Keynotes

Steven Eliuk

Vice President of Deep Learning, Global Chief Data Office

IBM

Steven Eliuk is Vice President Deep Learning, Global Chief Data Office (GCDO) at IBM, where he leads the development of platform and infrastructure components for machine learning and deep learning in the Cognitive Enterprise Data Platform, IBM’s data lake. He also is focused on applying DL in the enterprise to accelerate the use of cognition in internal processes while maintaining governance, security, privacy, and trust. His work has both generated revenue and showcased cognition at IBM scale to clients. Before joining IBM, Steven led the design of high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure for artificial intelligence and launched the first model parallel distributed training framework for HPC at Samsung Research America. Steven earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Alberta. He has presented at many events, including IBM Think, IBM CDO Summit, NVIDIA GPU Developers Conference, IEEE, and more.

Abstract:
Improving the use of data is a top priority of business organizations around the world. A key aspect is to develop an enterprise information architecture that provides an effective AI solution. Data must be accessible, trusted, and ready to be analyzed by AI algorithms. Data of every type, regardless of where it lives, needs to be part of the AI journey. We must provide an AI-friendly infrastructure that includes hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, virtualized, and containerized environments. Machine learning can then be applied to the results for a competitive advantage.

Data management challenges ensue with the ingestion, aggregation, and siloing of data. The problems are compounded by multiple copies and potentially stale data that can detract from the AI environment. Architectural challenges can affect security, protection, and global accessibility to data assets.

The challenges can be met by classifying and preparing data sets, implementing AI data workflows. and deploying AI models capable of meeting service level objectives. See how real world customers are executing AI transformation and applying best practices to successfully leveraging flash memory for AI performance optimization and employing innovative techniques to increase business value.

Alper Ilkabahar

Vice President & General Manager

Intel

Alper Ilkbahar is General Manager of Data Center Memory and Storage Solutions and Vice President Data Center Group at Intel, where he led the introduction of the world’s first persistent memory to market in 2018. Before taking on this position, he oversaw the commercialization of new non-volatile, high-performance memory technology at Matrix Semiconductor and SanDisk, as well as holding design engineering and management roles in Intel’s microprocessor division. A 27-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, he earned an MSEE from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Wharton School University of Pennsylvania. He holds over 50 patents in semiconductor process, device design, and testing and has published multiple conference and journal papers.

Abstract:
New and increasingly important data-centric workloads, such as real-time analytics, AI/ML, VR/AR, IoT, HPC, and cybersecurity, demand tremendous throughput at a reasonable price. The current memory/storage hierarchy of DRAM and flash cannot do the job alone. A new tier is needed that is persistent, high-throughput/low-latency, production-proven, low-cost, scalable, and simple to integrate into existing designs. Such a tier can provide a tremendous speed boost at an affordable cost. Use cases are already available for a wide variety of key applications, and results show major advances in speed, cost/performance ratio, power consumption, and scalability.

Andrew Dieckmann

VP of Marketing for Data Center Solutions

Microchip

Andrew Dieckmann is vice president of marketing and applications engineering for the data center solutions (DCS) division at Microchip Technology's Microsemi subsidiary. He is responsible for product management, product marketing, product strategy and the application engineering teams supporting Microsemi's broad portfolio of storage solutions, including SSD controllers, memory controllers, RAID solutions, HBAs, PCIe switches and SAS expanders. Prior to Microchip, Mr. Dieckmann led marketing for Microsemi’s data center business and helped build PMC-Sierra’s enterprise storage business from inception to an industry leadership position. He earned an electrical engineering degree from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.

Abstract:
Data centers have the formidable task of improving operating efficiency and maximizing their IT investments in hardware infrastructure in the face of evolving and varied application requirements. New architectures are needed to better utilize and optimize hardware assets spanning storage, compute and memory. Enabling resource agility where physical compute, storage and memory resources are treated as composable building blocks is a key to unlocking efficiencies and eliminating stranded and underutilized assets. We will explore the innovation that is possible with a flexible infrastructure for storage, compute and memory, examine primary barriers to adoption and highlight technology areas that both the industry and vendors like us are enabling to meet the needs of a composable platform.

