Datacenter Reading Path

An ordered way into the datacenter material you already own. Built from 369 unique datacenter-heavy articles across twelve Substack publications in KB/raw/substack/, deduped on slug (the sweep re-ingests posts under a second date; the earlier date is the true publication date and the one used here).

Every entry links to the full text in the vault and to the local A4 PDF under ~/Documents/Substack/. No article is described here that I have not opened — annotations are written from each piece's own opening, not from its title.

The order is deliberate. Tier 1 builds the physical object, Tier 2 the constraint that governs it, Tier 3 what sits inside it, Tier 4 how it is paid for. The depth shelf below is for going sideways once a tier has landed.

Tier 0 — start with what is already written

Three pages in this vault, written for this purpose, and they come first because they compress a great deal of what follows.

• datacenter-foundations — the physical and financial fundamentals from zero: megawatts rather than square feet, PUE and how it is gamed, the power chain, heat rejection, redundancy grammar, the development sequence, cost per MW, leases, yield on cost, and what kills a deal.
• th-power-sector — Thailand's electricity system for an investor: the Enhanced Single Buyer, the regulator, licensing, tariffs, Direct PPA and Third Party Access in detail, and what can legally be built behind a meter.
• th-dc-landscape — the Thai market itself: the gap between announced and connected capacity, the operator field, the generators, regional capital, and where deals sit.

Tier 1 — What the building is and why it is shaped that way

Datacenter Anatomy Part 1: Electrical Systems
SA · 2024-10-14 · read · md · pdf
Start here. The whole electrical chain named part by part: substation, transformers, switchgear, UPS, OCP busbar, generators, redundancy, with a bill of materials by component and the vendors who supply each one (Vertiv, Schneider, Eaton, Legrand, Delta). Nothing else in the corpus teaches the physical plant this directly.

Datacenter Anatomy Part 2 – Cooling Systems
SA · 2025-02-13 · read · md · pdf
The other half. Liquid-to-air, liquid-to-liquid, immersion and two-phase, with Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon water designs compared side by side, plus WUE and PUE defined properly. Read immediately after Part 1.

Understanding High-Voltage DC Power Architectures for AI Megafactories
Viks · 2025-07-20 · read · md · pdf
Why the traditional AC distribution design simply cannot power a gigawatt-class site, and what replaces it. The clearest bridge between the anatomy pieces and the 800V material below.

Inside the 800VDC Revolution – Part 1
SA · 2026-05-26 · read · md · pdf
The four-phase transition to 800 volt DC, rack power economics, solid-state transformers, and equipment content per MW built. This is where power architecture becomes an investable supply chain.

Power Delivery As The Next Physics Wall In AI Datacenters
Viks · 2026-05-06 · read · md · pdf
Short and physics-first. The constraint forcing 800V, the conversion architectures that follow from it, and which power semiconductor sockets open up.

The Wild Wild West Of LEGO Datacenters
SA · 2026-07-29 · read · md · pdf
Modular construction, which is how these get built fast. Vendor claims tested against reality, 60 GW+ of modular capacity tracked, and Vertiv's content uplift per MW.

AI Datacenters Drink More Water Than You Think
Viks · 2026-02-10 · read · md · pdf
Water, which is a permitting and community problem before it is an engineering one. Why the popular comparison metrics mislead and what long-run usage actually looks like.

Tier 2 — Power and the grid, which is where the constraint actually sits

AI Datacenter Energy Dilemma - Race for AI Datacenter Space
SA · 2024-03-13 · read · md · pdf
The foundational call, made in early 2024 and largely right since. Capacity limited by datacenters rather than by chips. Read it as the origin of every power argument that followed.

AI Training Load Fluctuations at Gigawatt-scale - Risk of Power Grid Blackout?
SA · 2025-06-25 · read · md · pdf
Why synchronized training load is a grid stability problem, not just a demand problem. The 108 GW large-load queue, and the batteries and supercapacitors being used to damp it.

US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-The-Meter Datacenter by 2028?
SA · 2026-06-25 · read · md · pdf
The behind-the-meter thesis. Why grid interconnection stops being the default and more than half of new capacity goes self-supplied by 2028. Directly relevant to the Thai captive-power question.

How AI Labs Are Solving the Power Crisis: The Onsite Gas Deep Dive
SA · 2025-12-30 · read · md · pdf
Onsite gas in depth: turbines against reciprocating engines against fuel cells, why nobody just builds more combined-cycle plants, and the total cost of onsite power.

Are AI Datacenters Increasing Electric Bills for American Households?
SA · 2026-03-03 · read · md · pdf
The political economy of it. Why power prices rose, where PJM's market design failed, capacity prices up 9.3x, and ERCOT compared against PJM. This is the argument you will be asked to answer in public.

