SemiAnalysis

ALERT 🚨🚨OpenAI's latest GPT6.1 Sol Ultrafast is NOT running on Cerebras but is instead running at a low batch size on NVIDIA GPUs. What does this say about Cerebras? Will Cerebras be serving GPT6.1 Sol Ultrafast in the future?

SpaceX is building Terafab at full speed. Program launched in March, equipment orders placed by April, and concrete is already being poured on site. (1/5)🧵

Apple paid $1B for Intel's modem unit and spent 6+ years building the C1 to cut its dependence on Qualcomm. Last week's agreement is a reminder that Apple still can't escape the $2.5B+ in patent royalties it pays Qualcomm every year just for the iPhone's right to work on cellular networks.

Even the frontier labs underestimated their own demand. “What gets confusing to me is how nobody forecast this.” “Even the frontier labs, who really understand how these models work, did not expect to be this profitable, to serve this many users and to grow this fast.” “They had to do crazy things and sign big contracts at very high premiums just to get access to GPUs tomorrow to serve their users.” “I don’t view this as an AI fast takeoff. It seems to be a revenue and profitability fast takeoff for a lot of these labs.”

The most basic test SemiAnalysis applies to a GPU cluster health check is whether it could possibly work on paper. Several could not. "We've been through a few of these clusters where there's no way it could possibly work. These are health checks so bad they're worse than no health checks, because they're actively interfering with jobs." "On Amazon HyperPod Slurm, the first time we tested, there was a health check that needed the node to be healthy before it could run. It could only run once the node was back in the fleet, and it was needed to bring the node back into the fleet." "There are probably five or ten examples of this throughout testing where the health check never had a chance. It makes you wonder whether these people are really putting it through the paces before they hand it off to customers."

AI is making papers cheaper to produce. ICLR submissions: 4,938 (2023), 7,262 (2024), 11,603 (2025), 19,525 (2026). Reported 2027 IDs exceed 62K, above roughly 56K paper submissions in all previous years COMBINED. Can reviewers keep up? (1/6)🧵

How GLM5.3 Sparse Attention Affects HBM Memory Usage GLM-5.3, KV Cache Offloading, HiSparse, AgentX TileRT, InferenceX DeepSeek Sparse Attention, IndexShare, Single-rollout Asynchronous Optimization, Cybersecurity https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/sparse-savings-persistent-demand-inside-glm53

In Semicon Taiwan, EVG had described the use of Nano-Imprint Lithography (NIL) in the mass manufacture of Photonic Integrated Circuits and for laser manufacturing. NIL is especially useful to define periodic structures within a photonic chip such as grating couplers or microlens arrays for microemitter arrays and potentially for DFB laser gratings. (1/3)🧵

SHOCKING: We have confirmed that multiple Neoclouds have been refused access to GTC Berlin due to them adding AMD GPUs, TPUs, and other chips to their cloud offerings Note that this doesn't apply to hyperscalers, as they have more buying power. But for neoclouds, executives feel NVIDIA has been using high-pressure tactics to keep them NVIDIA-only. As such, neocloud executives are starting to consider offering TPUs or AMD GPUs quietly to avoid getting pressured by NVIDIA and to avoid the feeling that NVIDIA will retaliate. https://x.com/SemiAnalysis_/status/2071005685903454496

Singapore, you won't want to miss this: we're hosting the SemiAnalysis × Nanyang Capital Stock Pitch Challenge. Pitch an AI or semis stock for a shot at S$5,000 in prizes and a fast track into SemiAnalysis. Register by 11 Oct: https://nanyangcapitalspc.com/register

When does OpenAI launch an agent swarm for a lean proof on their actual annualized recurring revenue? https://x.com/FT/status/2108238721820614886

AMD Helios (partial co-design): AMD revealed the TH6 scale up switch design publicly for the first time. If you look close enough, you can spot all the Broadcom ethernet retimers next to the flyover cables coming from the backplane into the switch ASIC. This design demonstrates AMD's lack of complete silicon product portfolio, particularly a scale up switch, which is necessary for a scale up rack. In the case of Helios, AMD relies on Broadcom for the scale up switch and retimers alone the scale up path. In the future, AMD are also working with UALink switch vendors in their pursuit of a true UALink scale up system. https://www.broadcom.com/products/ethernet-connectivity/phy-and-poe/optical/bcm83361. In our advancing AI 2026 article, we talked about the challenges with these retimers and flyover cables towards manufacturing and signal performance. The retimers also add extra latency alone the scale up path. https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/can-amd-break-the-cuda-moat-amd-advancing?r=2tvhp5&selection=49db110a-6f59-4bae-91a7-2492a088fac3&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web&aspectRatio=instagram&textColor=%23ffffff&bgImage=true