Utilizing Tech - The Podcast Series about New and Emerging Technologies

As customers try to figure out how to present data to Agentic AI applications, many of them are realizing that it’s time for the storage infrastructure team to step up and take a seat at the table. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, recorded live at NetApp Insight in Las Vegas, hosts Stephen Foskett and Guy Currier from The Futurum Group sit down with Ingo Fuchs, Chief Technologist for AI at NetApp, to explore the critical role of data infrastructure in supporting enterprise AI and agentic AI applications. As organizations move AI workloads into production, traditional infrastructures—especially storage teams—must take a more active role in enabling performance, efficiency, and governance. Ingo emphasizes the emerging needs for data quality, control, compliance, and currency, particularly as AI agents begin making decisions and interacting with sensitive enterprise data. The conversation highlights how NetApp’s capabilities, such as AI Data Engine and native infrastructure integrations, enable real-time data pipeline management, enforce guardrails, and ensure consistent and secure data delivery. This shift represents a transformative intersection of storage, infrastructure, and AI operations, paving the way for scalable and reliable enterprise AI solutions.

Guest: Nick Patience, VP and Practice Lead for AI at The Futurum Group

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Currier⁠⁠⁠⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Although there's a lot of skepticism around generative AI, companies are finding incredible practical uses for these new capabilities. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Luke Norris of Kamiwaza to discuss business outcomes that can be achieved by AI applications with hosts Guy Currier and Stephen Foskett. Agentic AI is an autonomous system that has a schedule, and action, or an interface to interact with it. Apps should represent the data rather than vice versa, so a dashboard should reconfigure and recompute to serve the needs of a user. Kamiwaza recently announced a capability to make applications accessible to people with disabilities, and this represents the kind of real-world benefit that can be delivered by AI. They previously worked with NOAA to make historic data more accessible to modern users.

Luke Norris, CEO and Founder of Kamiwaza AI

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Currier⁠⁠⁠⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

We are surrounded by intelligent devices and these increasingly use various AI interfaces and processing capabilities to support the needs of users. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on edge AI and AI assistants and agents with Olivier Blanchard of The Futurum Group along with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. We have all used so-called intelligent assistants, starting with Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa and continuing with Google, Microsoft, and many others. These voice interfaces are increasingly functioning as agents, connecting with various data sources and tools to perform tasks on the behalf of the user. AI assistants have arrived at the same overall paradigm as AI agents, and there is an inevitable crossover between these technologies, as the best of breed components are adopted. The needs of AI assistants has also lead to an increase in availability of specialized processing on PCs and even personal devices, and this helps offload the tremendous need for power and space of AI applications.

Guest:

Olivier Blanchard, Research Director at The Futurum Group

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠⁠⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠⁠⁠Guy Currier⁠⁠⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

As customers try to figure out how to present data to Agentic AI applications, many of them are realizing that it’s time for the storage infrastructure team to step up and take a seat at the table. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, recorded live at NetApp Insight in Las Vegas, hosts Stephen Foskett and Guy Currier from The Futurum Group sit down with Ingo Fuchs, Chief Technologist for AI at NetApp, to explore the critical role of data infrastructure in supporting enterprise AI and agentic AI applications. As organizations move AI workloads into production, traditional infrastructures—especially storage teams—must take a more active role in enabling performance, efficiency, and governance. Ingo emphasizes the emerging needs for data quality, control, compliance, and currency, particularly as AI agents begin making decisions and interacting with sensitive enterprise data. The conversation highlights how NetApp’s capabilities, such as AI Data Engine and native infrastructure integrations, enable real-time data pipeline management, enforce guardrails, and ensure consistent and secure data delivery. This shift represents a transformative intersection of storage, infrastructure, and AI operations, paving the way for scalable and reliable enterprise AI solutions.'

Guest:

Ingo Fuchs, Chief Technologist of AI at NetApp

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Currier⁠⁠⁠⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Most generative AI work has been fairly general purpose to date, but it is far more effective to develop expert models focused on specific industries. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Arun Subramaniyan, founder and CEO of Articul8 AI, in conversation with Guy Currier and Stephen Foskett. According to Arun, an agent is a model with a set of tools plus data that has agency to be called and interact with other agents. If these agents are domain-specific they can perform tasks more effectively than general purpose agents at certain points in this chain. Agentic AI is able to accomplish tasks previously thought impossible, and these systems keep improving. But people remain responsible for using and managing these systems. Costs can rise significantly if AI is used improper, but it is possible to deploy it profitably. Companies that can combine domain expertise with a novel AI-powered application are breaking free from the pack.

Guest: Arun Subramaniyan, CEO and Founder of Articul8 AI

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠⁠⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠⁠⁠Guy Currier⁠⁠⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

From the very first episode of this podcast back in 2020, we've been focused on practical applications for AI technology, and we're starting to see these come to market with agentic tools. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Brad Shimmin, VP and Practice Lead for Data and Analytics at The Futurum Group discussing the ways AI is gaining autonomy with hosts Frederic Van Haren of HighFens and Stephen Foskett, organizer of AI Field Day. Agentic AI is all about autonomy, leveraging generative AI to perform actions on our behalf. There are many different types of agentic AI components, ranging from tools for data and analytics, connections and processes for integrating data, and end-user agents. Increasingly, model context protocol (MCP) is used to specify the capabilities and data for each of these tools, enabling them to work together as part of an agentic process. Frameworks like agent2agent (A2A) enable these components to work together. And models are becoming true platforms to serve the needs of users. Companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Mistral are transforming their models into real agentic platforms, while Salesforce, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and more are trying to support their business customers with Agentic AI. The Futurum Group is addressing this market with their new Signal reports, including a forthcoming one focused on agentic AI.

Guest: Brad Shimmin, VP and Practice Lead, Data and Analytics at The Futurum Group

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠⁠Guy Currier⁠⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Our online interactions include audio, video, and sensor data, but most AI applications are still focused on text. This episode of Utilizing Tech considers how we can integrate multimodal data with agentic applications with Vishakha Gupta, founder and CEO of ApertureData, Frederic Van Haren of HighFens, and Stephen Foskett of Tech Field Day. After decades of developing AI models to process spoken word, images, video, and other multimodal data, the ascendance of large language models has largely focused on text. This is changing, as AI applications are increasingly leveraging multimodal data, including text, audio, video, and sensors. Many agentic applications still pass data as structured or unstructured text, but it is possible to use multimedia data as well, for example passing a clip of a video from agent to agent if the system has true multimodal understanding. Enterprise applications are moving beyond text to include voice and video, data in PDFs like charts and diagrams, medical sensors and images, and more.

Guest:

Vishakha Gupta, CEO and Founder, ApertureData

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠Frederic Van Haren⁠, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

⁠Guy Currier⁠, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

AI is the hottest topic in tech right now, evolving dramatically over the previous eight seasons of this podcast. We are kicking off Utilizing Tech season nine with a discussion of the state of the art of Agentic AI with Frederic Van Haren of HighFens, Guy Currier of Visible Impact, and Stephen Foskett of Tech Field Day. Generative AI augments our capabilities, and is being used every day by millions of people. Agentic AI combines reasoning with actions, enabling AI to perform actions on our behalf. Although AI does not reason like us, the way it manipulates data resembles intelligence, and iterative analysis can result in a chain of thought that strongly resembles reasoning. Agents can then receive context and take actions based on this using a framework like Model Context Protocol (MCP). These techniques help move generative AI from concept to production, building real applications rather than simply processing text. This season of Utilizing Tech will help our listeners understand the emerging agentic AI, and how this technology can make end users more productive and build profitable businesses using AI technology.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠

Frederic Van Haren, Founder and CTO of HighFens, Inc.

Guy Currier, Chief Analyst at Visible Impact, The Futurum Group.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Fore more episodes: https://www.utilizingtech.com/

Storage software running on modern hardware can deliver incredible performance and capability to support AI applications. This episode of Utilizing Tech wraps up our season with a discussion of WEKA's data platform for AI with Alan McSeveney, Scott Shadley of Solidigm, and host Stephen Foskett. Modern hardware is capable of incredible performance, but bottlenecks remain. The limiting factor for AI processors is memory capacity: GPUs are hungry for data and must be refreshed from storage quickly enough to keep them running at scale. Storage can also be used to share data between GPUs across the data center and to cache working data to accelerate calculation. The secret to scalability, from storage to applications to AI, is distribution and parallel processing. Modern software runs at incredible scale, and all elements of the stack must match. Technologies like Kubernetes allow applications to use huge clusters of workers all contributing to scale and performance. WEKA runs this way, matching the GPU clusters and web applications we rely on today.

Guest: Alan McSeveney, Field CTO of Media and Entertainment, WEKA

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠.

More episodes and seasons of Utilizing Tech: https://utilizingtech.com/

Immersion cooling requires specialized servers designed to operate submerged in a tank of coolant, but there are many benefits. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, we continue our conversation on immersion cooling with Patrick Scateni of Hypertec, the leading manufacturer of immersion-cooled servers. Most of the current demand for immersion cooling is in the datacenter, but edge computing is rapidly adopting this technology thanks to the demands of AI applications. Hypertec calls their servers immersion born, since they are designed for this specific application rather than being modified for use in a coolant tank. Sustainability is growing in importance and immersion cooled solutions are much more power efficient, much closer to a PUE of 1 compared to 1.5 for a conventional air-cooled server. It also uses no water, while air-cooled data centers often use evaporative cooling equivalent to an olympic-sized pool every day or two. Immersion cooled servers can be packed closer, enabling smaller datacenters, and are cheaper, more reliable, and longer-lived than conventional equipment.

Guest: Patrick Scateni, VP of Global Sales at Hypertec

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠.

More episodes and seasons of Utilizing Tech: https://utilizingtech.com/

Modern AI servers generate a lot of heat, but the industry is ready with revolutionary technologies like immersion cooling. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Micah Jordan from DUG, discussing specialized server solutions with Jeniece Wnorowski of Solidigm and Stephen Foskett. Although it sounds exotic, companies like DUG have been using immersion cooling for decades. Once they proved the value of the technology in their own datacenter, DUG began delivering immersion cooled containers wherever they are needed, especially at the edge. This uniform and efficient cooling allows servers to work harder while also extending their lifespan and reducing the risk of component failure. DUG’s containerized AI racks are being deployed around the world closer to users, lowering the latency and enabling rapid response to demands. DUG is working with partners like Hypertec to build, certify, and support immersion cooling for end customers, achieving higher density and lower energy consumption.

Guest: Micah Jordan, Account Executive at DUG

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micah-jordan1/

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠.

As enterprises roll out production applications using AI model inferencing, they are finding that they are limited by the amount of memory that can be addressed by a GPU. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Steen Graham, founder of Metrum AI, discussing modern RAG and agentic AI applications with Ace Stryker and Stephen Foskett. Achieving the promise of AI requires access to data, and the memory required to deliver this is increasingly a focus of AI infrastructure providers. Technologies like DiskANN allow workloads to be offloaded to solid-state drives rather than system memory, and this surprisingly results in better performance. Another idea is to offload a large AI model to SSDs and deploy larger models on lower-cost GPUs, and this is showing a great deal of promise. Agentic AI in particular can be run in an asynchronous model, enabling them to take advantage of lower-spec hardware including older GPUs and accelerators, reduced RAM capacity and performance, and even all-CPU infrastructure. All of this suggests that AI can be run with less financial and power resources than generally assumed.

Guest:

Steen Graham is the Founder and CEO of Metrum AI. You can connect with Steen on LinkedIn and learn more about Metrum AI on their website.

Guest Host:

Ace Stryker is the Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm. You can connect with Ace on LinkedIn and learn more about Solidigm and their AI efforts on their dedicated AI landing page or watch their AI Field Day presentations from the recent event.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Standards bodies don't just set technical specifications, they also drive greater understanding of topics like storage. This episode of Utilizing Tech, brought to you by Solidigm, features Dr. J Metz, Chair of SNIA and the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and technical director at AMD. Over decades of advancement, enterprise storage has evolved to be a central requirement of modern systems, especially where AI is concerned. And storage is a lot more than just capacity: It's about performance and power, connectivity and throughput, availability and reliability. Standards bodies like SNIA and UEC help raise awareness of these requirements while also setting standards to address them. Technological developments made in one area often have unexpected applications in others. This makes it even more important to foster open communication to enable ideas to spread.

Host:

J Metz is the Chair of both the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and SNIA, as well as a Technical Director at AMD. You can connect with J on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more about The Ultra Ethernet Consortium on their website. Learn more about SNIA on their website. Learn more about AMD here.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠.

No matter how we define the edge, the special requirements for use in harsh environments drive unique product decisions. This episode of Utilizing Tech, brought to you by Solidigm, features Alistair Bradbrook, founder of Antillion, discussing edge servers with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. It pays to start with the intended outcome, defining the solution based on customer needs rather than with the technology at hand. This is especially true at the edge, where unique requirements for mobility, power, ruggedness, and manageability drive novel configurations. When it comes to defense applications, AI is driving greater collection of data at the edge, yet connectivity is often inconsistent, driving increasing processing power. Yet the current CPUs can often handle inferencing in edge use cases, especially when the rest of the server, including storage, can handle high data transfer rates. Edge computers have always needed more storage capacity, and the latest SSDs can bring incredible amounts in a small form factor. Antillion is also a leader in conduction cooling, bringing liquid and immersion cooled devices to market for demanding applications. They are also working to bring disaggregated servers to market using CXL technology, a topic covered in detail on season 4 of this podcast. The edge is all about constraints, and this limitation drives incredible innovation.

Guest:

Alistair Bradbrook is the Founder and COO of Antilion. You can connect with Alistair on LinkedIn and learn more about Anitllion on their website.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠⁠.

Much of what we take for granted in the IT industry was seeded from HPC and the national labs. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Gary Grider, HPC Division Leader at Los Alamos National Labs, discussing leading-edge technology with Scott Shadley of Solidigm⁠⁠⁠ and Stephen Foskett. The Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium (EMC3) is working to bring technologies like sparse memory access and computational storage to life. These technologies are designed for today's massive scale data sets, but Moore's Law suggests that this scale might be coming soon to AI applications and beyond. The goal of the national labs is to work 5-10 years ahead of the market to lay the foundations for what will be needed in the future. Specific products like InfiniBand, Lustre, pNFS, and more were driven forward by these labs as well. Some promising future directions include 3D chip scaling, analog and biological computing, and quantum chips.

Guest: Gary Grider, HPC Division Leader at Los Alamos National Labs

Hosts:

⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠

⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠

⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠ ⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠.

AI applications have unique requirements for server infrastructure, so a new platform is required. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Mark Klarzynski of PEAK:AIO discussing their AI-specific software-defined storage platform with Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠⁠ of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Solidigm and ⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠. With a background in enterprise storage, the PEAK:AIO team evaluated the needs of AI users with a goal of delivering a simple and integrated solution that could scale to support the most demanding applications. The company began working in healthcare to support distributed applications before finding similar use cases in research and manufacturing. Rather than focusing on advancing technology and then finding a use case, Mark advocates focusing on the needs and possibilities and bringing technology to solve these problems. Edge servers are constrained in terms of power, cooling, and cost, and this requires new thinking, as well as new software and hardware approaches, to continue to progress.

Guest: Mark Klarzynski, Cofounder and Chief Strategy Officer at PEAK:AIO

Hosts:

⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠⁠

⁠⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠

⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠⁠Solidigm⁠⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠ ⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠.

Much of the conversation on AI is focused on power consumption and chatbots, but there are so many other positive applications for the technology. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, welcomes Keith Bradley, VP of IT at Nature Fresh Farms, discussing with Stephen Foskett⁠⁠ and Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠ how they use AI to improve crop yields and plant performance. Farming has traditionally evaluated crop performance on a large-scale basis, but AI enables Nature Fresh Farms to much more carefully tailor care to the needs of the plants. Once a tomato or pepper has been grown, Nature Fresh can use AI to classify, package, and store produce for sale. This requires a great deal of storage for active plants, and Nature Fresh Farms has standardized on solid state storage because of the incredible combination of performance and reliability it brings. It wouldn't be possible to process this much data at the edge without advanced SSDs, processors, and servers.

Guest: Keith Bradley, Vice President of Information Technology at Nature Fresh Farms

Hosts:

⁠Stephen Foskett⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠

⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠Solidigm⁠

⁠Scott Shadley⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠Solidigm⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠on LinkedIn⁠, ⁠on X/Twitter,⁠ ⁠on Bluesky⁠, and ⁠on Mastodon⁠. Visit the ⁠Tech Field Day website⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠the dedicated website⁠ and follow the show ⁠on X/Twitter⁠, ⁠on Bluesky⁠, and ⁠on Mastodon⁠.

As the use of AI spreads outside the cloud and datacenter, data management and protection has never been more important. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, features Rick Vanover of Veeam discussing the importance of data protection with hosts Stephen Foskett⁠⁠ and Scott Shadley⁠. Data protection for backup and security is familiar in the datacenter but is not always considered at the edge. But as AI and sensors push data to the edge, we have to consider how to protect and manage it. Edge AI systems combine elements of endpoint, datacenter, and cloud technologies and often have limited or intermittent connectivity, creating a differentiated platform that challenges data protection software. Mixing these capabilities to build a useful platform is the key challenge for data protection at the edge. Data protection at the edge is different, with continuity and recovery from outages and attacks more important than long-term preservation of data, and IT pros are beginning to adjust their perspectives on the requirements for these systems as well.

Guest:

⁠Rick Vanover⁠, Vice President of Product Strategy at ⁠Veeam⁠

Hosts:

⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠

⁠⁠Scott Shadley⁠⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at ⁠Solidigm⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠on X/Twitter,⁠⁠ ⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠Tech Field Day website⁠⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠⁠the dedicated website⁠⁠ and follow the show ⁠⁠on X/Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠on Bluesky⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠on Mastodon⁠⁠.

Successful edge infrastructure must be incredibly reliable and adaptable, especially in the AI age. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on the ultra-converged infrastructure offering with George Crump of Verge IO joining Jeniece Wnorowski⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Stephen Foskett. Edge environments often have a diversity of hardware, especially as nodes are upgraded and replaced, and this can pose serious issues when building reliable infrastructure. The ultra-converged infrastructure concept would allow nearly any hardware to be integrated into a unified platform with simple management and scalability. As AI applications are deployed at the edge, organizations will need this level of integration to ensure they are reliable and secure. As more data is collected, more storage is needed at the edge; this makes it even more important to have advanced storage management for data protection and resilience.

This season of Utilizing Tech is presented ⁠by Solidigm⁠. For more information on Solidigm, head to their website and learn more about their ⁠AI efforts through the dedicated site section⁠. Follow Solidigm ⁠on X/Twitter⁠ and ⁠LinkedIn⁠.

Guest: Guest: George Crump, Chief Marketing Officer at Verge.io

Hosts:

⁠Stephen Foskett⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the ⁠Tech Field Day Event Series⁠

⁠Jeniece Wnorowski⁠, Head of Influencer Marketing at ⁠Solidigm⁠

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠on LinkedIn⁠, ⁠on X/Twitter,⁠ ⁠on Bluesky⁠, and ⁠on Mastodon⁠. Visit the ⁠Tech Field Day website⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠the dedicated website⁠ and follow the show ⁠on X/Twitter⁠, ⁠on Bluesky⁠, and ⁠on Mastodon⁠.

Modern AI servers are loaded with GPUs, but spend too much time waiting for data. This episode of Utilizing Tech, focused on AI at the Edge with Solidigm, features Kelley Osburn of Graid Technology discussing the latest in data protection and acceleration with ⁠⁠Scott Shadley and ⁠⁠Stephen Foskett. As more businesses invest in GPUs to train and deploy AI models, they are discovering how difficult it is to keep these expensive compute clusters fed. GPUs are idled when data retrieval is too slow, and failures or errors could prove catastrophic. Graid not only protects data but also accelerates access, allowing users to achieve the full potential of their AI server investment.

Guest: Kelley Osburn, Senior Director of OEM and Channel Business Development at Graid Technology

Hosts:

⁠Stephen Foskett⁠, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series

⁠Scott Shadley⁠, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at Solidigm

Follow Tech Field Day ⁠on LinkedIn⁠, ⁠on X/Twitter,⁠ ⁠on Bluesky⁠, and ⁠on Mastodon⁠. Visit the ⁠Tech Field Day website⁠ for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to ⁠the dedicated website⁠ and follow the show ⁠on X/Twitter⁠, ⁠on Bluesky⁠, and ⁠on Mastodon⁠.

IT architecture is evolving rapidly as AI moves to the edge. This season on Utilizing Tech, ⁠Stephen Foskett⁠ and co-hosts ⁠Scott Shadley⁠ and Jeniece Wnorowski⁠ of Solidigm⁠ will explore how next-generation AI infrastructure is revolutionizing industries from healthcare to high-performance computing. With insights from leading companies Verge IO, Graid Technology, and WEKA as well as practitioners like Nature Fresh Farms and Los Alamos Nation Labs, we will show how the latest advancements in storage, data protection, and virtualization that are enabling AI to thrive beyond traditional data centers. Join us every Monday as we bring you expert discussions on the future of edge AI.

This season of Utilizing Tech is presented by Solidigm. For more information on Solidigm, head to their website and learn more about their AI efforts through the dedicated site section. Follow Solidigm on X/Twitter and LinkedIn.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series

Jeniece Wnorowski, Head of Influencer Marketing at Solidigm

Scott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at Solidigm

Follow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events.

For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.

