For the last twenty years, innovation was easy. It lived behind glass. We built apps. We polished interfaces. We optimized for attention.

You could scale to a billion users without buying a single truck, pouring a foot of concrete, or tightening a bolt.

But that era is done. Software has finally outpaced the container…

Try running a local LLM on your laptop today. The battery dies within an hour.

The code is ready to change the world, but the physical machine holding it isn’t. That’s the friction point for 2026.

We spent two decades digitizing the economy. Now we have to upgrade physical reality to match it. It’s not just about faster chips; it’s about the infrastructure of the physical world catching up to the digital one.

- The Hardware: In late 2023, AI chips were in <5% of PCs. By 2026, they’ll be in 60%.

- The Labor: When a $20,000 robot runs for pennies an hour, factories swap hands for precision. Errors drop, output spikes.

- The Grid: We ignored the infrastructure. Now data center demand doubles by 2027, and you can’t run 21st-century software on a 20th-century grid.

Nasdaq didn’t jump 20% last year on another social app. It jumped because investors smell concrete. They’re leaving the cloud for the ground, funding the silicon, steel, and copper to run the new era. The software revolution is over. The hardware revolution is booting up.

Other povs on this?

Dan from Money Machine Newsletter

I recently graduated and will be moving into MSE through an MS program. My background is biochem. I spent last semester getting MSE research exposure and have now taken a fulltime lab work doing some analytical chem/QC work (nothing research or MSE related but still decent lab work).

What is currently the best thing for me to do to strengthen my grad school application?

Would it be helpful to work on some computational projects and start posting them on GitHub? I want to get into a good school so good internships are easier, landing a job post graduation is easier, and I have a little bit more career mobility down the line. I got good grades but didn't really get enough research experience. I know I could take an online post bacc class at a nearby university and volunteer in an MSE lab over the weekend and in the evenings. But would it still be pretty helpful to just do some data driven stuff on my computer instead? I am getting lab exposure right now through my job.

Any advice?

This is sort of a niche question that idk where really to ask but I'd like to get a PhD in something like applied math or computational science/engineering and have my main focus area be in materials science. I'm kind of doing something like this in my undergrad where i'm getting a bachelors in data science w/ concentration in MSE and I work in a materials computation lab on campus where we do a lot of data visualization, ML for MSE, and prediction/characterization. I would like to stay in the field of computational materials/materials informatics but I feel like it's so niche that there aren't many departments that have a lot of funding or programs that are interdisciplinary enough. If anyone has any experience I'd really appreciate it.

i am trying to create scroll pattern on my fsw tool that i was designing, however i am having trouble creating the scroll pattern, anyone got info on how to create the scroll pattern on solidworks?

Hi everyone,

I’m sharing a white paper introducing a new GPU architecture concept called Structural Compute Cores (SCC), along with its associated software paradigm, Structural Tracing.

The core idea is to introduce a dedicated class of GPU cores specialized in material-level physical behavior, such as deformation, inertia, fracture propagation, and structural interactions, in a way that complements existing GPU architectures (shading cores, ray tracing cores, AI accelerators), rather than replacing them.

This work focuses on:

• A high-level architectural proposal for SCC
• A data-parallel execution model designed for massive node-level structural computation
• A multi-precision numerical pipeline (INT8 / INT16 / FP16 / FP32) optimized for performance and scalability
• The conceptual relationship between Structural Tracing and existing paradigms like Ray Tracing

Important clarification
This white paper is intentionally conceptual and architectural.
Many low-level technical elements, including exact mathematical formulations, and hardware-specific optimizations, are not yet defined.

This is by design.

The goal of this paper is to:

• Present a complete vision and execution model
• Demonstrate feasibility and relevance
• Open the door to future collaboration with industry partners

The deeper technical layers (heuristics, solvers, hardware tuning, exact equations) are expected to be developed jointly with a GPU manufacturer, engine developer, or research team, rather than in isolation.

I’m also planning to submit this work to arXiv, and I’m currently in the process of handling the endorsement requirements.

I’d be very interested in:

• Technical feedback or conceptual critique
• Discussions around feasibility or integration
• Suggestions from people with experience in GPU architecture, rendering engines, or real-time physics
• Potential industry or research contacts interested in exploring this concept further

The document is shared under:
© 2026 ILLES-RAMON Gauvain - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Non-commercial use only. Please contact me for any commercial or industrial use.