Abstract:
Today GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), are driving the mathematically intensive artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications which have the promise of revolutionizing almost every aspect of our world. They are also data hungry and fast, which means they can consume terabytes of data very quickly. Often more data than can be stored locally. By interfacing GPUs to ultra high performance InfiniBand and Ethernet storage networks you solve the local storage capacity limitation. Especially when the networked storage in flashed based. Join the leaders, NVIDIA and Mellanox, in GPUs and High Performance Networking, to understand how these two amazing technologies can be combined to turbocharge the AI and ML revolution.

Thad Omura

EVP of Marketing & Operations

ScaleFlux

Mr. Thad Omura is an accomplished technology business executive that has been instrumental in driving startups to IPO and high-value acquisitions, while also having public company experience as a corporate executive. Since April 2015, Thad has served as EVP of Marketing and Operations for ScaleFlux responsible for all business, marketing, and expanding the growth opportunities for Computational Storage. Prior to ScaleFlux, Thad was VP of Product & Customer Management for Seagate Technology’s Flash and SSD business. He stepped into that role through Seagate’s acquisition of the LSI Flash products in 2014, including SandForce Flash Processors, and PCIe SSDs. Thad was an early executive at SandForce in 2008 as VP of Marketing, and remained with the organization through the LSI and Seagate acquisitions. Prior to SandForce, Thad was with Mellanox Technologies as VP of Product Marketing, and helped drive the company to an IPO in 2007 based on success of its industry-leading networking solutions. Prior to Mellanox, Thad served in various marketing and sales roles at Motorola SPS, Marvell, Galileo Technology, and Quality Semiconductor. Thad holds a BS degree in EECS from UC Berkeley.

Abstract:
Data-driven applications such as databases, analytics, AI/ML, VR, and IoT are everywhere today – and gobbling up more data all the time. How can we get them the processing power they need today and the even larger amounts necessary tomorrow? Computational storage is the answer! It brings compute to the data, thus distributing the workload rather than straining central resources. After all, more compute comes along for the ride when you add more storage to handle larger data stores. Case studies show promising results for popular storage engines such as RocksDB and common storage functions such as compression/decompression. Now is the time for IT managers to deploy computational storage to provide the solutions they need in clouds, data centers, content distribution networks, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance computing.

Nigel Alvares

VP of Marketing, Flash Business Unit

Marvell

Nigel Alvares is Vice President of Marketing for the Flash Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor. He is responsible for defining and driving new product solutions spanning edge to cloud data center segments. Before joining Marvell, Nigel worked for Inphi, a high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor innovator, where he helped launch innovative non-volatile memory chipsets for emerging NVDIMMs. Prior to Inphi, Nigel was a founding member of PMC-Sierra’s Enterprise Storage Division and helped build it into the company’s largest business, managing its widely deployed storage controller and disk interconnect products. He has over 20 years of experience in data storage and networking. He earned a BSEE from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and an MBA from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada).

Abstract:
As billions of devices come online and begin generating zettabytes of data, new architectures leveraging emerging technologies are essential to handle the onslaught. Chipset innovations play a critical enabling role, powering high-performance edge and local processors, ultra-high-speed Ethernet devices and switches, low-power controller and device solutions, and new 5G wireless systems. New architectures are needed to enable local and distributed processing at all levels. They must bring new levels of scalability that are easy to achieve, integrate machine learning, and provide throughput sufficient for the demands of real-time analysis and high-performance computing. To meet these requirements, it is crucial that chipset architectures are optimized for power consumption and cost while also supporting low latency. Collectively, these requisites result in a tall order, but one that chip makers are addressing with innovations that will accelerate the growing data economy.

Salil Raje

Executive Vice President and General Manager, Data Center Group

Xilinx

Salil Raje heads the Data Center Group (DCG) for Xilinx, leading a global team of engineering, sales, and marketing professionals dedicated to the data center, the fastest growing market for FPGAs. His group helps top hyperscalers and enterprise cloud providers harness intelligent, adaptable infrastructure to improve performance, power efficiency, and operating costs. He has previously led initiatives in development environments, contributed greatly to expansion efforts in machine learning and vision applications, and improved FPGA design tools. He has over 20-years of experience in the technology industry, holds eight patents in electronic design tools, ASIC, and FPGA designs, and has written more than 15 industry-recognized research papers. He earned a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University.

Abstract:
With the advent of flash storage and persistent memory, storage is no longer a roadblock to better system performance. Data can already be transferred from SSDs at thousands of times the speed of hard drives. Now NVMe and new technologies such as 3D XPoint are putting further pressure on other system resources with ever-higher data rates. How can processors and networks keep up? With traditional system design – they can’t. Heterogenous architectures and computational storage are becoming the answer to this challenge, with FPGAs leading the charge. This long-proven technology can offload protocol overhead, accelerate storage services such as compression and security, and perform local processing for computational storage. FPGAs are fast, flexible, and capable of handling a wide variety of algorithms and procedures. They can meet today’s challenges and support tomorrow’s emerging applications such as AI/ML, real-time analytics, video and image processing, cybersecurity, and 5G wireless.

Jihyo Lee

Co-Founder & CEO

FADU

Jihyo Lee is the co-founder and CEO of FADU Technology. Jihyo is a former partner at Bain & Company and a successful serial entrepreneur involved in multiple businesses in technology, telecom and energy. He successfully led and initiated Bain & Capital’s technology sector focus, including semiconductor and display panel components, devices (mobile and TV) and services (cloud and internet/contents). Jihyo has been a C-level advisor to global technology companies, leading projects to solve key strategic issues. As CEO of FADU, he has established FADU as a fabless semiconductor innovator, uniting exceptional industry talent to create a revolution in data center and storage for next generation computing architecturesarchitectures.

Abstract:
Emerging Enterprise applications need extremely high-performance storage and the lowest possible power. To meet the challenges, storage designers must move away from legacy architectures left over from hard drive-based systems. They must look to new form factors, new approaches to NAND management, new ways to offload processors and reduce DRAM caches, new acceleration techniques, and new support for virtualization and end-to-end security. They must utilize the latest NVMe features, scalable systems, SSD architectures (including open-channel), and security standards. The end result for data centers will be much higher storage capacity and performance combined with lower power consumption and higher resistance to security threats.

About FADU:
FADU is a fabless semiconductor company focusing on advanced Flash-based memory storage solutions and systems for next generation computing. FADU is answering the industry’s call to enable future end applications that are computation and storage intensive. The innovative Flash solution designs are independent of legacy storage architectures and include the Annapurna PCIe 3.0 X 4 NVMe SSD controller and Bravo M.2 and Dual U.2 Enterprise SSDs. FADU is setting the benchmark for a low power, high performance and feature rich future.

Zining Wu

Founder & CEO

InnoGrit

Dr. Zining Wu is the co-founder and CEO of InnoGrit Corporation, a fabless semiconductor startup focusing on data storage, management, and processing.

Before founding Innogrit in October 2016, Dr. Zining Wu worked at Marvell for 17 years, where he last served as Chief Technology Officer of Marvell Technology Group. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing all technical aspects of the company, including establishing the company's technical vision, directing strategic initiatives for future growth, and managing central engineering for R&D execution. Prior to his CTO role, Dr. Wu was the Vice President of Data Storage Technologies at Marvell, where he was responsible for innovative storage technologies for the hard disk drive and SSD controllers.

Dr. Wu holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and a Master of Science Degree and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Abstract:
As the SSD industry migrates from PCIe Gen3 to Gen4 and even to Gen5, can users really enjoy the doubling of throughput and IOPs? In this presentation, we analyze system-level bottlenecks and discuss how to address them. For PC users, we show that PCIe Gen4 combined with host managed FTL can greatly boost system performance and reduce power. For data centers, tiered storage with fast NAND and hardware offload engines can help unleash the true potential of PCIe Gen4 and produce a high-performance storage system for demanding data center applications.

Jean S. Bozman

VP/Chief Analyst

Hurwitz and Associates

Panelists:

Jim Handy, Chief Analyst, Objective Analysis
Rob Peglar, President, Advanced Computation and Storage
Dave Eggleston, Principal, In-Cog

Abstract:
The last year has been marked by a boatload of surprises. A price collapse for flash and SSDs, reduced demand, and general oversupply with companies reporting lower revenues and lower earnings. Meanwhile, in the background, we have trade wars and key companies (and countries) being blacklisted and having their executives arrested. What is next? Our fearless panelists will give their opinions on the unpredictable future as American elections draw near, trade and shooting wars loom, Brexit continues to elude completion, and no one feels safe despite a strong economic outlook. Bring your thoughts and opinions to this no-holds-barred example of my favorite company name - "Precision Guesswork"!