UPDATED 16:13 EST / MAY 03 2017

INFRA

Riding the perfect storm of memory’s market with NVMe over Fabric

What’s the future of computing hold for storage? Non-volatile memory standards offers hope to the enterprise, as flash storage provider Micron Technologies Inc. unveiled a new NVMe over Fabrics architecture at its summit today in New York. Eagerly presenting the capabilities of its new offering, Micron details the market factors that have come together to allow for the selling and deployment of NVMe at significant volumes, and the challenges that come along with the company’s efforts to offer related software services up the stack.

“This is the perfect storm for storage. We have technology that is just better on every dimension,” said Darren Thomas (pictured, left), vice president of the Storage Business Unit of Micron Technology.

Thomas and Mark Durcan (pictured, right), chief executive officer of Micron Technology, joined Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and David Floyer (@dfloyer), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during the Summit. They shared their thoughts on NVMe, Micron’s business and what changes they anticipate.

Some of the changes that have already come along are evidenced in the ways that Micron is considering and presenting itself. “Our customers want to be able to speak to us directly as a fab shop,” said Thomas. And while Micron still “sells the components, as time has gone on, we sell more of the sub-systems,” he added.

Thomas noted that they weren’t trying to circumvent any of the company’s partners, but that it was simply a move to match the modern market forces.

“The reality is, the future of memory is about customer intimacy, customer value … across a broad, diversified set of end-user markets,” said Durcan.

As he sees it, the markets have acquired an incredible level of diversity. “Wherever you look, there’s memory today, and wherever you look, there’s customers who want more from their memory,” he said.

Though enterprise storage is a firm focus for Micron, Durcan emphasized, “We have to do this in all the end-markets we serve” to deliver the value expected of the company.

Internal changes

That expansive field of opportunities for a memory business may have solved some problems for Micron, but it’s also introduced new challenges for the company.

“The end-markets have diversified, and so we’re servicing so many more customers within a fixed-size supply,” Durcan explained. And as memory suppliers have consolidated, creating a more stable market, Micron is finding the avenues for introduction and expansion of NVMe to be opening up for them.

In order to capitalize on the current state of things, Micron will need to continue adapting, though Durcan felt this was something that would be a relatively small step for them.

“Today, Micron is a much more sophisticated and nuanced company than we used to be,” he said. “Our vision and our internal culture has evolved. … It’s not just by choice, it’s really imperative, it’s what the customers need us to do to take advantage of these technologies.”

And as it works to meet the infrastructural needs of those organizations, Durcan highlighted Micron’s partnership with Mellanox Technologies Ltd. as the key to making NVMe over Fabric viable and bringing with it the ability to handle data across a massive number of nodes while diminishing downtime, unused space and latency issues.

“Prior to this, we could have built an NVMe solution, but it wouldn’t have been enterprise-worthy. And what you’re seeing now is we can make one that the enterprise customers will not only love the performance of, but embrace the quality and reliability of. … I don’t think anybody else could have done this, because you had to understand how the Fabrics work,” Thomas said.

The enterprise will not tolerate a “science project type” technology, Thomas added. “And prior to this, that’s kind of what it was,” he said.

However, now that Micron has been able to mature the technology and bring it to life in its labs, Thomas concluded that he “couldn’t be more excited” about the role memory will play in computing in the future, particularly with cognitive computing and the like, as he anticipated some tough but rewarding times in store for the company.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Micron Summit 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner at the Micron Summit. The conference sponsor, Micron, does not have editorial oversight of content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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