WEKA's Val Bercovici: KV Cache, DeepSeek V4, HBF, SLC vs QLC NAND, CXL, NVLink, Tokenomics
WEKA's Val Bercovici: KV Cache, DeepSeek V4, HBF, SLC vs QLC NAND, CXL, NVLink, Tokenomics  
Podcast: Semi Doped
Published On: Fri Jul 10 2026
Description: 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, Weka1:59 Memory situation and model routing3:50 KV cache offloading to CMX6:10 Network faster than motherboard13:10 Weka as AI memory infrastructure14:45 Inference market is different16:06 Memory hierarchy and KV cache19:40 KV cache optimizations and demand25:20 DeepSeek's cache read pricing34:49 NAND flash tiers: SLC vs QLC43:01 High Bandwidth Flash (HBF)49:59 CXL versus other interconnectsFollow Chipstrat:Newsletter: https://www.chipstrat.comX: https://x.com/chipstratFollow Vik:Newsletter: https://www.viksnewsletter.com/X: https://x.com/vikramskrFollow Semi Doped:Get more of Austin and Vik daily, free!Sign up: https://daily.semidoped.com/