AI Datacenter Power Investment Map: From 765kV to 0.65V
Damnang · 2026-05-06 · read · md · pdf
The whole chain from 765 kV down to 0.65 V at the chip, mapped to where margin actually sits. The most investor-shaped treatment of power in the corpus.

Deep|AIDC: 2027 Demand Runs at Roughly 2x Deliverable Supply, and the Binding Constraint Is Power
FundaAI · 2026-08-27 · read · md · pdf
2027 North American demand near 35 GW against 16.5 to 23.4 GW deliverable, a gap of roughly 2x, with two independent supply methods cross-checked. The single best sizing of the supply shortfall.

Tier 3 — What sits inside the building

GB200 Hardware Architecture - Component Supply Chain & BOM
SA · 2024-07-17 · read · md · pdf
The rack taken apart: NVLink backplane, NVL36 and NVL72, retimers, switches, optics, PCB, substrate, CDU, PDU, VRM, busbar. Read this once and rack diagrams stop being opaque.

Vera Rubin – Extreme Co-Design: An Evolution from Grace Blackwell Oberon
SA · 2026-02-25 · read · md · pdf
The current generation. Rubin, Vera, NVLink 6, the cableless compute tray, the power rack, and a full bill of materials and cost of ownership for VR NVL72.

CPUs are Back: The Datacenter CPU Landscape in 2026
SA · 2026-02-09 · read · md · pdf
The counter-trend worth knowing: agentic workloads and context memory pulling spend back toward CPUs, DRAM and interconnect, with the AMD, Intel and Arm roadmaps laid out.

Photonics 101
Gaetano · 2026-03-23 · read · md · pdf
Written as a beginner's guide and it delivers. An hour here and the optics layer stops being a black box.

A Beginner’s Guide to Interconnects in AI Datacenters
Viks · 2025-09-08 · read · md · pdf
The companion piece to Photonics 101. What each interconnect does, the trade-offs, and why the choices come out the way they do.

Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) Book – Scaling with Light for the Next Wave of Interconnect
SA · 2026-01-01 · read · md · pdf
The reference work on co-packaged optics: scale-up against scale-out, power budgets, DSP against LPO against NPO against CPO, and the supply chain. Long, and worth it once the basics are in.

Tier 4 — The money

AI Neocloud Playbook and Anatomy
SA · 2024-10-03 · read · md · pdf
The canonical piece on the business model. Cluster bill of materials, deployment, daily operations, cost optimization, cost of ownership and returns. If you read one economics piece, this one.

ClusterMAX™ 2.0: The Industry Standard GPU Cloud Rating System
SA · 2025-11-06 · read · md · pdf
The rating system that became the industry reference. 84 providers rated, 209 tracked, 140+ customers surveyed. Useful less for the ratings than for what it reveals about how buyers actually evaluate capacity.

How Much Do GPU Clusters Really Cost?
SA · 2026-04-20 · read · md · pdf
Cluster total cost of ownership done properly, including the real cost of downtime and a unified way to think about goodput. The closest thing to an underwriting model in the corpus.

Nvidia GPU Debt Backstop Unleashes the AI Project Trinity: Capital, Offtake and Datacenters
SA · 2026-07-06 · read · md · pdf
How the buildout is actually financed now that it has outgrown cash flow. Over 7 trillion dollars of AI debt by 2029, and why capital, offtake and datacenters have to arrive together.

CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN: Same Neocloud Label, Three Different Investment Cases
Damnang · 2026-08-28 · read · md · pdf
Three companies wearing the same label with three different investment cases, worked from how the asset operates through to the equity view. A good test of whether the rest has landed.

Stop Saying Half of 2026 US Datacenter Capacity Is Canceled
SA · 2026-06-18 · read · md · pdf
The skeptic's discipline. A widely repeated cancellation claim taken apart filing by filing. Read it for the method as much as the conclusion.

Datacenter Industry Model
SA · 2025-10-08 · read · md · pdf
The model itself, forecasting critical IT power for colocation and hyperscale datacenters. Read the methodology even if you never use the numbers.

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Depth shelf

Grouped by theme, newest first within each group. These are not sequenced; dip in by topic once the tier above has landed.

