UPDATED 17:22 EDT / OCTOBER 24 2019

INFRA

Edge computing drives storage innovation while China edges its way into flash memory

The superpowers of the new economy are also the buzz words changing how the world interacts: Artificial intelligence, the “internet of things” and edge computing are the megatrends dominating the conversation on both a business and a personal level.

“Practical everyday things are being done in AI,” said David Floyer, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “It’s going from being a niche to being just everyday use, and its impact long-term is profound.”

TheCUBE co-host Dave Vellante joined Floyer during today’s Micron Insight event in San Francisco. They discussed recent developments in storage and memory, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing Micron Technology Inc. in the marketplace (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Two constraints to flash have been eliminated

The underlying technology that makes these sexy innovations possible is also adapting to the demands of the new economy.

Edge computing is an area that is growing “very, very strongly indeed,” according to Floyer. And as capture and processing takes place closer and closer to the data origin, demand for smaller and smaller processors is increasing.

“So memory and the NAND are moving out to the edge itself, and it’s going to be lots of smaller processors,” Floyer stated.

NAND memory has reduced in price due to oversupply in the market, but “when prices drop people buy more at the same time,” Vellante pointed out. “It feels like there’s a new wave or a new step function of consumption going on with regard to flash.”

Replacing old-fashioned protocols with all-flash, storage-specific nonvolatile memory express has increased the demand and usefulness of flash memory. Another improvement has occurred in performance capabilities.

“Now flash is growing in two dimensions,” Floyer said. “It’s growing in the number of layers. But it’s [also] growing from single-level cell, to multilevel cell, to triple-level cell, to quad-level cell in terms of the number of bits that it can pack into it.”

A rapid change to NVMe is happening, according to Floyer. “We’re predicting that in 2019, 50% of the drives will be NVMe drives,” he said.

Where does Micron fit into the picture? “Micron is a little bit late to NVMe, but they’re now hopping on board,” Vellante said.

However, Floyer thinks that Micron has “managed the timing of every new release very well indeed. If you go too early, you over-rotate — then you are struggling to get that out, the costs are higher and the people who are selling the previous generation than you are going to do better.”

Despite announcing a $7 billion drop in revenue this year, Micron has managed to avoid a drop in share price. “Micron has done an amazing job of steadying and managing its demand and supply,” Vellante noted.

China eyes the consumer flash market

China is a big concern, according to Vellante. As well as the impact of tariffs from the trade war, and the restrictions on selling to Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., China is “coming after companies like Micron; really going after consumer flash, building fab capacity to begin with…. Eventually, China’s going to aim at the higher value enterprise,” he said.

Micron is going to have to react to this threat by investing, according to Floyer. “They’re going to have to invest,” he stated. “And that, long term, is good news for consumers and good news for everybody else. But it’s going to be bad news for other people in the business.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Micron Insight event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Micron Insight event. Neither Micron, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Micron

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