Artificial intelligence, machine learning, modern applications — these aren’t terms that spring to mind when someone mentions hoary hardware vendors. Perhaps they should be, since software doesn’t run on thin air; its performance has everything to do with underlying hardware. This is what Micron Technology Inc. is trying to communicate to customers as it tweaks its message for the instant-gratification age.

“I think people are a little surprised that we are so focused on systems and making sure that they work, and their performance with [solid state drives],” said Greg Kincade (pictured, left), senior ecosystem enablement program manager, storage enterprise solutions, at Micron.

Kincade and Eric Caward (pictured, right), business development manager at Micron, spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host David Floyer (@dfloyer), during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed Micron’s latest non-volatile dual in-line memory modules announcement and how Micron is surviving in 2018. (* Disclosure below.)

Memory use cases branch out

The company has been delving deep into SSDs, non-volatile memory express, and super-fast NVDIMMs, and how they amp up performance of whole systems. Once the company builds out these products, it runs them through the benchmarking gauntlet, according to Kincade.

“We also do quite a bit of application testing as well. And we publish a very thorough reference architecture that’s available on our website to act as a pragmatic blueprint for those who want to implement those kinds of solutions,” he said.

The company is especially enthused about the stunning read and write speeds of its latest NVDIMM products.

“NVDIMM is memory that doesn’t forget,” Caward said. Its performance derives largely from the fact that it is dynamic random-access memory acting as a storage device. It is sitting on the memory channel right next to the central processing unit, enabling extremely low latency, he explained.

Micron is still discovering use cases for super-fast NVDIMMS and will likely find new ones when it releases its 32 gigabyte NVDIMM this month, according to Caward. “The ecosystem, as it solidifies, it becomes more robust. There’s just going to be use cases that our engineers and our team haven’t thought of yet,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: Micron Technology Inc. sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from VMware Inc. Micron, VMware, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE