The tech industry has marched into the future of with the theory of Moore’s Law for decades, but that innovation engine no longer fits the landscape of today with data-driven infrastructure. The innovation engine is now data: AI and machine learning and scaling with the cloud and the edge.

So what does this new landscape mean for tech businesses that are trying to survive this brave new world?

“The workloads that are there today driving the AI of the future require not the solutions of yesterday,” said Sanjay Mehrotra (pictured), president and chief executive officer of Micron Technology, Inc. “They require new, innovative architectures.”

Mehrotra spoke with Dave Vellante and David Floyer, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Micron Insight event in San Francisco. They discussed the future of tech, custom processors and how Micron is handling all this digital transformation (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Bespoke processors

These innovative architectures, as Mehrotra calls them, are bespoke processors. The idea behind bespoke processors is similar to the idea of a custom suite tailored to fit an individual. As technology gets more complex, another idea inherent to Micron’s strategy is vertical integration to bring value to customers for data-driven infrastructure.

“A bespoke processor is there to actually meet the needs of the specific workloads … [so] these new innovations, new architectures proliferate through the ecosystem,” Mehrotra explained. “Vertical integration enables us to … bring greater value to our customers. We have a massive scale of manufacturing that is built on a very comprehensive and … the world’s most unique technology platform.”

For bespoke processors and vertical integration, memory and storage are key areas to focus on, because AI is about drawing deeper insight and creating greater value from data that billions of internet of things devices are creating around the world, according to Mehrotra. Micron is focused on bringing solutions with DRAM technology, NAND flash and 3D XPoint that meet the performance needs of the enterprise.

“So this is the vertical integration built on the most unique platform of technologies,” Mehrotra stated. “Nobody else in the world has DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint. Now building vertical integration on this gives us tremendous differentiated opportunity to bring value to our customers.”

Here’s the complete video interview, 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 Technology, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE