Why Storage Matters for AI with Solidigm

In this presentation, Ace Stryker and Alan Bumgarner of Solidigm discuss the importance of storage in AI workloads. They explain that as AI models and datasets grow, efficient and high-performance storage becomes increasingly critical. They introduce their company, Solidigm, which emerged from SK Hynix’s acquisition of Intel’s storage group, and they offer a range of SSD products suitable for AI applications.

The discussion covers several key points:

1. The growing AI market and the shift from centralized to distributed compute and storage, including the edge.
2. The dominance of hard drives for AI data and the opportunity for transitioning to flash storage.
3. The role of storage in AI workflows, including data ingestion, preparation, training, and inference.
4. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits of SSDs over hard drives, considering factors like power consumption, space, and cooling.
5. The Solidigm product portfolio, emphasizing different SSDs for various AI tasks, and the importance of choosing the right storage based on workload demands.
6. A customer case study from Kingsoft in China, which saw a significant reduction in data processing time by moving to an all-flash array.
7. The future potential of AI and the importance of SSDs in enabling efficient AI computing.

The session also includes questions from the Field Day delegates covering technical aspects of Solidigm storage products, such as the role of their cloud storage acceleration layer (CSAL), and discuss the importance of consulting with customers to understand their specific AI workload requirements for optimal storage solutions.