As practical applications of AI are rolled out, they are increasingly being deployed on-premises at scale. We are wrapping up this season of Utilizing Tech with Solidigm focused on AI Data Infrastructure by discussing practical deployment considerations with Ariel Pisetzky, VP of Information Technology and Cyber at Taboola in a discussion with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Companies like Taboola are built on data and have been deploying AI-driven applications for years. Generative AI brings new capabilities but is part of a spectrum of solutions that leverage data to produce results for customers. As applications mature, many companies are looking to bring them back on-premises, and this trend will likely accelerate given the cost of AI infrastructure as-a-service offerings. Owned infrastructure can also deliver beyond expected lifespans, representing a potential windfall for businesses that can continue to use deprerciated hardware. This is especially true of large flash drives, which have proven much more reliable than initially predicted. Although it is tempting to buy the biggest, fastest infrastructure to extend the lifespan of equipment, Pisetzky recommends focusing on equipment that is flexible and can be re-purposed in other ways in the future. Server storage is unique in that it is easy to upgrade and replace it in place, even hot-swapping drives, and large lives have a very long lifespan.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/⁠

Guest: Ariel Pisetzky, VP of Information Technology and Cyber, Taboola: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariel-pisetzky/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Modern AI infrastructure has exposed the importance of reliability and predictability of storage in addition to performance. This episode of Utilizing Tech, presented by Solidigm, features Kelley Osburn of Graid Technology discussing the challenges of maximizing performance and resiliency of storage for AI with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. AI servers are optimized for machine learning processing, and Graid Technology SupremeRAID offloads processing to GPUs similarly to the way these massively-parallel processors offload ML processing. They also have a peer-to-peer DMA feature to direct the data directly to the processor rather than forcing all data to pass through a single processor or channel. There is a need for RAID software at many spots in the data pipeline, from ingestion and preparation to processing and consolidation, and each requires performance and availability. There are many applications that require maximum performance and capacity without impacting the host CPU, including military, medical research and diagnostics, and financial, in addition to AI processing.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/⁠

Guest: Kelley Osburn, Senior Director at Graid Technology: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleyosburn/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Many of the largest-scale data storage environments use Ceph, an open source storage system, and are now connecting this to AI. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, features Dan van der Ster, CTO of Clyso, discussing Ceph for AI Data with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Ceph began in research and education but today is widely used as well in finance, entertainment, and commerce. All of these use cases require massive scalability and extreme reliability despite using commodity storage components, but Ceph is increasingly able to deliver high performance as well. AI workloads require scalable metadata performance as well, which is an area that Ceph developers are making great strides. The software has also proved itself adaptable to advanced hardware, including today’s large NVMe SSDs. As data infrastructure development has expanded from academia to HPC to the cloud and now AI, it’s important to see how the community is embracing and improving the software that underpins today’s compute stack.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/

Guest: Dan van der Ster, CTO at CLYSO and Ceph Executive Council Member: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-vanderster/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

As the volume of data supporting AI applications grows ever larger, it's critical to deliver scalable performance without overlooking power efficiency. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, brings Chris Gladwin, CEO and co-founder of Ocient, to talk about scalable and efficient data platforms for AI with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Ocient has developed a new data analytics stack focused on scalability with energy efficiency for ultra-large data analytics applications. At scale, applications need to incorporate trillions of data points, and it is not just desirable but necessary to enable this without losing sight of energy consumption. Ocient leverages flash storage to reduce power consumption and increase performance but also moves data processing closer to the storage to reduce power consumption further. This type of integrated storage and compute would not be possible without flash, and reflects the architecture of modern processors, which locate memory on-package with compute. Ocient is already popular in telco, e-commerce, and automotive, and the scale of data required by AI applications is similar, especially as concepts like retrieval-augmented generation are implemented. The conversation around datacenter, cloud, and AI energy usage is coming to the fore, and companies must address the environmental impact of everything we do.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/⁠

Guest: Chris Gladwin, CEO and Cofounder, Ocient: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-gladwin-7ba42b/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Cutting-edge AI infrastructure needs all the performance it can get, but these environments must also be efficient and reliable. This episode of Utilizing Tech, brought to you by Solidigm, features Davide Villa of Xinnor discussing the value of modern software RAID and NVMe SSDs with Ace Stryker and Stephen Foskett. Xinnor xiRAID leverages the resources of the server, including the AVX instruction set found on modern CPUs, to combine NVMe SSDs, providing high performance and reliability inside the box. Modern servers have multiple internal drive slots, and all of these drives must be managed and protected in the event of failure. This is especially important in AI servers, since an ML training run can take weeks, amplifying the risk of failure. Software RAID can be used in many different implementations, with various file systems, including NFS and high-performance networks like InfiniBand. And it can be tuned to maximize performance for each workload. Xinnor can help customers to tune the software to maximize reliability of SSDs, especially with QLC flash, by adapting the chunk size and minimizing write amplification. Xinnor also produces a storage platform solution called xiSTORE that combines xiRAID with the Lustre FS clustered file system, which is already popular in HPC environments. Although many environments can benefit from a full-featured storage platform, others need a software RAID solution to combine NVMe SSDs for performance and reliability.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

Davide Villa, Chief Revenue Officer at Xinnor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davide-villa-b1256a2/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Organizations seeking to build an infrastructure stack for AI training need to know how the data platform is going to perform. This episode of Utilizing Tech, presented by Solidigm, includes Curtis Anderson, Co-Chair of the Storage Working Group at MLCommons, discussing storage benchmarking with Ace Stryker and Stephen Foskett. MLCommons is an industry consortium seeking to improve AI solutions through joint engineering. The organization publishes the well-known MLPerf benchmark, which now includes practical metrics for storage solutions. The goal of MLPerf Storage is to answer the key question: Will a given data infrastructure support AI training of a given scale. The organization encourages storage vendors to run the benchmarks against their solutions to prove the suitability to support specific workloads. The AI industry is already shifting its focus from maximum scale and performance to more-balances infrastructure using alternative GPUs, accelerators, and even CPUs, and is increasingly concerned about price and environmental impact. The question of data preparation is also rising, and this generally uses a different CPU-focused solution. MLPerf Storage is focused on training today and will soon address data preparation, though this can be quite different for each data set. The next MLPerf Storage benchmark opens soon, and we encourage all data infrastructure companies to get involved and submit their own performance numbers.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

Guest: Curtis Anderson, Co-Chair MLCommons Storage Working Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-anderson-174aa/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Model training seriously stresses data infrastructure, but preparing that data to be used is a much more difficult challenge. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Subramanian Kartik of VAST Data discussing the broad data pipeline with Jeniece Wnorowski of Solidigm and Stephen Foskett. The first step in building an AI model is collecting, organizing, tagging, and transforming data. Yet this data is spread around the organization in databases, data lakes, and unstructured repositories. The challenge of building a data pipeline is familiar to most businesses, since a similar process is required in analytics, business intelligence, observability, and simulation, but generative AI applications have an insatiable appetite for data. These applications also demand extreme levels of storage performance, and only flash SSDs can meet this demand. A side benefit is the improvements in power consumption and cooling versus hard disk drives, and this is especially true as massive SSDs come to market. Ultimately the success of generative AI will drive greater collection and processing of data on the inferencing side, perhaps at the edge, and this will drive AI data infrastructure further.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/

Guest: Subramanian Kartik, Ph. D, Global Systems Engineering Lead at VAST Data: https://www.linkedin.com/in/subramanian-kartik-ph-d-1880835/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Analysts and press spend a lot of time talking about specs and performance numbers, so it's always a treat when we get to talk to people who are testing and using these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech is focused on AI Data Infrastructure and features Jordan Ranous from StorageReview and is co-hosted by Stephen Foskett and Ace Stryker from our sponsor, Solidigm. StorageReview has constricted an experimental environment focused on astrophotography as a way to demonstrate AI applications in challenging edge environments. Their setup included a ruggedized Dell server, NVIDIA GPU, and Solidigm SSDs. This is the same sort of setup found at edge compute environments in retail, manufacturing, and remote use cases. StorageReview benchmarks storage devices by profiling real-world applications and building representative infrastructure to test. When it comes to GPUs, the goal is to keep these expensive processors operating at maximum capacity through optimal network and storage throughput.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

Guest: Jordan Ranous, AI, Hardware, & Advanced Workloads Specialist at StorageReview.com: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jranous/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Great AI needs excellent data infrastructure, in terms of capacity, performance, and efficiency. This episode of Utilizing Tech serves as a preview of season 7, brought to you by Solidigm, and features co-hosts Jeniece Wnorowski and Ace Stryker along with Stephen Foskett. Solidigm's partners are discovering just how important it is to optimize every element of the Ai infrastructure stack. With ever-larger AI datacenters being built, efficient storage can make a big difference, from power and cooling to physical density to performance. As we will hear throughout season 7, different AI environments will need specialized data infrastructure, from the edge to the cloud. With retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) emerging as a new trend in AI, it makes high-performance even more important at run-time.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech

Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

We knew that 2024 would be the year of AI right from the start, but this season of the podcast has seen incredible development and change. This final episode of Utilizing Tech Season 6 features hosts Frederic Van Haren, Allyson Klein, and Stephen Foskett discussing the current state of AI infrastructure half-way through 2024. In addition to AI Field Day, we experienced NVIDIA GTC and numerous product introductions over the last few months. It's truly an ecosystem play now, with every company showing how well they can partner to build AI infrastructure. At the same time, a few superusers of AI are responsible for the basic models, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and of course OpenAI and the other dedicated generative AI firms. The key to bringing this to the enterprise market is transfer learning, which will see a few base models tuned and trained for specific use cases. This season saw a range of guests discussing storage, data platforms, connectivity, and application development, and every one is focused on delivering practical AI solutions in the enterprise.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/ Frederic Van Haren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech

Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: #UtilizingAI, #UtilizingTech, #YearofAI, @UtilizingTech, @TechFieldDay, @TheFuturumGroup, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @TechAllyson,

Both AI and quantum computing seemed entirely theoretical just a few years ago, yet generative AI is everywhere today. This episode of Utilizing Tech considers the promise of quantum computing generally and the applicability of this technology in AI with Dr. Bob Sutor of The Futurum Group, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. One big challenge for quantum computing is the difficulty of storing data for calculations, a severe limitation for using the technology in AI. But there is the possibility of pairing classical computers with quantum processors to bring the best of both concepts. Both AI and quantum computing deal with linear algebra, so there is an affinity between the technologies, but it is likely that each will find use cases in different areas. Ultimately there is still a lot of development to do but quantum technology shows great promise in AI and beyond.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Alastair Cooke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastaircooke/

Guest: Bob Sutor, Vice President and Practice Lead od Emerging Technologies at The Futurum Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobsutor/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠⁠

Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @TechFieldDay, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @TheFuturumGroup, #UtilizingAI, #AI,

