A Publication Built Around Careful Reading
skarna was founded to provide one well-maintained source on AI hardware for people who follow the field professionally.
← Back to HomeHow skarna Came Together
skarna began in Kuala Lumpur out of a straightforward observation: people working near AI hardware — engineers, analysts, product leads, strategists — had no single reading source they could rely on. News was fast and thin. Vendor content was tilted. Academic papers were dense and slow. The gap in the middle, where well-researched, readable material should sit, was mostly empty.
The publication was built to fill that gap. The name comes from the geological formation created when two different rock types meet under pressure and produce something new — a fitting description of what happens at the intersection of semiconductor physics, manufacturing economics, and the demand structures created by AI workloads.
From the start, skarna was structured as a publication rather than a newsletter or a blog. That distinction matters. A publication has issues, an archive, editorial standards, and a pace that suits long-form material. It treats readers as professionals with limited time who nonetheless want depth when they choose to engage.
The team is based in Kuala Lumpur, which gives the publication a useful vantage point. Malaysia sits inside the global semiconductor supply chain in meaningful ways — through substrates, packaging, and assembly — and proximity to Southeast Asian markets shapes how coverage is framed, even when the subject is a chip designed in California or fabricated in Taiwan.
People Behind skarna
Rajan Abisheganathan
Editor-in-Chief
Covers processor architectures and semiconductor industry structure. Previously worked in technical analysis for an APAC-focused research group.
Lena Wouters
Research Writer
Focuses on memory systems, packaging technology, and supply chain mapping. Brings a background in materials science to hardware writing.
Dinesh Krishnan
Industry Correspondent
Tracks AI accelerator developments and cloud provider hardware strategies. Writes the company and product coverage for each issue.
How We Approach the Work
Source Transparency
Where information originates is stated clearly. Primary documents, company disclosures, and data sets are cited rather than paraphrased without attribution.
No Vendor Alignment
skarna has no commercial partnerships with chip companies, hardware vendors, or AI labs. Coverage follows research findings, not commercial relationships.
Edited Before Publishing
All pieces go through an editorial pass. Technical claims are checked, structure is reviewed, and factual errors corrected before an issue is released.
Reader Data Protection
Subscriber information is held securely and never shared with third parties for commercial purposes. We comply with applicable data protection requirements in Malaysia.
Consistent Schedule
Issues are published on a regular cadence. Readers can expect new material to appear predictably, without the stop-start pattern common in smaller publications.
Corrections Policy
If an error appears in a published piece, it is corrected promptly and noted in the archive. Accuracy is treated as an ongoing obligation, not a publishing endpoint.
What skarna Covers and Why It Matters
AI hardware has become one of the more consequential technical areas of the current decade. The decisions being made now about processor design, memory architecture, packaging approaches, and fabrication geography will shape the infrastructure that AI workloads run on for years to come. That makes it worth following carefully.
skarna covers the organisations — chipmakers, foundries, packaging houses, memory manufacturers, cloud providers — that are building or buying this hardware. It covers the technical developments: new architectures, interconnect standards, chiplet integration approaches, thermal management at scale. And it covers the structural context: supply chain geography, capital allocation patterns, and how demand signals from large AI deployments feed back into hardware roadmaps.
The publication is written for readers who are professionally proximate to this space. That means the writing assumes familiarity with basic concepts and focuses on depth, context, and implication rather than introductory explanation. It also means the tone is measured — analytical without being academic, accessible without being superficial.
For Malaysian and Southeast Asian professionals in particular, AI hardware is not a distant topic. Regional electronics manufacturing, substrate production, assembly and test operations, and the distribution networks serving APAC data centre buildout all connect to the themes skarna covers. The publication reflects that proximity in how it frames coverage.
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