPISODE: Synopsys Will Take a Royalty on Amazon's Chips and Sell GPT-Synopsys: Ravi Subramanian Ravi joins Austin to discuss why the company is moving to a royalty-based model for its custom "application optimized IP", starting with a billion-dollar deal with Amazon. Ravi also unpacks the OpenAI partnership and AI "agent engineers", and explains why physics-based simulation remains the ground truth. Insights: - Because 1-2 applications drive most of a hyperscaler's revenue, companies like Amazon now want custom "application optimized IP" instead of standards-based IP - The custom model has three parts. There is a license fee, a "customization fee" to prioritize scarce engineers, and for the first time a royalty on the final chip - The royalty model mirrors the Arm-Amazon partnership from a decade ago and fits 12-month design cycles. It also expands Synopsys's role to system-level bring-up - Customers can "hire" an AI agent engineer with a specific skillset, which fits existing budgets and team structures - GPT-Synopsys with OpenAI bundles a specialized LLM, the compute, and forward-deployed engineers - A CFET needs 200x more device equations than a planar FET, so physics-based simulators stay the ground truth This episode is presented by @CrusoeAI. Try Crusoe's managed inference for open models with $5 in free credits: Chapters: 0:00 Intro: The Amazon & OpenAI Deals 2:39 Application Optimized IP 6:04 The New Royalty Business Model 12:14 How Standard IP Differentiates 18:20 The Arm-Amazon Analogy 22:00 Synopsys's Role in Test Chips 26:06 The Three Stages of Chip Design 31:27 The 'Agent Engineer' AI Model 36:20 The GPT-Synopsys Partnership 39:27 In AI We Believe, In Physics We Trust Get more of Austin and Vik daily, free! Sign up: Connect with Vik and Austin: Vik's Paid Substack: Austin's Paid Substack: @austinsemis @vikramskr @Synopsys