/tags/ai/Recent content in AI on Yiwei ShiHugoen-usFri, 08 May 2026 11:58:50 -0400/posts/20260508-memory/Fri, 08 May 2026 11:58:50 -0400/posts/20260508-memory/<p><em>A deep dive into the memory shortage, the Nvidia value chain, and where the profits are flowing</em></p> <hr> <h2 id="the-setup-something-strange-is-happening-in-memory">The Setup: Something Strange Is Happening in Memory</h2> <p>If you only watch Nvidia, you are missing the most interesting story in semiconductors right now.</p> <p>In Q1 2026, SK Hynix posted an operating margin of 72%. That number is not a typo. It exceeded both Nvidia and TSMC in the same quarter. For a company that makes commodity DRAM, this is the kind of margin associated with luxury handbags, not memory chips. Industry veterans say profitability like this has not been seen since Microsoft launched Windows 95 in 1995.</p>/posts/20260507-what-is-fde/Thu, 07 May 2026 11:36:30 -0400/posts/20260507-what-is-fde/<p>FDE stands for Forward Deployed Engineer, a role first systematized by Palantir. While a traditional product engineer builds a single feature to serve many customers, an FDE provides the diverse range of capabilities required by a single customer.</p> <p>The distinction can be illustrated by a specific scenario: a pre-sales engineer’s job ends when the customer says, &ldquo;This looks like it should work,&rdquo; whereas an FDE’s job begins when the customer says, &ldquo;Then let’s get it running.&rdquo; If your code is live in a customer&rsquo;s production environment and you’re the one handling on-call issues at midnight, you are an FDE.</p>