Power, grid and cooling (6)

• 2026 OCP APAC: Full Conference Report · Viks · 2026-08-23 · read · md · pdf
• The Power Delivery Bottleneck in AI Data Centers: Where and How to Invest · Damnang · 2026-08-04 · read · md · pdf
• From Tokens to Burgers: A Water Footprint Face-Off · SA · 2026-01-15 · read · md · pdf
• H100 vs GB200 NVL72 Training Benchmarks - Power, TCO, and Reliability Analysis, Software Improvement Over Time · SA · 2025-08-20 · read · md · pdf
• The Data Center is the New Compute Unit: Nvidia's Vision for System-Level Scaling · Fabricated Knowledge · 2024-04-04 · read · [md](../raw/substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2024-04-04_the-data-center-is-the-new-compute.md) · [pdf](~/Documents/Substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2024-04-04_the-data-center-is-the-new-compute.pdf)
• The Emerging Data Center Server Architecture · BTH · 2023-10-10 · read · md · pdf

Optics, photonics and interconnect (25)

• We Need To Talk About MRVL. A Deep Dive Into All That Is Going On · Gaetano · 2026-08-22 · read · md · pdf
• Trump’s Chinese Optical Proposal Is A Really Big Deal. · Gaetano · 2026-08-05 · read · md · pdf
• Down 40%, 40%, and 14% in Six Weeks: What the Ciena, Nokia, and Cisco Correction Priced In · PhotonCap · 2026-07-19 · read · md · pdf
• InP Makes the Light. Fiber Carries It: Same Cycle, Different Bottleneck · PhotonCap · 2026-07-17 · read · md · pdf
• The More Silicon Wins, the More InP Sells: Why UMC and Tower Both Expanded 300mm on the Same Day · PhotonCap · 2026-07-16 · read · md · pdf
• One Layer Below SemiAnalysis’s Meta Map: Scale-Across Is Coherent, Not CPO · PhotonCap · 2026-07-10 · read · md · pdf
• The AI Optics Trade: Shortage Today, Oversupply Tomorrow? · Gaetano · 2026-07-06 · read · md · pdf
• AAOI: Down 37% From Its Peak. Opportunity or Trap? · Damnang · 2026-06-24 · read · md · pdf
• Coherent: The Company That Gets Stronger in the CPO Era · Damnang · 2026-06-17 · read · md · pdf
• The Optical Axis Alone Won’t Show It: Redrawing CPO Across Three Budgets, Energy, Heat, and Reach · PhotonCap · 2026-06-02 · read · md · pdf
• One of My Favorite Investments. 12 Ways to Play. · Gaetano · 2026-05-28 · read · md · pdf
• The Third Signal in May: Marvell Confirms the AI Optical Signal from Lumentum and Coherent · PhotonCap · 2026-05-28 · read · md · pdf
• Is This the Best Way to Invest in Copper + Optics together? Revisiting Semtech · Gaetano · 2026-05-17 · read · md · pdf
• [Investment Map] The Real Bottleneck 7,000m Below: The $13B Cycle Held by 60 Ships · PhotonCap · 2026-05-12 · read · md · pdf
• Coherent, Lumentum, Marvell, and Now Corning: NVIDIA’s 4 Photonics Bets and the Path of Light · PhotonCap · 2026-05-07 · read · md · pdf
• P = I²R: The One-Line Equation Shaping AI Infrastructure and Vicor's ($VICR) VPD · PhotonCap · 2026-04-21 · read · md · pdf
• Worth Tracking: A Company With OCS Exposure · Gaetano · 2026-04-20 · read · md · pdf
• NVIDIA's $2B Marvell Bet and Celestial AI's "25x Bandwidth" Claim: What's the Denominator? · PhotonCap · 2026-04-03 · read · md · pdf
• AAOI Deep Dive · Gaetano · 2026-03-28 · read · md · pdf
• Ciena Deep Dive · Gaetano · 2026-03-24 · read · md · pdf
• MACOM ($MTSI) Report · Gaetano · 2026-03-16 · read · md · pdf
• Deep|OFC 2026 Preview: 400G per Lane — The Next Major Inflection in Optical Interconnects · FundaAI · 2026-03-11 · read · md · pdf
• Copper Wall, Age of Light — Dissecting Marvell's FY2026 & the 1.6T Optics Chain · PhotonCap · 2026-03-11 · read · md · pdf
• An Interview with Wes Cummins, CEO of Applied Digital · Fabricated Knowledge · 2024-07-09 · read · [md](../raw/substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2024-07-09_an-interview-with-wes-cummins-ceo.md) · [pdf](~/Documents/Substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2024-07-09_an-interview-with-wes-cummins-ceo.pdf)
• Marvell's Vision – Custom Silicon, CXL, DPUs, Ethernet, Optical, Telecom, Storage, Automotive, SerDes, 2025 Revenue & EPS · SA · 2022-12-11 · read · md · pdf

Silicon, racks and systems (28)

