Kees van Berkel
Eindhoven University of Technology
Builder The claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open
Kees van Berkel is a computer architect and Professor Emeritus at Eindhoven University of Technology, known for decades of foundational work on asynchronous VLSI circuits, handshake signaling, and low-power processor architectures, as well as systems analysis of emerging compute substrates.
In his July 2026 paper The Cost and Network Limits of Space-Based AI Compute (arXiv:2607.14172), van Berkel applies roofline performance modeling and network bisection bandwidth analysis to low-Earth orbit (LEO) AI clusters. Comparing terrestrial folded Clos data-center fabrics against 2D orbital torus meshes connected by optical laser inter-satellite links, he demonstrates that while orbital inference is energetically and economically viable in dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbits, frontier-scale distributed training faces severe bisection-bandwidth and speed-of-light latency walls across thousand-kilometer satellite separations.
Van Berkel is classified as a Builder on this site. His network bisection and latency calculations supply a hard physical constraint for orbital consciousness theories, showing that any architecture requiring high-bandwidth, millisecond-scale global workspace synchronization must remain localized within a single spacecraft or tight cluster rather than spanning a planet-wide orbital shell.
Known for. The Cost and Network Limits of Space-Based AI Compute, bisection bandwidth and roofline analysis of orbital LEO clusters, asynchronous circuit design
Coverage on this site
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Kees van Berkel is listed with the other builders, who hold that the claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.