As we consider the impact of AI on modern applications, we should consider the ways that this technology will improve these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Matthew Wallace, CTO of Kamiwaza AI, to discuss the adoption of AI in application development with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Large SaaS providers were the first to add AI-powered features but this technology is rapidly coming to market across the spectrum of applications. Matthew likens this to the evolution from spreadsheets to SaaS tools and cloud, which was a similar revolution. He mentions tools like ?, Cursor, Llama2, Mixtral, and more. We also discuss retrieval-automated generation (RAG), which enables LLMs to bring in external data at run time. We must also consider the source of the data, both in training and RAG, and questions of sovereignty, privacy, copyright, and safety. Looking forward, Matthew expects companies to customize their own models based on use case specific data. Looking forward, we expect new frameworks and models to be adopted rapidly to bring maturity and reliability to AI in enterprise applications throughout 2024.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠ Allyson Klein: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/

Guest: Matthew Wallace, CTO and Cofounder of KamiwazaAI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewwallaceco/

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Tech Field Day Website: ⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @KamiwazaAI, @TechFieldDay, #AIFD4, #AI, #UtilizingAI,

AI is accelerating application development and modernization in many ways, but developers are just ramping up their use of the technology. This episode of Utilizing Tech includes Paul Nashawaty, who focuses on application development at The Futurum Group, discussing this topic with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Use cases for AI include documentation, chatbots, data integration, programming co-pilots, and more. Regardless of how AI is used, organizations must accept that they are ultimately responsible for the products and outputs produced. Accelerating testing and thus the entire DevOps release cycle is one area where AI is making incredible growth. Another popular concept is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) which brings existing datasets to generative AI to improve results. There is currently a lack of confidence in AI-based solutions and concern about the complexity and level of effort required to bring them to market, so vendors must help make deployment easier and better integrated. Product vendors are addressing this by delivering solutions with partners and popular platforms and frameworks. Open source tools and open data are also helping to move AI technologies forward. Developers want invisible infrastructure and platforms that just work, and the emerging AI PC segment promises more processing power on the desktop. 2024 is shaping up to be the year of AI in application development.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠ Allyson Klein: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/

Paul Nashawaty, Practice Lead, Application Development Modernization at The Futurum Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulnashawaty/

Follow Utilizing Tech Website: ⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠ X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠ Tech Field Day Website: ⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠ X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AppDev, #AI, @TheFuturumGroup, @GestaltIT, @TechFieldDay, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @PNashawaty,

We are at a turning point, as AI has matured from theoretical experimentation to practical application. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Neeloy Bhattacharyya joins Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett to discuss how VAST Data's customers and partners are making practical use of AI. Data is the key to successful AI-powered applications, and VAST Data supports both unstructured and structured data sets. Neeloy emphasizes the interactive nature of AI application development and the flexibility required to support this. He also discusses the need for structured data to support LLMs and the challenges of keeping these up to date and synchronized. One of the biggest issues in deploying AI applications is the complexity inherent in these systems. That's why it's heartening to see companies working together to created integrations and standardized platforms to make AI easier to deploy. Collaboration is the key to making AI practical. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/ Guest: Neeloy Bhattacharyya, Director of AI/HPC Solutions Engineering at VAST Data: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neeloybhattacharyya/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AI, #Data, @VAST_Data,

Ultra Ethernet promises to tune Ethernet for the needs of specialized workloads, including HPC and AI, from the lowest hardware to the software stack. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Dr. J Metz, Steering Committee Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, discussing this new technology with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. The process of tuning Ethernet begins with a study of the profile and workloads to be served to identify the characteristics needed to support it. The group focuses on scale-out networks for large-scale applications like AI and HPC. Considerations include security, latency, ordering, and scalability. The goal is not to replace PCIe, CXL, or fabrics like NVLink but to extend Ethernet to address the connectivity and performance needs in an open standardized way. But Ultra Ethernet is more than hardware; the group is also building software features including a Libfabric interface and are working with OCP, DMTF, SNIA, and other industry groups.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠⁠ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠⁠

Guest:

J Metz, Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and SNIA, Technical Director at AMD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmetz/

Everyone uses AI today, whether they know it or not, and it's critical for users of this technology to understand its capability and limitations. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Chris Grundemann, a fellow podcast host and Tech Field Day delegate, talking the many ways we use AI every day. Like Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett, Chris uses AI to assist with content creation in many ways, from summarization and organization of data to image generation. Content creators are using AI tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and more to process data, but we all agree that it's best to spend time and effort to refine the output, especially when it comes to tone and voice. We are also using AI based tools for coding and structuring data, especially interactively. Although some have suggested that AI will replace content creators or coders, the technology is instead democratizing access and making it easier to use on a daily basis. It also makes computing more available to those who were previously locked out, expanding the impact of the technology we have spent decades creating.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest:

Chris Grundemann, Managing Director at Grundemann Solutions: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgrundemann/

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#UtilizingAI #Storage #AI #Datacenter #Hyperscale @UtilizingTech

Many people involved in artificial intelligence don't spend much time considering storage infrastructure. That's the topic of this episode of Utilizing AI, which features Ace Stryker of Solidigm discussing the role of flash storage in AI infrastructure with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Considering the cost of GPUs and the rest of the AI stack, idle time is the enemy. That's why it's critical to have a low-latency storage layer to support tasks like training.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest: Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

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Tags: #UtilizingAI #FlashStorage #AI @Solidigm @UtilizingTech

AI training is a uniquely data-hungry application, and it requires a special data pipeline to keep expensive GPUs fed. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on the data platform for machine learning, featuring Molly Pressley of Hammerspace along with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Nothing is worse than idle hardware, especially when it comes to expensive GPUs intended for ML training. Performance is important, but parallel access and access to multiple systems is just as important. Building an AI training environment requires identifying and eliminating bottlenecks at every layer, but many systems are simply not capable of scaling to the extent required by the largest GPU clusters. But a data pipeline goes way beyond storage: Training requires checkpoints, metadata, and access to different data points. And different models have unique requirements as well. Ultimately, AI applications require a flexible data pipeline not just high-performance storage.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest: Molly Presley, Head of Global Marketing at Hammerspace: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyjpresley/

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Tags: #UtilizingAI #AI #AITraining @Hammerspace_Inc @UtilizingTech

AI is powering breakthroughs across all domains. In this episode of Utilizing AI Podcast brought to you by Tech Field Day, part of The Futurum Group, David Kanter, Founder and Executive Director of MLCommons, joins hosts, Stephen Foskett and Frederic Van Haren, to talk about MLCommons’ role in driving valuable AI solutions, and helping organizations overcome the challenges around AI safety. MLCommons’ set of benchmarks provides transparent ratings and reviews of a wide range of products guiding buyers towards better purchase decisions.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest: David Kanter, Founder and Executive Director, MLCommons: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanterd/

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LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingTech #AI #MLPerf #UtilizingAI #AISafety @MLCommons @UtilizingTech

AI is all about data, so it is no surprise that enterprises are deploying their own private AI inside the firewall. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Chris Wolf, Global Head of AI and Advanced Services at VMware by Broadcom, to discuss private AI with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Companies looking to deploy AI are finding that it doesn't require nearly as much hardware as expected, software is widely available, and are reluctant to trust sensitive data to a service provider. VMware by Broadcom is deploying their own private AI code assist, keeping proprietary software and standards inside the firewall. But the solution also helps the AI team be more agile and responsive to the needs of the business and customers. One of the first use cases they found for private AI was customer support, and this is tightly integrated with internal documentation and sources to ensure valid responses. The biggest challenge is to integrate unstructured data, which can be spread across many locations, and this is actively being investigated by companies like Broadcom as well as projects like LlamaIndex. VMware has contributed back to the open source community, notably with the Ray workload scheduler, open source models, and related projects. It's important to build community and long-term engagement and support for open source as well, and this is in keeping with the overall trends in the AI community. Organizations looking to get started with private AI should consider the VMware by Broadcom reference architecture, which incorporates best practices at a smaller scale and pick a use case that provides immediate value.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Chris Wolf, Global Head of AI and Advanced Services at VMware by Broadcom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cswolf/

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Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AI, #PrivateAI, @VMware, @Broadcom, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren,

Data is the foundation on which AI models are built, and integration of enterprise data will be the key to generative AI applications. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Nick Magnuson and Clive Bearman from Qlik to discuss the integration of data and AI with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Enterprises sometimes worry that their data will never be ready for AI or that they will feed models with too much low-quality data, and overcoming this issue is one of the first hurdles. Another application for machine learning is improving data quality, organizing and tagging unstructured data for applications. The concept of curated data is an interesting one, since it promises to elevate the value of enterprise data. But what if a flood of data causes the model to make the wrong connections? If data is to be a product it must be profiled, tagged, and organized, and ML can help make this happen. The trend of generative AI is driving budgets and priorities to make data more useful and organized, but even unstructured data streams can be valuable. The application of large language models to structured data is promising as well, since it enables people to query these data sets even if they lack the background and skills to construct queries.

Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/

Guests: Nick Magnuson, Head of AI, Qlik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-magnuson-0a253931/ Clive Bearman, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Qlik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clivebearman/

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LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

In the two years since we focused on AI on this podcast, OpenAI added a simple conversational interface to their deep-learning model and AI has exploded on society. This season of Utilizing Tech focuses on practical applications for artificial intelligence and features co-hosts Frederic Van Haren and Mark Beccue along with Stephen Foskett. In this episode we return to AI with a look back at the incredible impact that generative AI has had on society. Humans traditionally interfaced with machines using keyboard and mouse, touch and gesture, but ChatGPT changed all that by enabling people to communicate with computers verbally. But this is just one of many potential AI model components that can be used to build business applications. The true power of generative AI will be realized when these other components appear, and when they are able to integrate custom data. We will also see innovation in the AI infrastructure stack, from GPUs to NPUs to CPUs, storage and data platforms, and even client devices.
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Tags: @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @TheFuturumGroup, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @FutureBec, #UtilizingAI, #AI, #GenerativeAI, #AINetworking,

As we've discussed all season on Utilizing Edge, innovation is coming from all directions, including hardware, software, and applications. This special crossover episode of the On-Premise IT and Utilizing Tech podcasts features Edge Field Day delegates Brian Knudtson, Ned Bellavance, and Jody Lemoine discussing their perspectives about edge innovation with Stephen Foskett. The primary drivers at the edge are integration, efficiency, and connectivity, as well as the unique needs of the applications there. Starting with hardware, customers are headed in two directions, with more enterprise availability features deployed in some locations and less-capable hardware in others, both in terms of compute and networking. At the software level, most edge infrastructure is hyper-converged, meaning that multiple layers of the stack are integrated in software and managed as one. Although intended as an application platform, Kubernetes is being deployed as a packaging abstraction and distribution solution at the edge.

