Virtualization

Former Intel CEO: Why This is the Best Time to Build Hardware

Former Intel CEO: Why This is the Best Time to Build Hardware

Pat Gelsinger joins a16z's Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller to discuss how AI is reshaping chip design, why design speed alone will not fix semiconductor bottlenecks, and why power and energy capacity may ultimately limit AI growth. The conversation covers HBM and memory innovation, stacking limits, the shift from copper to optics, consolidation among AI chip startups, and what a VMware for AI agents might look like.

From fork() to Fleet: Designing an Agent Sandbox Cloud — Abhishek Bhardwaj, OpenAI

From fork() to Fleet: Designing an Agent Sandbox Cloud — Abhishek Bhardwaj, OpenAI

This talk by Abhishek Bhardwaj from OpenAI details the architectural considerations for building secure and scalable AI agent sandboxes in the cloud. It explores runtime isolation technologies (from basic process execution to containers, GVisor, and microVMs), emphasizing the superior security of hardware-virtualized microVMs. The speaker then highlights the critical need for persistent storage, outlining explicit (copy-on-write snapshots) and always-on (tiered block storage) solutions as the next major unlock for agent capabilities. Finally, it touches on orchestration challenges for fleet-level management, including low-latency sandbox creation and snapshot-driven scheduling.