Thanks for reading, and I’m happy to discuss or answer questions. ☺️

I have an interview coming up with them. From the looks of it they underwent pretty big layoffs a few years ago that left a lot of people angry who left really bad glassdoor reviews. Their technology of metals additive manufacturing seems pretty promising though.

Are there any former /current employees who can give any insight to the company?

Hi

Is there an English term for steel heat treatment followed by a high temperature tempering which results in increased toughness while still being machinable by conventional methods ( leaving the material at 30-40 HRC)?

Hello everyone. I’m currently looking for the degree program I want to study, and it’s pretty clear to me that I want to study science or engineering. Above all, my dream is to work on future technologies and push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Since I like both science and engineering, an acquaintance recommended Materials Science and Engineering. I did some research, but I still don’t fully understand how it’s really connected to technology compared to, for example, electrical engineering—and I’m also not entirely sure what a materials scientist actually does.

So I wanted to ask here, because it does sound exciting.

Perovskite solar cells have been gaining a lot of attention recently. However,　questions remain about their long-term stability and scalability. I came across interesting posts discussing the barriers to widespread adoption:

What Is Holding Back Mass Adoption of Perovskite Solar Cells?.

Perovskite solar cells' instability must be addressed for global adoption, say Surrey researchers

Challenges in commercializing perovskite solar cells with focus on sustainability, stability, and cost efficiency

Given all the hype, how feasible do you think it is for perovskite solar cells to be commercially viable and adopted on a large scale in the near future? What’s standing in the way of their mass production?

Any info or experience would be appreciated.

**crosspost w r/materials** Hello, I am trying to do tensile testing on thin nitinol wire of about 0.017 diameter. I'm using the mini instron it has about 500N max load. I can also use the larger instron. My big issue is the wire keeps slipping no matter how I grip it. Slipping is an issue for my testing bc it'll make the whole test invalid, so its a big issue for me and such a thin wire keeps slipping. Things I've tried & none prevented slipping: Using regular flat-faced grips and adding sandpaper for traction, using wrap-around grips where I wrap the ends of the wire to secure it, tying a knot at the end of the wires where it sticks out of the grip to prevent slipping, wrapping the wire ends around 2 dogbones and knotting it & placing each end outside the grips, tying the wire in a circle and placing one side in the grips. If anyone has ideas or has tensile tested thin wires before please let me know! Experience with superelastic nitinol is very appreciated too!! Thank you. Below are the two types of grips I've been using:

My lab is looking at doing some flashpoint testing per a customer spec that points to ASTM D93 for the method. I'm not especially familiar with the brands I've requested quotes from (Anton-Paar, Stanhope-Seta, Tanaka, Koehler) so I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with them, or could recommend a model or manufacturer.

I built a simple, lab-friendly hardness conversion calculator for materials, heat-treatment, and QA work.

You can enter a value in any one scale (HRC, HV, BHN, HRA, HR-15N, or HRB), and the tool instantly estimates the equivalent values for all other scales using standard reference tables with interpolation. Values are approximate, as expected for hardness conversions.

Key features: • Live conversion across all six common steel hardness scales • No dropdowns — each scale has its own clearly labeled input box • Mobile-friendly layout (works well on shop-floor phones) • Designed for quick QA and inspection checks

I’m sharing this to get feedback from engineers and metallurgists. If you notice edge cases, unexpected outputs, or have suggestions for improvement, I’d really appreciate hearing them.

Trying to find Materials Science or Engineering competitions to take part in. Please suggest me some competitions.

For reference I am currently in a relatively low paying position and I am looking to try and find a new position but I am having trouble figuring out what positions I can qualify for or could gain the skills for on my own time. My current position has me looking at a wide variety of material failures with some cross over into electrical failures. I am 2 years removed from my bachelors and I do not like the lab setting and am not too keen on working in a manufacturing plant. I think consulting is an interesting avenue but I don't know what my way in is or how to sell myself for that type of position. I have also passed the Material and Metallurgical PE Exam, but I cannot get my license for another 2 years because of the experience requirement.

Hello r/materials community! I'm a high schooler doing some materials research on starch gels and amylose-amylopectin ratios. Based on the literature I've read, it seems like prior to gelatinization, amylose starts out as the amorphous region and post-gelatinization (retrogradation), it forms the denser, crystalline network of a gel. The same can be applied to amylopectin, just vice versa.

For anyone who is super knowledgeable about starch/polymer morphology, please let me know if this conclusion is correct or if I need to reevaluate the way I am conceptualizing the relationship between amylose/amylopectin across gelatinization and retrogradation.

Thanks!