Host:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/

Guests:

Ned Bellavance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ned-bellavance/

Brian Knudtson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bknudtson/

Jody Lemoine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodyl/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #EFD2, #Edge, #UtilizingEdge, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @Ned1313, @GhostInTheNet, @BKnudtson,

Edge is leading the hardware industry into a new era of innovation. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Stephen Foskett, and co-hosts, Allyson Klein and Alistair Cooke, sit down to dissect this. In the wake of Intel’s discontinuation of its NUC product line, a question that is in everyone’s mind is, what’s next. Intel, and many behemoths like it, have a proud legacy of knowing how to break a stalemate and preserve the churn, and even if that means stepping up and pulling the plug on an old product. It oxygenates the marketplace, welcoming new solutions and keeping the wheel of innovation moving. In the context of the emerging paradigm of edge, this change will likely propel the market towards a new breed of powerful, low-cost, pocket-size hardware that delivers breakthrough energy-efficiency and compute performance with little infrastructure.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ

Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #NUC, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @DemitasseNZ,

Personal devices are increasingly being used across enterprise IT, from smartphones to wearable devices, and these are becoming the true edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Field Day delegates Mark Houtz and Jim Czuprynski together with Stephen Foskett to discuss the personal side of the edge. Mobile Device Management (MDM) has been used to manage smartphones and similar technology is used for personal computers, but it seems inevitable that there will be a mixing of business and private data. The mix and match of personal devices at the edge is sure to be a topic of future focus.

Host:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.Twitter.com/SFoskett

Guests:

Jim Czuprynski:

https://mastodon.social/@jimthewhyguy@techfieldday.net

Matt Houtz: https://www.Twitter.com/Marko_With_A_K

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, Edge, #RaspberryPi, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @JimTheWhyGuy, @Marko_With_A_Why, @GestaltIT, #EFD2,

Although blockchain technology has been tainted by scammers, the core idea of distributed consensus is relevant for certain edge applications. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on practical application of blockchain technology in edge and IoT, featuring Jason Benedicic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Two key concepts in blockchain are the distributed ledger and consensus approach. There is a lot of work being done to apply blockchain in medical, finance, IoT, and proof of provenance. Although many applications can rely on authority or quorum, larger and more heterogeneous applications might benefit from consensus instead. The other aspect of blockchain, chain of custody and immutability of data, is potentially relevant in preventing supply chain attacks and dealing with transient devices. It's important to remember that many of the things that have put people off blockchain, from financialization to public exposure of transactions, are not necessarily required in all blockchains. Guest:

Jason Benedicic: https://www.twitter.com/JBenedicic Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #Blockhain, #IoT, @GestaltIT, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @JBenedicic,

Computing and sensors have been deployed at the edge for decades, and this is certainly true in the agriculture sector. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Edge Field Day delegates Ben Young and Alastair Cooke discussing with Stephen Foskett the evolution of connectivity and orchestration at the edge. Governmental policies can have a huge impact on the deployment of technology, from connectivity to environmental regulations, as has the emergence of inexpensive sensors, batteries, and processors thanks to the mobile phone industry, along with solar power. Cloud-inspired automation and orchestration is another key enabler of technology in agriculture and at the edge, with zero-touch provisioning, management, and central maintenance. Containerized applications, caching, and cloud-derived control planes are very popular at the edge, though not exactly the same way as in the cloud.
Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ 

Guest:

Ben Young: https://www.twitter.com/BenYoungNZ

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #Orchestration, #Edge, #UtilizingEdge,

VMware Explore 2023 featured a broad set of products and technologies, all of which could be included under the banner of edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge considers this dynamic and varied world with Roy Chua and Brian Knudtson, along with host Stephen Foskett. Virtualization, networking, storage, and orchestration are all key edge technologies, and VMware and its partners are deeply involved in bringing these technologies to the edge. VMware announced Edge Cloud Orchestrator, new security capabilities, integrated networking, client integration, and the exciting potential of private 5G networks. Dive into this episode to unravel the complexities and promising future of edge computing.

Host:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Guests:

Brian Knudtson: https://www.twitter.com/BKnudtson

Roy Chua: https://www.twitter.com/WireRoy Follow Gestalt IT

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https://www.UtilizingTech.com/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #EdgeComputing, #UtilizingEdge, #EFD2, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @BKnudtson, @WireRoy, @GestaltIT

Industrial control and operational technology systems face the same forces as IT applications and are rapidly being integrated into comprehensive edge infrastructure. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Andy Foster of IOTech to discuss standardization of industrial IoT with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. There are many more similarities between industrial control systems and information technology systems than many people realize. Both are impacted by standards in commodity hardware, networking and communications protocols, and cloud integration. And OT and IT are colliding at the edge, with a massive opportunity to leverage data.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson

Guest:

Andy Foster, Product Director and Cofounder of IOTech

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-foster-673b268/

https://www.iotechsys.com/ Follow Gestalt IT

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #EdgeComputing, #IoT, #UtilizingEdge, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @IOTechSystems, @GestaltIT,

Media and entertainment is one industry generating and moving vast amounts of data at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Jimmy Fusil of Tsecond into a discussion with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett about the unique data challenges in media and entertainment. There is a great need for local processing, secure data transport, and efficient storage utilization in managing the ever-increasing volume of data generated during film and TV production. The podcast explores the continued relevance of physical media, like tape, for long-term archiving, while also emphasizing the security measures necessary to protect creative privacy and prevent potential plot leaks in the industry. Fusil also discusses Tsecond’s groundbreaking product, Bryck, a portable NVMe storage device capable of holding up to a petabyte of data with a remarkable 40GBps data transfer speed. The discussion highlights how Bryck’s high-performance storage facilitates on-device data processing, ensuring quick backups and maintaining data integrity. It’s critical to consider edge storage solutions like Bryck in many data-intensive sectors beyond media and entertainment as well. Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Guest:

Jimmy Fusil, M&E Expert and Business Development Manager, Tsecond

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmyfusil/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech

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Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge #EdgeComputing #Bryck #EdgeStorage

Edge computing comes in many forms and brings many challenges, including bandwidth limitations, network reliability issues, and limited space. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Brian Chambers, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett together to discuss the state of the edge in 2023. Industries like retail, multi-tenant environments, and industrial IoT find practical applications, but defining the edge remains an ongoing exploration. Implementation varies, from repurposing existing technologies to adopting modern approaches like containers and function as a service. The debate between virtual machines and containers continues, driven by organizational comfort. Despite constraints, edge environments offer greater control and accountability. The future promises more innovation and adoption, cementing edge computing’s significance in the tech landscape.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ

Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeDiversity, #EdgeComputing, #EdgeSolutions, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @BriChamb, @GestaltIT,

In this episode of the Utilizing Tech podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alison Klein, and Gina Rosenthal discuss dark data in edge computing. Dark data is unutilized or unknown data collected by organizations. The distributed nature and use of third-party apps can make it challenging to handle dark data, limiting insights and posing security risks. Establishing a stronger IT-business connection is crucial. Observability solutions and data analytics can aid in discovering and centralizing dark data. AI has potential for data hygiene improvement, but human-driven cleaning is still necessary. Despite challenges, edge computing offers better data management due to controlled deployments. Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Panelists: Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Gina Rosenthal: https://www.twitter.com/Digi_Sunshine Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #DarkData, #EdgeComputing, #Edge,

Although we use Intel's NUC as a shorthand for the type of hardware deployed at the far edge, this recently-cancelled platform isn't all there is. This episode of Utilizing Edge looks beyond the NUC, to platforms from Lenovo, Nvidia, and more, with Julian Chesterfield of Sunlight, Andrew Green, and Stephen Foskett. ARM-based solutions, many using the Nvidia Jetson platform, are particularly interesting given their low cost and power consumption and strong GPUs for edge AI. A hyperconverged stack runs all of the components required for high availability, including storage and networking, in software spanning all of the nodes in a cluster, and this is commonly deployed on low-cost devices at the far edge. The trend to deploying applications at the edge is driven both by new hardware and software capabilities and the changing expectation of consumers and businesses.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Andrew Green, Analyst at GigaOm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-green-tech/ Guest:

Julian Chesterfield, CTO and Founder, Sunlight.io: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-chesterfield-3B74951 Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech

Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/

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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #IntelNUC, #EdgeHardware, #EdgeComputing, #UtilizingEdge, @Sunlightio, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett,

Edge infrastructure is susceptible to many of the same security risks as datacenter and cloud, but is often run in less protected environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Craig Nunes, Co-Founder and COO of Nebulon, talking to Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the provision of reliable infrastructure services at the edge. Nebulon's product presents storage to servers in a managed way, monitoring and protecting storage in real time. Edge servers must have a known-good system image to ensure that they are secure, yet this is difficult to achieve in remote devices. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Guest: Craig Nunes, COO and Co-founder, Nebulon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-nun... Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #ResilientInfrastructure, #Security, #EdgeSecurity,

Perhaps no company is more important to the datacenter than VMware, but how are the company’s technologies applied at the edge? This episode of Utilizing Edge features Saadat Malik, VP and GM of Edge Computing at VMware, discussing the evolution of VMware at the edge with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett. The discussion delves into the evolution of VMware’s presence at the edge, highlighting the differences between datacenter and edge environments in terms of people and technology. Malik emphasizes the importance of outcomes and product-focused mindsets in edge environments, as well as the constraints posed by limited physical resources. VMware’s technologies in connectivity, storage, security, and management are showcased as key enablers of successful edge computing. The episode also touches upon the growing significance of AI and machine learning at the edge and the need for standardized solutions to drive edge growth and transformation. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Guest from VMware: Saadat Malik, VP and GM of Edge Computing at VMware https://www.linkedin.com/in/saadatmalik/ Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #Edge, #CustomEdge,

Datacenter IT is used to having tight control over infrastructure and applications, but this is challenging to maintain at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Pierluca Chiodelli of Dell Technology discussing the modern edge application platform with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. A typical edge environment features many different platforms, devices, and connections that must be deployed, managed, and controlled remotely. When looking at the modern edge, Chiodelli recognizes the different personas and needs and constructs a plan to achieve the required outcome at this location. Modern applications need specialized hardware and connectivity that must be supported, deployed, and managed.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett 

Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson 

Guests:

Pierluca Chiodelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierluca-chiodelli-3b743a4/

Follow Gestalt IT

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #Edge

Between the so-called last mile and first mile lies the middle mile, the realm of colocation and network service providers. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Roy Chua and Allyson Klein, discussing the middle mile with Stephen Foskett. This middle area includes content delivery services like Varnish and Akamai, as well as companies like Cloudflare that are delivering content and compute there. The middle network includes providers like Equinix, Digital Realty, and Megaport, which provide connectivity to the cloud and service providers, the hyperscalers themselves, and some interesting networking startups like Packet Fabric and Graphiant. We must also consider observability, with companies like cPacket and Kentik as well as companies like Cisco and Juniper Networks.

Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett 

Guests:

Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson 

Roy Chua: https://www.twitter.com/WireRoy 

Follow Gestalt IT

Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ 

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #Edge

When it comes to edge computing, money is not limitless. Joining us for this episode of Utilizing Edge is Carlo Daffara of NodeWeaver, who discusses the unique economic challenges of edge with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Cost is always a factor for technology decisions, but every decision is multiplied when designing edge infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of nodes. Total Cost of Ownership is a critical consideration, especially operations and deployment on-site at remote locations, and the duration of deployment must also be taken into consideration. Part of the solution is designing a very compact and flexible system, but the system must also work with nearly any configuration, from virtual machines to Kubernetes. Another issue is the fact that technology will change over time and the system must be adaptable to different hardware platforms. It is critical to consider not just the cost of hardware but also the cost of maintenance and long-term operation.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett 

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ 

NodeWeaver Representative:

Carlo Daffara, CEO of NodeWeaver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdaffara/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gest...

Tags: #EdgeEconomy, #EdgeComputing, #Edge, @NodeWeaver

Although everyone wants high availability from IT systems, the cost to achieve it must be weighed against the benefits. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on HA solutions at the edge with Bruce Kornfeld of StorMagic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Although it might be tempting to build the same infrastructure at the edge as in the data center, but this can get very expensive. Thinking about multi-node server clusters and RAID storage, the risk of a so-called split brain means not just two nodes but three must be deployed in most cases. StorMagic addresses this issue in a novel way, with a remote node providing a quorum witness and reducing the need for on-site hardware. Edge infrastructure also relies on so-called hyperconverged systems, which use software to create advanced services on simple and inexpensive hardware. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ StorMagic Representative: Bruce Kornfeld, Chief Marketing and Product Officer at StorMagic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucekornfeld/ Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeStorage, #EdgeComputing, @StorMagic

The edge isn't the same thing to everyone: Some talk about equipment for use outside the datacenter, while others talk about equipment that lives in someone else's location. The difference between this far edge and near edge is the topic of Utilizing Edge, with Andrew Green and Alastair Cooke, Research Analysts at Gigaom, and Stephen Foskett. Andrew is drawing a line at 20 ms roundtrip, the point at which a user feels that a resource is remote rather than local. From the perspective of an application or service, this limit requires a different approach to delivery. One approach is to distribute points of presence around the world closer to users, including compute and storage, not just caching. This would entail deploying hundreds of points of presence around the world, and perhaps even more. Technologies like Kubernetes, serverless, and function-as-a-service are being used today, and these are being deployed even beyond service provider locations. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Guest: Andrew Green, Analyst at GigaOm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-green-tech/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789 Tags: #UtilizingTech #EdgeComputing #UtilizingEdge @UtilizingTech @GestaltIT

One of the main differentiators for edge computing is developing a scalable architecture that works everywhere, from deployment to support to updates. This episode of Utilizing Edge welcomes Dave Demlow of Scale Computing discussing the need for scalable architecture at the edge. Scale Computing discussed Zero-Touch Provisioning and Disposable Units of Compute at their Edge Field Day presentation, and we kick off the discussion with these concepts. We also consider the undifferentiated heavy lifting of cloud infrastructure and the tools for infrastructure as code and patch management in this different environment. Ultimately the differentiator is scale, and the key challenge for designing infrastructure for the edge is making sure it can be deployed and supported at hundreds or thousands of sites.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb

Scale Computing Representative:

Dave Demlow: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddemlow/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #EdgeComputing, #EdgeTechnology, #ScalableEdge, #EdgeInfrastructure, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @AvassaSystems,

There is a long-standing gulf between developers and operations, let alone infrastructure, and this is made worse by the scale and limitations of edge computing. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Carl Moberg of Avassa discussing the application-first mindset of developers with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett. As we've been discussing, it's critical to standardize infrastructure to make them supportable at the edge, yet we also must make platforms that are attractive to application owners.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb

Carl Moberg, CTO and co-founder at Avassa https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlmoberg/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #EdgeComputing, #EdgeTechnology, #EdgeApplications, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @AvassaSystems,

Edge has many different stakeholders, applications, and needs, and this is especially true in distributed retail environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Simon Gamble of Mako Networks talking with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the complexities of technology at the retail edge. The key according to Gamble is segmentation of brands, franchisees, and technical applications. In some cases a single location might even include multiple separate companies or tenants under the same roof. Video, sensors, IoT, and location-based services are coming to retail locations as well, and some of these leverage outside service providers as well. Although sharing infrastructure is desirable, segmentation and security is key. Retail edge environments are increasingly complicated, but there are many ways to consolidate, converge, and standardize to make them practical to implement.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Brian Chamber: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb

Mako Networks Representative: Simon Gamble, President of Mako Networks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simongnz/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/

Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #RetailEdge, #Edge, @GestaltIT, @MakoNetworks

Edge environments were historically very specialized, but virtualization and cloud technology is enabling companies to deploy commodity platforms at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Raghu Vatte of ZEDEDA discussing this commoditization with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Although the transition is still getting started, standard compute platforms are rapidly being exploited at edge locations, from warehouses to retail to industrial. Even is some specialized hardware is still needed, a unified platform can increasingly absorb a majority of applications at the edge. Another factor contributing to commoditization is the standardization of application requirements, with most now virtualized or containerized with standards developing for I/O and shared hardware resources.
Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ

ZEDEDA Representative: Raghu Vatte, VP of Product Management and Customer Success, ZEDEDA: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghushankar-vatte-970a9214/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/

Tags: #UtilizingEdge #Commoditization #EdgeComputing #EdgeInfrastructure @UtilizingTech @GestaltIT @ZededaEdge

Although the technology is roughly similar to datacenter or cloud, the unique challenges of edge computing require new approaches to storage, networking, orchestration, deployment, and more. We were kicking off a new season of Utilizing Tech focused on edge computing, featuring Alastair Cooke and Brian Chambers as co-hosts along with Stephen Foskett. One of the key differences for edge computing is the strictly constrained resources there as well as the massive scale. What we now call edge has existed for decades but the proprietary hardware previously used has been largely replaced by commodity and internet-connected systems that inherit technologies like virtualization, containerization, and hyperconvergence. Businesses and consumers expect more interactivity and capability in retail, restaurants, and hospitality environments, and the IoT revolution is strongly affecting manufacturing, military, and industrial settings. But what is the edge really, and how do we deliver services there? That's the question we hope to answer in this season of Utilizing Edge.

Hosts:

Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett

Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ

Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/

Tags: #UtilizingEdge #Edge #EdgeComputing #EdgeTechnology @UtilizingTech @GestaltIT

We're wrapping up this season of Utilizing Tech by asking the key question: Why would a system architect choose to utilize CXL in their designs? This episode of Utilizing CXL features Stephen Foskett, Nathan Bennett, and Craig Rodgers discussing the practical prospects and benefits of CXL.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL #CXLFabric #CXLMemoryExpansion @UtilizingTech

Perhaps no one can tell the story of Compute Express Link (CXL) better than Jim Pappas, who was involved in the development of nearly every related technology, from PCI to UCIe. This episode wraps up the season of Utilizing Tech with Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers discussing the evolution of CXL with Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives at Intel and Chairman of the CXL Consortium. No matter how good the technology is, it needs widespread industry support, backwards and forwards compatibility, and open cooperation, and that's what made technologies like PCI, PCI Express, USB, and now CXL successful.  

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms  

Guest:
Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives, Intel and Chairman of the CXL Consortium: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-pappas-3624442/ 

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Tags: #CXL #CXLConsortium #UtilizingCXL @Intel @UtilizingTech

Moving memory and other resources off the system bus to CXL is exciting, but how do we ensure that these systems will be reliable, available, and serviceable? This episode of Utilizing Tech features Mark Orthodoxou, VP of Strategic Marketing for Datacenter Products at Rambus discussing with Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers the technology and standards required for mass adoption of CXL-attached memory. Rambus brings decades of experience and a breadth of technology to the deployment of memory in high-performance and highly-available systems. As a CXL Consortium member, Rambus is bringing this experience to CXL, enabling the technology across the ecosystem. Memory expansion with CXL is being deployed today, and memory pooling over CXL fabrics is coming, but it is disaggregation and rack-scale architecture that will ultimately be the result of the adoption of CXL.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Rambus Representative:
Mark Orthodoxou, VP of Strategic Marketing - Datacenter Products: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-orthodoxou-94b189/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL, #CXLAttachedMemory, #Datacenter, @RambusInc, @UtilizingTech

CXL grew out of a long history of Intel platform technology and promises to revolutionize this platform. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Allyson Klein of TechArena, who shares her vision for the future of disaggregated servers with Craig Rodgers and Stephen Foskett. The foundation for CXL was laid with coherent interconnects and fabrics in previous decades, and the concept of tiered memory draws heavily on the history of Intel and Micron 3D XPoint and Optane Persistent Memory. As was the case for virtualization, CXL has an initial value proposition and a revolutionary future. CXL opens up virtually unlimited memory, pools of processors and offload engines, and unprecedented flexibility. Ultimately CXL will allow us to deliver compute resources that are truly balanced and matched to the needs of each workload. We also discussed UCIe, which promises to enable mix and match chiplets within future processors in a way that is compatible with CXL.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest Host:  
Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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Tags: #UtilizingCXL #DisaggregatedServers #CXLFabrics #MemoryExpansion #CXL @UtilizingTech

Memory expansion is the first application for CXL, and memory pooling is coming next, but this technology will eventually support storage, Ethernet, and more. This episode of Utilizing CXL brings Ronen Hyatt, CEO of UnifabriX, to discuss memory and more over CXL with Nathan Bennett and Stephen Foskett. UnifabriX demonstrated high-performance compute benchmarks using their Smart Memory Node at Super Computing 22 and claims to be the first to show a CXL 3.0 fabric. But the company is also promising NVMe storage and Ethernet connectivity over the CXL fabric. This enables each server to have the right type and capacity of connectivity, from basic Ethernet to DPU, with dynamic reconfiguration. The fabric can also contain an NVMe storage target that combines DRAM and flash and can be dynamically allocated.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett

Guest:
Ronen Hyatt, CEO and Founder of UnifabriX: https://www.linkedin.com/in/execute/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL #CXLStorage #Ethernet @UtilizingTech @UnifabriX

Tiered memory will have different performance, so operating systems will need to incorporate techniques to adapt to pages with different characteristics. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Hasan Al Maruf, part of a team that developed transparent page placement for Linux. He began his work enabling transparent page placement for InfiniBand-connected peers before applying the concept to NUMA nodes and now CXL memory.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest Host:  
Hasan Al Maruf, Researcher at the University of Michigan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hasanalmaruf/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL #TieringMemory #CXL #Linux @UtilizingTech @GestaltIT @UMich

Bringing CXL to market requires a wide variety of components, and Marvell is a key supplier to datacenter and cloud. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Shalesh Thusoo of Marvell, who discusses the many solutions they are creating to bring CXL to market. Current products are directly connecting memory to CPUs via CXL but soon we will see products enabling the sharing of memory between hosts to enable new applications.  

From Marvell: This podcast contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future events or achievements. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contemplated in this podcast. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Listeners are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and no person assumes any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest:
Shalesh Thusoo, Vice President CXL Product Development, Marvell
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaleshthusoo/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
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Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL #CPU #CXL #Memory @Marvell @GestaltIT @UtilizingTech

The CXL Consortium is an open industry standard group responsible for technical specifications and standards. This episode of Utilizing CXL brings Siamak Tavallaei, CXL president, to discuss the emergence of Compute Express Link. The goal of CXL is to disaggregate servers, moving memory away from the CPU and enabling users to compose servers more flexibly. We have already disaggregated storage from compute, and breaking the fixed memory interconnect will have a similar effect. But we also need the system to be manageable, with software to configure and orchestrate resources. The CXL Consortium is facilitating the development of all this in association with nearly every company in the IT industry.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett

Guest:
Siamak Tavallaei of the CXL Consortium: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siamaktavallaei/

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL #CXLConsortium #CXL #SapphireRapids #Genoa #Epyc #CXLDevelopment 

Although the emergence of CXL in server CPUs is big news, the inclusion of this technology in ARM processor IP is just as important. In this episode of Utilizing CXL, Eddie Ramirez of ARM joins Craig Rodgers and Stephen Foskett to discuss CXL in the ARM-powered ecosystem. ARM develops processor IP that is used in CPUs as well as supporting processors throughout the datacenter. We begin with a discussion of CXL 1.1, which brings memory expansion to ARM CPUs. But ARM is also delivering CXL 2.0 which would allow memory pooling to increase the utilization of memory, and thus overall system efficiency. The next step is true heterogeneous compute, with accelerators like GPU and DPU sharing memory with CPUs in a flexible fabric that can leverage CXL.  

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms 

Guest:  
Eddie Ramirez, VP of Marketing at Arm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddie-ramirez-41233a1/

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With both AMD and Intel supporting CXL in their newly-launched server platforms, it's worth taking a moment to consider what has been delivered to date. This special episode of Utilizing CXL brings hosts Stephen Foskett, Craig Rodgers, and Nathan Bennett together to look back at 6 months of CXL announcements now that real products are shipping. We were pleased to see the support delivered by Intel and AMD, but also from Astera Labs, Samsung, SK Hynix, and MemVerge, as well as promising developments from ARM, Elastics Cloud, IntelliProp, Marvell, and many others.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

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Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
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Tags: #UtilizingCXL #CXLServerPlatforms #CXL #SapphireRapids #Genoa #Epyc

CXL is being rolled out in production and more reliability, scalability, and security features are being added all the time. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on enterprise-grade CXL with John Spiers, CEO of IntelliProp, talking about the ongoing evolution of CXL. IntelliProp is bringing a CXL fabric solution to market the enables memory expansion outside the server over a fabric. CXL 3.0 introduces memory fabrics, but it will take more development to bring features like high availability, routing, peer-to-peer, failover, and re-routing while preserving cache coherency and enabling management, and IntelliProp is working to bring all this to the spec.  

As we discussed in our last episode with Dan Ernst from Microsoft Azure, CXL delivers acceptable memory latency, and John expects that this will continue with fabrics to some extent. IntelliProp will profile memory and enable tiered memory that matches application needs. The company is also working to enable advanced features, including sharing memory between systems, in association with the CXL consortium.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett

Guest Host:  
John Spiers, CEO of IntelliProp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwspiers/

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Tags: #UtilizingCXL #CXLFabric #MemoryLatency @UtilizingTech #CXL @Intelliprop

Cloud architects have long wished for more flexibility in how memory is provisioned in servers, and CXL is finally delivering on a decade of promises. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers talk to Dan Ernst of Microsoft, who is deeply involved in bringing CXL-attached memory to fruition within Azure. Dan was previously involved in the Gen-Z effort, and feels that CXL picks up the baton and brings valuable real-world benefits to cloud server architecture. Memory has a bigger impact on overall IT platforms than many are aware, and is already the costliest component in large servers. Per Amdahl's Law, it makes sense to look for cost savings in memory. And this is doubly the case because DIMMs only come in certain sizes so memory is usually over-specified. CXL memory modules cost a bit more than a DIMM, but this is offset by efficient right-sizing, and CXL is already cheaper than 3D stacked DIMMs.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest Host:  
Dan Ernst, Principal Architect working on Future Azure Cloud Systems, Microsoft Azure
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danernst/

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Tags: #CXL #DIMMs #Azure #UtilizingCXL @Microsoft @Azure

As 2023 arrives, so do two server platforms that support CXL, along with associated chipsets, software, and memory expansion cards. This special episode of Utilizing Tech features the three hosts of this season, Stephen Foskett, Craig Rodgers, and Nathan Bennett, discussing the prospects for CXL in 2023. AMD recently introduced Genoa Epyc, featuring CXL and PCIe 5, and it is widely expected that Intel will introduce Sapphire Rapids Xeon very soon with similar support. We expect these new server platforms to be adopted quickly by hyperscalers and to reach the enterprise datacenter throughout the year. We wonder what CXL memory expansion might bring, from other types of DRAM to persistent memory and possible even Optane. The prospect for shared and pooled memory is perhaps a little further off, but we have already heard that this capability might come to CXL 1.1 via device-specific features. What could go wrong? Enterprise server vendors might not embrace composability for various reasons, and this could derail CXL in the datacenter. Another concern is security, especially for shared memory and devices. The big differentiator will be software that enables systems to take advantage of features from memory expansion to pooling to disaggregation to composability.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett

Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech
Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789

Tags: #UtilizingCXL #Genoa #Epyc #SapphireRapids #DRAM #CXL

The key to building an ideal server is balance, and this is why CXL is important, since it helps overcome the inflexible nature of modern server architectures. In this episode of Utilizing CXL, Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers talk with Ahmad Danesh of Astera Labs about the company's CXL-based memory expansion technology. Although there are many CXL memory expansion chips coming to market, the industry is keen on interoperability testing to make sure everything works as expected. These products are differentiated based on their reliability, performance, and security, including trusted hardware and encryption. This is especially important with AMD Genoa having recently been launched and Intel Sapphire Rapids coming very soon. Security is very important as memory moves further from the CPU and is shared and pooled among multiple servers. Ahmad also suggests that CXL memory can perform as well as local memory, so specialized memory tiering software might not always be needed. But this technology also allows other types of memory to be used, including non-DDR5 DRAM and potentially future non-DRAM memory.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest Host:  
Ahmad Danesh, Sr. Director, Product Management, Astera Labs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmaddanesh/

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Tags: #UtilizingCXL #MemoryExpansion #Genoa #Epyc #AMD #CXL

CXL couldn't be utilized until there was a server platform that supported it, so we're very excited to see AMD launch their next-generation Epyc server platform, code-name Genoa. In this episode of Utilizing CXL, Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers talk with Mahesh Wagh of AMD and the CXL Consortium about this important release. The first step to bring CXL to market is to prove it is functional and performs well with a mainstream platform like AMD 4th-generation Epyc. AMD is bringing CXL to market as a tiered memory solution that performs similar to as memory on a remote NUMA socket without any special configuration or software. But AMD also supports other memory technologies, including hierarchical memory with software, security, pooling, and even memory sharing with specialized software. Although Epyc is said to only support CXL 1.1, later spec devices will be backwards-compatible and the platform also supports some CXL 2.0 features including global flush for persistent memory, firmware-first error handling, and device-specific capabilities.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest Host:  
Mahesh Wagh, Senior Fellow at AMD, Server Systems Architect, Co-chair CXL Consortium Board Technical Task Force https://www.linkedin.com/in/maheshwagh/

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Tags: #UtilizingCXL #Genoa #Epyc #AMD #CXL 

A lot of VMware’s initiatives are in the same sphere as CXL, and now everybody is wondering if VMware is officially camp CXL. In this episode of Utilizing CXL, Stephen Foskett and co-host Craig Rodgers join Arvind Jagannath from VMware to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Learn if CXL is on the horizon for VMware as it is for a lot of IT companies of its stature, and what VMware’s role is in the enablement of the technology. Watch the full episode to find out how VMware is participating in the CXL revolution and the way its most recent projects support and enable implementation of CXL.  

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms 

Guest Host:  
Arvind Jagannath, Product Management Lead at VMware https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvindjagannath/ 

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#UtilizingCXL #CXL #VMware

Today's AI and ML systems use proprietary interconnects, which limits the choices available to customers. CXL technology promises to enable greater interoperability, and this is the focus for Xconn Technology. In this episode of Utilizing CXL, Gerry Fan of Xconn joins Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers to discuss the ways that CXL can improve machine learning processing. The CXL Consortium is working with nearly every company in the IT industry to bring this promise to life, but we need hardware and software to enable memory pooling, device sharing, and more. The initial CXL products enable right-sizing memory, regardless of the specific architectural details of the CPU chosen. The next addition will be disaggregated and pooled memory using CXL switches, and this is coming to market in the next year or so. This will enable massive pools of memory on-demand for intensive applications. Xconn promises to make memory pooling available to CXL 1.1 hosts as well, and is working on a fabric manager to enable this.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

Guest:
Gerry Fan, Cofounder CEO, Xconn Technology.
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerry-fan-5769608/

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Experts call CXL the lifeblood of composable datacenter infrastructure, and for good reason. It has unlocked tremendous possibilities and is reshaping the server architecture for good. Over 190 companies including some of the biggest names in the industry are involved in it, and as new versions of CXL are rolling out, the technology is clearly taking steps towards maturity. But the market needs more CXL-based technologies to kick-start its evolution.  

In this episode of Utilizing CXL, hosts Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers join Founder and CEO of Elastics.cloud, George Apostol to talk about this transition and the need for CXL solutions, and what Elastics.cloud is bringing to market.  

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms

 Guest:
George Apostol, Cofounder and CEO, Elastics.cloud. Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geapostol/

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Although x86 servers have some configuration and expansion options, they are increasingly monolithic, putting customers at the whim of the system vendor. CXL promises to change this, allowing customers to configure, and reconfigure, servers according to their needs. On this episode of Utilizing CXL, Ryan Baxter of Micron Technology joins Stephen Foskett and Nathan Bennett to talk about the options that CXL brings to the table. One of the first benefits of CXL technology is memory expansion, allowing servers to be created with exactly the right amount of memory instead of over-populating memory to fill channels and meet needs. But it will soon allow truly modular servers with exactly the right combination of CPU, memory, storage, and I/O.

