Podcast #131: SSD Industry Vet Jonmichael Hands – The Latest on Enterprise SSDs

Jul 15, 2024

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This is another live podcast in which Brian checks in with long-time friend and industry veteran Jonmichael Hands for this fast-paced, technically focused podcast. Jonmichael is currently the Senior Director of Product Planning at FADU but has an extensive storage, networking, and blockchain background.

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Brian and Jonmichael are passionate about flash technology and seem on the same page. Jonmichael brings some deep and varied industry knowledge to the conversation, making this a candid learning session.

If you are interested in flash technology and want to hear more about the future of SSD in this AI universe, you will enjoy this one. But if you are only interested in a few topics, we have highlighted them in five-minute increments.

0-5 minutes

Introduction and Background
- Introducing Jonmichael, noting their long history and expertise in the industry.
- Reminisces about their last meeting involving Topo Chico and discussing chia, blockchain, and crypto.
- Ongoing crypto craze and Jonmichael’s return to the SSD world.
- The challenging market conditions for IPOs and crypto over the last two years.
- Transition back to tech and improvement in the SSD market, potentially leading to the best year for SSD revenue.

5-10 minutes

NAND Prices and AI Impact
- NAND costs during COVID, recent increases in SSD prices.
- The cyclical nature of Nand prices and renewed challenges.
- AI’s impact on data center storage demand and the importance of flash.
- Emphasis on increased CapEx for data centers and the unsung hero status of storage in AI.
- Upgrading legacy SAN infrastructure for high-end AI GPU work.

10-15 minutes

Meta Engineering and AI Storage
- Comments from listeners and viewers.
- Meta’s engineering efforts in AI storage solutions,
  - Building exabyte-scale storage.
- There is a need for more extensive flash capacity for training large multi-modal models.
- Emphasis on the cost and importance of fast SSDs in training servers.
- The complexity of modern AI data centers and advanced storage solutions.
- Significance of high-end SSDs and storage technology in AI training servers.

15-20 minutes

Storage Technologies and Market Trends
- Power requirements and storage challenges in data centers.
- Advantages of high-performance SSDs
- The need for efficient networking.
- Broadcom’s high-speed NICs and the importance of network bandwidth for GPU clusters.
- The role of switching in supporting AI workloads and infrastructure.
- Benefits of running GPUs locally and the competitive advantage of private data sets.

20-25 minutes

AI Strategy and Industry Insights
- AI strategies and the importance of GPUs.
- Setting up AI tools like Nvidia’s AI studio for private data use.
- Running AI models on affordable NAS systems for private data protection.
- Importance of AI tools for improving productivity and creativity.
- SSD form factors and the evolution of E1 and E3 standards.

25-30 minutes

Form Factors and Industry Adoption
- E1 and E3 form factors in hyperscale and enterprise markets.
- Transitioning to new form factors and customer preferences.
- Benefits of E3 form factors.
- Form factors for industry adoption.

30-35 minutes

Hyperscale and Enterprise SSD Adoption
- E1.S form factor in hyperscale and enterprise training servers.
- Limited availability of Gen 5 E3 drives.
- Transition challenges to Gen 5 E3 drives.
  - Potential improvements for Gen 6.
- Demise of Gen 4 for U.2 drives.
- E1.S and E3 form factors.
  - Thermal management and capacity options.

35-40 minutes

Client-Side Storage and Form Factors
- Slow uptake on client-side for Gen 5 drives.
- Inefficiency of M.2 for high-performance Gen 5 drive.
- Differences in performance requirements between laptops and desktops.
- Potential of E3 form factor in consumer desktops.
- Benefits of PCIe cabling standards.

40-45 minutes

Flexible Data Placement (FDP) Technology
- Flexible Data Placement (FDP) technology.
  - Benefits in reducing write amplification factor (WaF).
- FDP allows data to be tagged and placed more efficiently on the SSD.
- FDP can be implemented without requiring software to be FDP-aware.
- Comparison of FDP with zone namespaces.
  - Complexities involved in the zone namespaces.
- Flexibility and benefits of FDP for different workloads.

50-55 minutes

Host Management vs. Drive Management
- Rely more on host systems for storage management.
- Complexities of host-level management.
  - Understanding SSD internals.
- E1.S, benefits for dense storage arrays.
- Upcoming 128TB and 256TB drives.
  - Expected market impact.

55-60 minutes

Controller Technology and Performance
- Importance of controller technology in SSD performance.
- Advantages of 16-channel controllers for power efficiency and performance.
- Performance per watt as a critical metric in SSD evaluation.
- Ongoing developments and the future potential of FTP technology in the market.
- Wrap-up of the discussion and promotion of blogs and future sessions on related topics.

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