Jane, Author at Small Island Research Notes

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So far Jane has created 82 blog entries.

The Linear Narrative Around AI Memory Demand May Be Starting to Show Small Cracks

Jane2026-03-26T16:18:11+08:00March 26th, 2026|Categories: Global Business Dynamics, Strategic Tech and Market Signals|Tags: AI Hardware and Chips, AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Google, Market Sentiment and Reflexivity, Narrative and Trust, NVIDIA, Supply Chain and Manufacturing|

Executive Summary In current discussions around AI infrastructure, the market broadly assumes that memory demand will continue rising steadily as models scale, inference workloads expand, and HBM and DRAM remain under supply pressure. This narrative is grounded in real conditions, which is also why it appears especially durable. But once the focus shifts from demand itself to system design, the picture becomes less straightforward. As memory supply, cost, and capacity allocation increasingly become real constraints,

Tech Narrative Weekly #16 (Mar 2026, Week 3): The AI Story Has Not Changed, but Related Signals Are Becoming Clearer

Jane2026-03-23T21:13:05+08:00March 23rd, 2026|Categories: Tech Narrative Weekly|Tags: AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Market Sentiment and Reflexivity, Narrative and Trust, Policy and Tariffs|

Key Events of the Week: What Happened In the third week of March 2026, several developments in the U.S. technology sector were worth viewing together. These events came from different areas, including AI infrastructure, platform relationships, policy governance, and defense applications. But when considered together, they pointed to the same underlying shift. Even as the AI industry continues to move forward, the capital arrangements, cooperative order, institutional frameworks, and application boundaries behind it are becoming

After the Groq Move, NVIDIA’s Moat May Be Deeper Than It Appears

Jane2026-03-20T13:38:28+08:00March 20th, 2026|Categories: Global Business Dynamics, Strategic Tech and Market Signals|Tags: AI Hardware and Chips, AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Groq, Market Sentiment and Reflexivity, Narrative and Trust, NVIDIA, Research and Methodology, Supply Chain and Manufacturing|

Executive Summary At first glance, NVIDIA’s move to incorporate the Groq-based NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX into the Vera Rubin platform may look like a new approach to inference workload allocation. But the real focus of this article is not the technical detail itself. It is whether this move suggests that NVIDIA’s moat may be deeper than it previously appeared. The argument here is that NVIDIA’s competitive strength may not rest only on chip performance, the

The Expansion Logic of AI Infrastructure Is Changing

Jane2026-03-19T20:49:50+08:00March 19th, 2026|Categories: Featured Notes, Global Business Dynamics, Strategic Tech and Market Signals|Tags: AI Hardware and Chips, AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Oracle, Platform and Business Model, Supply Chain and Manufacturing|

Executive Summary Several recent signals that appear unrelated at first glance may in fact point to a shift in how decisions around AI infrastructure are being made. Adjustments to the expansion pace of the Abilene data center by OpenAI and Oracle, together with Meta’s description of its in-house AI chip roadmap for MTIA, suggest that companies are facing the same underlying question. As model development, chip generations, and infrastructure construction cycles become increasingly out of

Tech Narrative Weekly #15 (Mar 2026, Week 2): The AI Story Remains Intact, but Signals Around Models, Policy, and Institutions Are Becoming Clearer

Jane2026-03-17T20:30:36+08:00March 17th, 2026|Categories: Tech Narrative Weekly|Tags: AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Market Sentiment and Reflexivity, Narrative and Trust, Policy and Tariffs|

Key Events of the Week: What Happened During the second week of March 2026, several important developments emerged in the U.S. technology sector related to AI model progress, policy regulation, and defense applications. These events may not immediately change corporate investment direction, but they suggest that as the AI industry continues to expand rapidly, its pace of development, institutional environment, and application boundaries are becoming clearer. First, Meta delayed the release of its next generation

Tech Narrative Weekly #14 (Mar 2026, Week 1): When the AI Narrative Moves into the Institutional and Security Framework, Market Evaluation Becomes More Complex

Jane2026-03-09T12:58:12+08:00March 9th, 2026|Categories: Tech Narrative Weekly|Tags: AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Market Sentiment and Reflexivity, Narrative and Trust, Policy and Tariffs|

Key Events of the Week: What Happened During the first week of March 2026, several developments with institutional and geopolitical implications appeared in the US technology sector. These events may not immediately change corporate investment decisions, but they suggest that AI technologies are gradually entering the framework of national security and public policy. First, differences between the AI company Anthropic and the US Department of Defense regarding the military use of AI sparked discussion about

A Second Path Beyond the GPU? Architectural Thinking Behind NVIDIA’s Licensing Agreement with Groq

Jane2026-03-05T13:01:28+08:00March 5th, 2026|Categories: Featured Notes, Global Business Dynamics, Strategic Tech and Market Signals|Tags: AI Hardware and Chips, AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Groq, NVIDIA, Supply Chain and Manufacturing|

Executive Summary NVIDIA’s licensing agreement with Groq is worth watching not only because the technology itself is extreme, but because it may signal that AI compute architecture is being reconsidered. Even after GPUs have become the dominant platform for AI training and inference, NVIDIA is still willing to engage seriously with an execution model that runs almost counter to the mainstream path. That suggests the demands of the inference era may be making determinism important

Tech Narrative Weekly #13 (Feb 2026, Week 4): When the Narrative Holds, Market Patience Begins to Carry Conditions

Jane2026-03-01T21:51:00+08:00March 1st, 2026|Categories: Tech Narrative Weekly|Tags: Market Sentiment and Reflexivity, Narrative and Trust|

Key Events of the Week: What Happened In the fourth week of February 2026, key signals in the US technology sector did not diminish. Remarks from NVIDIA management, Meta’s continued buildout of AI infrastructure, and the sustained direction of elevated capital expenditures among major technology companies all extended the trajectory seen in prior weeks. From a corporate behavior perspective, the core narrative remained intact. AI continues to be treated as a central long term investment

CPU as an AI Pillar, Is Arm Approaching a Structural Inflection?

Jane2026-03-28T20:28:34+08:00February 27th, 2026|Categories: Featured Notes, Global Business Dynamics, Strategic Tech and Market Signals|Tags: AI Hardware and Chips, AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Amazon and AWS, Ampere, Arm, Meta, NVIDIA, Platform and Business Model, Supply Chain and Manufacturing|

Note (March 2026): I wrote this piece before Arm officially unveiled its own data center CPU. That does not make the original argument irrelevant, but it does change the context in an important way. I am keeping the article largely as it is because the framework still helps explain what to watch. What has changed is that some of the questions discussed here are no longer purely hypothetical. They can now be read

When Grace CPU Reaches Its First Large-Scale Deployment: This Is Not Just a CPU Story but Also a Shift in Data Center Structure

Jane2026-02-27T12:25:01+08:00February 24th, 2026|Categories: Featured Notes, Global Business Dynamics, Strategic Tech and Market Signals|Tags: AI Hardware and Chips, AI Strategy and Ecosystem, Meta, NVIDIA, Platform and Business Model, Supply Chain and Manufacturing|

Executive Summary The first large-scale deployment of the Grace CPU may appear, at the surface level, to be a routine update on product and partnership progress. Within a broader industry context, however, this development may carry structural implications that extend beyond a single product milestone. This article examines the signals embedded in Grace CPU’s large-scale deployment from the perspectives of market positioning, data center architectural evolution, and hyperscaler strategy. These signals include NVIDIA’s changing role