Intel, Musk, and the Tweet That Launched a 1000 Ships on a Becalmed Sea
Why do professional executives running major corporations frame a major moment in their company’s history with a tweet? Jerry Sanders, who passed away just last December, spent his career yelling “real men have fabs!” Now Intel has fabs–and… Read More
Agentic AI Demands More Than GPUs
Agentic AI workloads are reshaping the compute requirements of modern data center infrastructure by shifting performance bottlenecks from GPU-centric inference to CPU-heavy orchestration and workflow management. Traditional AI inference pipelines relied primarily on GPUs performing a single forward pass, where input… Read More
Musk’s Orbital Compute Vision: TERAFAB and the End of the Terrestrial Data Center
At the TERAFAB launch event in Austin on March 21, Elon Musk made a prediction that would have sounded like science fiction a decade ago—and may still: roughly 80 percent of AI compute will eventually move off-planet.
The argument is straightforward once you accept his premises. Earth-based data centers face three hard constraints—land,… Read More
Silicon Insurance: Why eFPGA is Cheaper Than a Respin — and Why It Matters in the Intel 18A Era
As semiconductor technology advances into increasingly complex and expensive process nodes, the economic and technical risks associated with ASIC design have grown dramatically. At advanced nodes such as Intel 18A, the cost of a single design error can escalate into tens of millions of dollars, compounded by months of delay.… Read More
Captain America: Can Elon Musk Save America’s Chip Manufacturing Industry?
Intel has posted three consecutive years of falling revenue and an $18.76 billion loss in 2024 alone—and the U.S. government has handed it tens of billions of dollars to fix the problem. The government money isn’t fixing the real issue, which isn’t technical. It’s cultural. Intel got slow, political, and risk-averse—the… Read More
TSMC Technology Symposium 2026: Advancing the Future of Semiconductor Innovation
One of my favorite times of the year is coming (sailing season) and my favorite event of the year is coming as the company I most respect will host the best international semiconductor networking event starting here in Silicon Valley.
The 32nd annual TSMC Technology Symposium represents one of the most influential events in the … Read More
Tesla and Samsung Relationship Update
The majority of my 40+ year career has been spent managing the relationship between leading-edge semiconductor design and manufacture, working with just about every commercial foundry and top customer in one way or another. It’s my thing—it fascinates me. I’m also a fan of disruption, and the latest disruptions the semiconductor… Read More
Intel Foundry: How They Got Here and Scenarios for Improvement
How do you get a shortage while not growing???
Intel Announced earnings in January. Then David Zinsner presented updates on business this week. David is open when talking and always shares 2-3 things he probably should not share. Often he shares things some of us know, but we cannot present because it is not public. Then he makes it… Read More
Advanced Architectures for Hybrid III-V/Silicon Quantum Cascade Lasers
Mid-infrared (MIR) photonic integrated circuits are emerging as a key technology for applications ranging from environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics to defense and industrial process control. The MIR spectral region, often referred to as the molecular “fingerprint” region, exhibits strong absorption features… Read More
Operationalizing Secure Semiconductor Collaboration: Safely, Globally, and at Scale
Semiconductor manufacturing is among the most complex industrial activities in existence. As device geometries shrink and systems become more interconnected, software has become as critical as process technology itself. Modern fabs depend on extensive automation, real-time analytics, and deep integration between tools,… Read More


Musk’s Orbital Compute Vision: TERAFAB and the End of the Terrestrial Data Center