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Nathan Bennett: https://www.twitter.com/vNathanBennett 

Guest:
Ryan Baxter, Senior Director of Marketing, Micron Technology. Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-baxter-a6a24a3/ 

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Data throughput has grown in leaps and bounds with the advent of AI. But as COVID-era digital transformation left the existing systems stressed out, CXL arrived at the heels of that. The newest memory solution that has got everybody talking, CXL is full of promises for AI computing. With the release of v3.0, CXL has started to gather more steam. More companies are now dipping their toes in CXL water bringing to the market their own brand of CXL products making the technology reachable for enterprises.  

In this episode of Utilizing CXL Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers sit down with guest Yue Li, Co-Founder and CTO at MemVerge and hold an illuminating discussion on the current CXL product market and things MemVerge is doing on the software side of things.  

Hosts:  
Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett
Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersms 

Guest:
Yue Li, Co-Founder and CTO at MemVerge.
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theyueli/

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Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
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The first CXL products have emerged, with Samsung delivering memory and storage expanders and MemVerge supporting big memory with their software. Stephen Foskett discusses these products with Julie Choi of Samsung, Steve Scargall of MemVerge, Shalesh Thusoo of Marvell, and George Apostol of Elastics.cloud to discuss current and emerging CXL products. This special episode of Utilizing CXL was recorded live at CXL Forum in New York, with the entire industry watching. Once memory expansion is delivered, where do we go next? Marvell is working to support the new protocol in chipsets, and Elastics Cloud developing CXL fabric switches. Everyone is ready for Intel and AMD to release their next-generation server chips, which natively support CXL, and the CXL Consortium is already working on the next release!

Links

Guest and Hosts

Date: 10/24/2022, @SFoskett, @MemVerge, @Elastics_cloud, @Samsung, @MarvellTech

The emerging CXL standard is making waves, promising big memory, new system architecture, and maybe even rack-scale computing. Utilizing Tech is switching focus from AI and ML to CXL for Season 4, and that means new companies, new technology and new hosts! Join Stephen Foskett as he introduces Utilizing CXL along with co-hosts Nathan Bennett and Craig Rodgers. Look for new episodes of Utilizing CXL every Monday!  

Links

Guest and Hosts

Date: 10/17/2022, @SFoskett, @vNathanBennett, @CraigRodgersms

Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett look back on all the subjects covered during Season 3 of Utilizing AI. The podcast covered many topics, from religious and ethical implications of AI to the technology that enables machine learning, but one topic that stands out is data science. If data is the key to AI, then the collection, management, organization, and sharing of data is a critical element of making AI projects possible. We also continue our “three questions” tradition by bringing in open-ended questions from Rich Harang of Duo Security, Sunil Samel of Akridata, Adi Gelvan of Speedb, Bin Fan of Alluxio, Professor Katina Michael, and David Kanter of MLCommons.

Three Questions:

Stephen's Question: Can you think of an application for ML that has not yet been rolled out but will make a major impact in the future?

Frederic's Question:What market is going to benefit the most from AI technology in the next 12 months

Rich Harang Senior Technical Lead, Duo Security: In an alternate timeline where we didn't develop automatic-differentiation and put it on top of GUPs do this entire deep learning hardware family that we depend on now never got invented. What would the dominat AI/ ML technology be and what would have been different? 

Sunil Samel, VP of Pusiness Development, Akriadata: How will new technologies like AI help marginalized members of the communities. Folks like senior citizens, minorities, pepole with disabilities, veterans trying to reenter civilian life?

Adi Gelvan, CEO and Co-Founder of Speedb: What do you think the risks of AI are and what is your recommended solution?

Bin Fan, Founding Member, Alluxio: Im wondering if AI can help with a humanitarian crisis happening in the future?

Katina Michael, Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University: If AI was to self replicate what would be the first thing it would do?

David Kanter, Executive Director of MLCommons: what s a problem in the AI world where you are held back by the lack of good publicly available data?

Hosts:

Frederic Van Haren, Founder at HighFens Inc., Consultancy & Services. Connect with Frederic onHighfens.com or on Twitter at @FredericVHaren. 

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.

Date: 4/25/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren,

How fast is your machine learning infrastructure, and how do you measure it? That's the topic of this episode, featuring David Kanter of MLCommons, Frederic Van Haren, and Stephen Foskett. MLCommons is focused on making machine learning better for everyone through metrics, datasets, and enablement. The goal for MLPerf is to come up with a fair and representative benchmark to allow the makers of ML systems to demonstrate the performance of their solutions. They focus on real data from a reference ML model that defines correctness, review the performance of a solution, and post the results. MLPerf started with training then added inferencing, which is the focus for users of ML. We must also consider factors like cost and power use when evaluating a system, and a reliable bench

Links:

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 4/12/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, 

The quality of an AI application depends on the quality of the data that feeds it. Sunil Samel joins Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett to discuss DataOps and the importance of data quality. When we consider data-centric AI, we must consider all aspects of the data pipeline, from storing, transporting, and understanding to controlling access and cost. We must look at the data needed to train our models, think about the desired outcomes, and consider the sources and pipeline needed to get that result. We must also decide how to define quality: Do we need a variety of data sources? Should we reject some data? How does the modality of the data type change this definition? Is there bias in what is included and excluded? Data pipelines are usually simple, ingesting and storing data from the source, slicing and preparing it, and presenting it for processing. But DataOps recognizes that the data pipeline can get very complicated and requires understanding of all these steps as well as adaptation from development to production.

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 3/29/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren

Machine learning is unlike any other enterprise application, demanding massive datasets  from distributed sources. In this episode, Bin Fan of Alluxio discusses the unique challenges of distributed heterogeneous data to support ML workloads with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. The systems supporting AI training are unique, with GPUs and other AI accelerators distributed across multiple machines, each accessing the same massive set of small files. Conventional storage solutions are not equipped to serve parallel access to such a large number of small files, and they often become a bottleneck to performance in machine learning training. Another issue is moving data across silos, storage systems and protocols, which is impossible with most solutions.

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 3/15/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @BinFan, @Alluxio

With so many AI tools available, it can be a challenge to integrate everything into a productive platform. Orly Amsalem of cnvrg.io joins Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett to discuss the challenges of managing data and resources for AI training, development, management, and deployment. Orly discusses her journey from software development to AI and the challenges people face. Many in the AI community are following the same path, and are looking for tools like cnvrg to help them bring AI to their day to day work. AL blueprints, provided by cnvrg and the community, can help developers and data scientists get started with AI projects. In a recent survey, only 10% of developers said training was their main challenge; nearly every one said that deploying a model to production was the biggest. Orly then discusses the main bottlenecks to MLOps in production and how to break through and normalize AI in the enterprise.

Links:

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 3/01/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @cnvrg_io

As machine learning is used to market and sell, we must consider how biases in models and data can impact society. Arizona State University Professor Katina Michael joins Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett to discuss the many ways in which algorithms are skewed. Even a perfect model will produce biased answers when fed input data with inherent biases. How can we test and correct this? Awareness is important, but companies and governments should take active interest in detecting bias in models and data.
Links:

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 2/21/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren

With AI technology changing so quickly, we often need to step back and take a big picture look at the market. In this episode, Manoj Suvarna of Deloitte joins Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett to discuss the many products and applications of AI in the enterprise. It is important for business executives to survey the many ways that AI and data science are being applied across the enterprise and try to find ways to leverage this work in other areas. Deloitte recently conducted a survey of companies around the world to get a sense of the many ways AI is being adopted. 92% of those surveyed said that AI is a competitive area these days, and 83% realize the value of multiple ecosystems. A majority of businesses see AI as a strategic differentiator that they want to invest in, while most of the rest are trying to determine the value of AI to the business.

Links:

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 2/15/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @MSuvarna

Data is the most important element of artificial intelligence, but how is that data managed and stored? In this episode of Utilizing AI, Adi Gelvan of Speedb goes deep under the hood to take a look at the data engine along with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Facebook's RocksDB provides the basic storage for many webscale projects, managing metadata in a massive scale. Because of the inherent limits of RocksDB, most cloud applications shard data across many data engines. But Speedb takes a different approach, bringing more advanced storage technology to build a compatible data engine. A good data engine can massively improve overall performance, and data scientists and AI engineers would be wise to consider the storage engine, not just the processing components and models.

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 2/08/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @speedb_io

AI is everywhere, and so are AI accelerators, from CPU to GPU to special-purpose hardware. Eitan Medina, Chief Operating Officer of Habana Labs, an Intel Company, joins Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett to discuss the various specialized AI processors being developed today. Habana Labs has created a special-purpose AI training and inferencing processor with many unique features. Since deep learning is done at scale today, it makes sense to integrate enterprise networking with an accelerator like Habana Gaudi to increase overall system performance thanks to rDMA over Ethernet (RoCE) technology. Habana Gaudi is optimized for matrix math and also includes a fully-programmable vector core for Tensor processing. In October 2021, Amazon AWS launched the new DL1 instance based on Habana Gaudi, offering more performance than many GPU-based instances for a much lower total cost. Habana is very developer-focused as well, working with partners, data scientists, and end users to expand the accessibility of the platform in channels like GitHub and their own developer forum. Habana will soon introduce a 7 nm Gaudi 2 processor with much-improved performance and power efficiency. Habana Labs is also making their hardware more accessible thanks to their SynapseAPI and recently acquired cnvrg.io to bring a higher-level MLOps pipeline to AI.

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 2/01/2022 Tags: @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @HabanaLabs

Among many surprising applications, AI can be used for pain management and medical care. Neuroscientist Sara E. Berger of IBM joins Chris Grundemann and Stephen Foskett to discuss applications of machine learning in medical care. Pain management is a deeply personal field, but there are so many different data points that it can be difficult to see patterns that lead to positive outcomes. Machine learning can assist in sorting and selecting treatments, bringing in different sensors and data types to help patients. The more we see pain in a multi-disciplinary lens, and the more understanding we bring, the better the outcome for patients.

Three Questions:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 1/25/2022 Tags: @IBM, @SFoskett, @ChrisGrundemann 

BrainChip's neuromorphic AI technology has long been the talk of the industry, and now the Akida processor is available for purchase. We invited Rob Telson, VP of Worldwide Sales for BrainChip, to return to the Utilizing AI podcast to give Chris Grundemann and Stephen Foskett an update on the Akida processor. As of today, Akida is available for use by developers and hobbyists to explore neuromorphic compute at the edge. BrainChip enables five sensor modalities: Vision, hearing, touch, olfactory, and taste. BrainChip's architecture allows incremental on-chip learning at extremely low power, potentially bringing this capability to some surprising places, from home appliances to the factory floor. Another differentiator of the BrainChip solution is its event-based architecture, which can trigger based on events rather than sending a continual stream of data. As of today, the BrainChip Akida AKD1000 PCIe development board is available for purchase so everyone can try out the technology.

Three Questions:

Links:

Gests and Hosts

Date: 1/18/2022 Tags: @BrainChip_inc, @SFoskett, @ChrisGrundemann