WEKA's Val Bercovici: KV Cache, DeepSeek V4, HBF, SLC vs QLC NAND, CXL, NVLink, Tokenomics

Vik welcomes Val Bercovici from Weka to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of AI memory and storage. Val explains how Weka's architecture leverages high-bandwidth networks to make storage faster than motherboard DRAM. They dive into KV cache optimizations, the future of NAND flash tiers, and the role of CXL in AI inference. The episode concludes with a look at predictive memory offloading and the AI flywheel.

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome Val Bercovici, Weka
1:59 Memory situation and model routing
3:50 KV cache offloading to CMX
6:10 Network faster than motherboard
13:10 Weka as AI memory infrastructure
14:45 Inference market is different
16:06 Memory hierarchy and KV cache
19:40 KV cache optimizations and demand
25:20 DeepSeek's cache read pricing
34:49 NAND flash tiers: SLC vs QLC
43:01 High Bandwidth Flash (HBF)
49:59 CXL versus other interconnects

Follow Chipstrat:
Newsletter: chipstrat.com
X: x.com/chipstrat

Follow Vik:
Newsletter: viksnewsletter.com
X: x.com/vikramskr

Follow Semi Doped:
Get more of Austin and Vik daily, free!
Sign up: daily.semidoped.com