Through case studies of Graviton implementation and GPU integration, Justin Fitzhugh, Snowflake’s VP of Engineering, demonstrates how cloud-native architecture combined with strategic partnerships can drive technical innovation and build business value.

Topics Include:

Cloud engineering and AWS partnership
Traditional databases had fixed hardware ratios for compute/storage
Snowflake built cloud-native with separated storage and compute
Company has never owned physical infrastructure
Applications must be cloud-optimized to leverage elastic scaling
Snowflake uses credit system for customer billing
Credits loosely based on compute resources provided
Company maintains cloud-agnostic approach across providers
Initially aimed for identical pricing across cloud providers
Now allows price variation while maintaining consistent experience
Consumption-based revenue model ties to actual usage
Performance improvements can actually decrease revenue
Company tracked ARM's move to data centers
Initially skeptical of Graviton performance claims
Porting to ARM required complete pipeline reconstruction
Discovered floating point rounding differences between architectures
Amazon partnership crucial for library optimization
Graviton migration took two years instead of one
Achieved 25% performance gain with 20% cost reduction
Team requested thousands of GPUs within two months
GPU infrastructure was new territory for Snowflake
Needed flexible pricing for uncertain future needs
Signed three to five-year contracts with flexibility
Team pivoted from building to fine-tuning models
Partnership allowed adaptation to business changes
Emphasizes importance of leveraging provider expertise
Recommends early engagement with cloud providers
Build relationships before infrastructure needs arise
Maintain personal connections with provider executives

Participants:

Justin Fitzhugh – VP of Engineering, Snowflake

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

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