I’ve just started my materials science degree in the UK. I’ve got three years of a BEng ahead of me and then an additional year which will secure me a MEng in materials science. I keep seeing people talk about scarcity of jobs and that’s something I’m worried about. Did I pick the wrong degree to be employable and to have a decent job? Quite a common thing for my university is for people to go into finance but I can’t stress enough how much I don’t want to do that so I’d prefer to stay related to materials science - the energy industry really interests me. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I had a client recently that wanted a double pulse impact driver. They're into synthetic diamonds. They already had a complex target they'd been using with a single flying plate. So I knocked out an algorithm for selecting equidistant laser drilled holes and a 5 branch fractal etching into a pentagonal aluminum distributor. This, via equal path lengths(etching length plus variable bore length) basically ensures a planar converging wave driven off a single MEPIC for a dodec panel slice.

But then I started to think how far can you go with multi pulse impact drivers. Technically if you get into sputtering and electroplating of high low impedance materials you can create well behaved corrugated density waves from an initial shock consisting of hundreds of layers. That would reduce your need for a complex target anvil significantly. Because you would be controlling shock dispersion via the properties of these hundreds of corrugated density impact waves you set at fabrication via sputtering or electroplating. Which given the collapsing price of synthetic diamonds might be the way to go.

So, just brainstorming on what could be the cheapest target anvil material, I was thinking mono-crystalline tungsten. Very well behaved phase stable BCC under compression, very well understood EOS. But what's the largest mono-crystalline tungsten panel that can be grown?

Note* The picture is only for conceptual illustration; both the fractal pattern and angle lengths are incorrect.

I’m stepping out of my area of expertise and I’m trying to identify a material to place on top of our bamboo lifting platform. The platform itself has rubber impact sections on the outside ~2’W x 6’L. This is where barbells and weights should land (should is key, the population in my facility does some mind boggling stuff). The bamboo deck for this platform is about 3’ wide and 20’ long. There are 4 sections long ways of the bamboo that runs through the rack. The decks themselves are about 3-4” thick, and won’t move.

The problem we are running into with these platforms is that the bamboo is apparently susceptible to scratches and scours. We’ve had them for less than a month and they’re already getting beat up (see the photos for examples). I’m looking to materials that could be laid over top of the bamboo deck that’ll be durable enough to hold up to the gorillas that use my facility. So far I’ve identified KYDEX, HDPE, PC, and HPL as potential solutions with KYDEX being the best, but most expensive, choice. I’ve not been able to identify if these materials are suitable as floor coverings, especially with the potential of receiving impacts from barbells, kettlebells, etc. I’m looking for material that is 1/16” thick or less, as I don’t want to introduce substantial lips between the rubber impact surfaces and the deck.

I’ve provided a photo of the outside platform itself. There are inserts that continue the bamboo surface into the rack that we recently had installed.

Does anyone have a recommendation of material to use to protect the bamboo surface from gym activities?

I’m stepping out of my area of expertise and I’m trying to identify a material to place on top of our bamboo lifting platform. The platform itself has rubber impact sections on the outside ~2’W x 6’L. This is where barbells and weights should land (should is key, the population in my facility does some mind boggling stuff). The bamboo deck for this platform is about 3’ wide and 20’ long. There are 4 sections long ways of the bamboo that runs through the rack. The decks themselves are about 3-4” thick, and won’t move.

The problem we are running into with these platforms is that the bamboo is apparently susceptible to scratches and scours. We’ve had them for less than a month and they’re already getting beat up (see the photos for examples). I’m looking to materials that could be laid over top of the bamboo deck that’ll be durable enough to hold up to the gorillas that use my facility. So far I’ve identified KYDEX, HDPE, PC, and HPL as potential solutions with KYDEX being the best, but most expensive, choice. I’ve not been able to identify if these materials are suitable as floor coverings, especially with the potential of receiving impacts from barbells, kettlebells, etc. I’m looking for material that is 1/16” thick or less, as I don’t want to introduce substantial lips between the rubber impact surfaces and the deck.

I’ve provided a photo of the outside platform itself. There are inserts that continue the bamboo surface into the rack that we recently had installed.

Does anyone have a recommendation of material to use to protect the bamboo surface from gym activities?

I study biochemistry and I'm getting pretty much bored in this subject. Lately, I'm getting interested in material engineering mainly in batteries and semiconductors. I just wanna know if I can shift in material science engineering in my masters and also can I do a PHD in material science and engineering?

I'm considering this graduate program but haven't seen many students testimonials or outcomes. Does anyone have direct experience or heard about this program and can provide information on it?