• The Open-Source AI Era: Will Hyperscalers Keep Buying Chips? · Damnang · 2026-07-19 · read · md · pdf
• EDA Market Primer - Market Dynamics, Cadence, Synopsys, Siemens, China EDA Rise · SA · 2026-05-21 · read · md · pdf
• Cerebras — Faster Tokens Please · SA · 2026-05-13 · read · md · pdf
• Intel’s Real Moat That Nobody Talks About: STCO · Damnang · 2026-05-04 · read · md · pdf
• AI Value Capture - The Shift To Model Labs · SA · 2026-05-01 · read · md · pdf
• The One Sentence That Made Me Look at Qualcomm Again · Damnang · 2026-04-30 · read · md · pdf
• Google’s AI Infrastructure Layer Map · Damnang · 2026-04-28 · read · md · pdf
• The GPU era ran on TSMC. The inference era runs on multiple foundries: NVIDIA Rubin NVL8 and 14 stocks · PhotonCap · 2026-04-28 · read · md · pdf
• The CPU Bottleneck Trade: Who Actually Gets Paid in the Agentic AI Era? · Damnang · 2026-04-26 · read · md · pdf
• Copper Has Limits. CXL Has Ambitions. Optics Has Answers. · Damnang · 2026-04-04 · read · md · pdf
• The Great GPU Shortage – Rental Capacity – Launching our H100 1 Year Rental Price Index · SA · 2026-04-02 · read · md · pdf
• Rising CPU Tide Is Not Likely to Lift ARM · BTH · 2026-03-30 · read · md · pdf
• AWS Trainium3 Deep Dive | A Potential Challenger Approaching · SA · 2025-12-04 · read · md · pdf
• TPUv7: Google Takes a Swing at the King · SA · 2025-11-28 · read · md · pdf
• InferenceMAX™: Open Source Inference Benchmarking · SA · 2025-10-09 · read · md · pdf
• AMD Advancing AI: MI350X and MI400 UALoE72, MI500 UAL256 · SA · 2025-06-13 · read · md · pdf
• Tariff Armageddon? | GPU Loopholes, Mexico Supply Chain Shift, Wafer Fab Equipment Vulnerabilities, Optical Module Pricing Surge, Datacenter Equipment · SA · 2025-04-10 · read · md · pdf
• AI Silicon Opportunity Is Changing – Part 2 · BTH · 2024-12-23 · read · md · pdf
• MI300X vs H100 vs H200 Benchmark Part 1: Training - CUDA Moat Still Alive · SA · 2024-12-22 · read · md · pdf
• Intel on the Brink of Death | Culture Rot, Product Focus Flawed, Foundry Must Survive · SA · 2024-12-09 · read · md · pdf
• Multi-Datacenter Training: OpenAI's Ambitious Plan To Beat Google's Infrastructure · SA · 2024-09-04 · read · md · pdf
• Nvidia's Blackwell Reworked - Shipment Delays & GB200A Reworked Platforms · SA · 2024-08-04 · read · md · pdf
• AMD Results Are Much Stronger Than They Appear At The Surface · BTH · 2024-07-31 · read · md · pdf
• Meet The World’s Most Profitable Memory Supplier: Nvidia · BTH · 2024-07-02 · read · md · pdf
• What Will Nvidia And AMD Data Center GPU Ramp Look Like? · BTH · 2023-10-10 · read · md · pdf
• Major Data Center Refresh Is Coming · BTH · 2023-10-10 · read · md · pdf
• Energizing AI: Power Delivery Competition Heats Up Vicor, MPS, Delta, ADI, Renesas, Infineon · SA · 2023-08-01 · read · md · pdf
• CXL: Protocol for Heterogenous Datacenters · Fabricated Knowledge · 2022-07-07 · read · [md](../raw/substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2022-07-07_cxl-protocol-for-heterogenous-datacenters.md) · [pdf](~/Documents/Substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2022-07-07_cxl-protocol-for-heterogenous-datacenters.pdf)

Hyperscalers, neoclouds and capex (18)

• SpaceX 10GW in 2027 – Why It’s Real, Will Drive $300B ARR for SpaceX, and Why Microsoft Will Be the Largest Offtaker · SA · 2026-08-07 · read · md · pdf
• The GPU Repricing Cycle and Q2 Hyperscaler Earnings: Which Hardware Layer the Capex Flows To · PhotonCap · 2026-08-06 · read · md · pdf
• The Future of Meta Superintelligence: A 1 Year Progress Update · SA · 2026-07-09 · read · md · pdf
• Meta Compute Misread: Where the AI Infrastructure Opportunity Really Is · Damnang · 2026-07-02 · read · md · pdf
• Meta Compute: Everyone Wants To Be A Neocloud · SA · 2026-07-02 · read · md · pdf
• Anthropic Growth and Bedrock Mix Drive AWS Margins Higher While Peers Lag · SA · 2026-05-27 · read · md · pdf
• The Real Beneficiaries of Azure +40%, AWS +28%, GCP +63%: The Hardware Supply Chain Map Behind $580B in Cloud Capex · PhotonCap · 2026-05-11 · read · md · pdf
• Deep|SpaceX Deep Dive: Part 3 — When Launch Costs Approach Zero, Where Does the Imagination End? · FundaAI · 2026-04-22 · read · md · pdf
• Microsoft's AI Strategy Deconstructed - From Energy to Tokens · SA · 2025-11-12 · read · md · pdf
• xAI's Colossus 2 - First Gigawatt Datacenter In The World, Unique RL Methodology, Capital Raise · SA · 2025-09-16 · read · md · pdf
• Amazon’s AI Resurgence: AWS & Anthropic's Multi-Gigawatt Trainium Expansion · SA · 2025-09-03 · read · md · pdf
• Meta Superintelligence - Leadership Compute, Talent, and Data · SA · 2025-07-11 · read · md · pdf
• How Oracle Is Winning the AI Compute Market · SA · 2025-06-30 · read · md · pdf
• Microsoft's Datacenter Freeze - 1.5GW Self-Build Slowdown & Lease Cancellation Misconceptions · SA · 2025-04-28 · read · md · pdf
• The GPU Cloud ClusterMAX™ Rating System | How to Rent GPUs · SA · 2025-03-26 · read · md · pdf
• 2025 AI Diffusion Export Controls - Microsoft Regulatory Capture, Oracle Tears, Impacts Quantified, Model Restrictions · SA · 2025-01-15 · read · md · pdf
• How Dell Is Beating Supermicro · SA · 2024-05-30 · read · md · pdf
• R2: What it Means to be 1 Less Than S3 · Fabricated Knowledge · 2021-10-05 · read · [md](../raw/substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2021-10-05_r2-what-it-means-to-be-1-less-than.md) · [pdf](~/Documents/Substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2021-10-05_r2-what-it-means-to-be-1-less-than.pdf)

Market structure, policy and the bubble question (11)

• Deep|Space: Orbital Data Centers - Lower Launch Costs Do Not Make GW-Scale Commercialization Viable · FundaAI · 2026-06-22 · read · md · pdf
• Cien Deep Dive - Post Earnings Selloff · Gaetano · 2026-06-09 · read · md · pdf
• To Boldly Go: The Case for Space Datacenters · SA · 2026-06-03 · read · md · pdf
• $P Earnings Breakdown.. NAND?! · Gaetano · 2026-05-28 · read · md · pdf
• New Position: Is This The Next AI Infrastructure Re-rate? · Gaetano · 2026-05-11 · read · md · pdf
• An Aschenbrenner-Style AI Infrastructure Investment Strategy for 2028 · Damnang · 2026-05-05 · read · md · pdf
• AI Arrives In The Middle East: US Strikes A Deal with UAE and KSA · SA · 2025-05-16 · read · md · pdf
• 2025 – The Year Ahead · BTH · 2025-03-03 · read · md · pdf
• Nvidia Investors Haven’t Noticed But The Thesis Has Changed From Capacity To Demand · BTH · 2023-11-18 · read · md · pdf
• Semiconductor Outlook 2023: Green Shoots · Fabricated Knowledge · 2022-12-31 · read · [md](../raw/substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2022-12-31_semiconductor-outlook-2022-green.md) · [pdf](~/Documents/Substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2022-12-31_semiconductor-outlook-2022-green.pdf)
• Nvidia's Crypto Issues, Cisco's Supply Chain issues · Fabricated Knowledge · 2022-05-26 · read · [md](../raw/substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2022-05-26_nvidias-crypto-issues-ciscos-supply.md) · [pdf](~/Documents/Substack/Fabricated Knowledge/2022-05-26_nvidias-crypto-issues-ciscos-supply.pdf)

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What is not here

This path covers 27 core reads and 93 on the depth shelf, all drawn from the 115 highest-density articles whose openings I read. The remaining 254 of the 369 deduped datacenter articles are real and searchable in KB/raw/substack/, but they are not annotated here because I did not open them, and a description written from a title is a guess.

The corpus is also strongly US and China weighted. It has close to nothing on Thai power specifically, which is why th-power-sector had to be researched and written rather than curated.

Topics

datacenter-foundations · th-power-sector · th-dc-landscape · ai-infrastructure