Utilizing Tech - Season 7: AI Data Infrastructure Presented by Solidigm Tech Field Day

Model training seriously stresses data infrastructure, but preparing that data to be used is a much more difficult challenge. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Subramanian Kartik of VAST Data discussing the broad data pipeline with Jeniece Wnorowski of Solidigm and Stephen Foskett. The first step in building an AI model is collecting, organizing, tagging, and transforming data. Yet this data is spread around the organization in databases, data lakes, and unstructured repositories. The challenge of building a data pipeline is familiar to most businesses, since a similar process is required in analytics, business intelligence, observability, and simulation, but generative AI applications have an insatiable appetite for data. These applications also demand extreme levels of storage performance, and only flash SSDs can meet this demand. A side benefit is the improvements in power consumption and cooling versus hard disk drives, and this is especially true as massive SSDs come to market. Ultimately the success of generative AI will drive greater collection and processing of data on the inferencing side, perhaps at the edge, and this will drive AI data infrastructure further.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠
Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/

Guest:
Subramanian Kartik, Ph. D, Global Systems Engineering Lead at VAST Data: https://www.linkedin.com/in/subramanian-kartik-ph-d-1880835/

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Website: ⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠
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Tech Field Day
Website: ⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠
LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Analysts and press spend a lot of time talking about specs and performance numbers, so it's always a treat when we get to talk to people who are testing and using these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech is focused on AI Data Infrastructure and features Jordan Ranous from StorageReview and is co-hosted by Stephen Foskett and Ace Stryker from our sponsor, Solidigm. StorageReview has constricted an experimental environment focused on astrophotography as a way to demonstrate AI applications in challenging edge environments. Their setup included a ruggedized Dell server, NVIDIA GPU, and Solidigm SSDs. This is the same sort of setup found at edge compute environments in retail, manufacturing, and remote use cases. StorageReview benchmarks storage devices by profiling real-world applications and building representative infrastructure to test. When it comes to GPUs, the goal is to keep these expensive processors operating at maximum capacity through optimal network and storage throughput.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/
Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

Guest:
Jordan Ranous, AI, Hardware, & Advanced Workloads Specialist at StorageReview.com: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jranous/

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Website: ⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠

Tech Field Day
Website: ⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠
LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay ⁠

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

Great AI needs excellent data infrastructure, in terms of capacity, performance, and efficiency. This episode of Utilizing Tech serves as a preview of season 7, brought to you by Solidigm, and features co-hosts Jeniece Wnorowski and Ace Stryker along with Stephen Foskett. Solidigm's partners are discovering just how important it is to optimize every element of the Ai infrastructure stack. With ever-larger AI datacenters being built, efficient storage can make a big difference, from power and cooling to physical density to performance. As we will hear throughout season 7, different AI environments will need specialized data infrastructure, from the edge to the cloud. With retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) emerging as a new trend in AI, it makes high-performance even more important at run-time.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/
Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/
Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

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Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech

Tech Field Day
Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com
LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day
X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: #UtilizingTech, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,

We knew that 2024 would be the year of AI right from the start, but this season of the podcast has seen incredible development and change. This final episode of Utilizing Tech Season 6 features hosts Frederic Van Haren, Allyson Klein, and Stephen Foskett discussing the current state of AI infrastructure half-way through 2024. In addition to AI Field Day, we experienced NVIDIA GTC and numerous product introductions over the last few months. It's truly an ecosystem play now, with every company showing how well they can partner to build AI infrastructure. At the same time, a few superusers of AI are responsible for the basic models, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and of course OpenAI and the other dedicated generative AI firms. The key to bringing this to the enterprise market is transfer learning, which will see a few base models tuned and trained for specific use cases. This season saw a range of guests discussing storage, data platforms, connectivity, and application development, and every one is focused on delivering practical AI solutions in the enterprise.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/
Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/
Frederic Van Haren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/

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Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/
X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech

Tech Field Day
Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com
LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day
X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: #UtilizingAI, #UtilizingTech, #YearofAI, @UtilizingTech, @TechFieldDay, @TheFuturumGroup, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @TechAllyson,

Both AI and quantum computing seemed entirely theoretical just a few years ago, yet generative AI is everywhere today. This episode of Utilizing Tech considers the promise of quantum computing generally and the applicability of this technology in AI with Dr. Bob Sutor of The Futurum Group, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. One big challenge for quantum computing is the difficulty of storing data for calculations, a severe limitation for using the technology in AI. But there is the possibility of pairing classical computers with quantum processors to bring the best of both concepts. Both AI and quantum computing deal with linear algebra, so there is an affinity between the technologies, but it is likely that each will find use cases in different areas. Ultimately there is still a lot of development to do but quantum technology shows great promise in AI and beyond.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/
Alastair Cooke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastaircooke/

Guest:
Bob Sutor, Vice President and Practice Lead od Emerging Technologies at The Futurum Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobsutor/

Follow Utilizing Tech
Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠⁠

Tech Field Day
Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠⁠
LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @TechFieldDay, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @TheFuturumGroup, #UtilizingAI, #AI,

As we consider the impact of AI on modern applications, we should consider the ways that this technology will improve these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Matthew Wallace, CTO of Kamiwaza AI, to discuss the adoption of AI in application development with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Large SaaS providers were the first to add AI-powered features but this technology is rapidly coming to market across the spectrum of applications. Matthew likens this to the evolution from spreadsheets to SaaS tools and cloud, which was a similar revolution. He mentions tools like ?, Cursor, Llama2, Mixtral, and more. We also discuss retrieval-automated generation (RAG), which enables LLMs to bring in external data at run time. We must also consider the source of the data, both in training and RAG, and questions of sovereignty, privacy, copyright, and safety. Looking forward, Matthew expects companies to customize their own models based on use case specific data. Looking forward, we expect new frameworks and models to be adopted rapidly to bring maturity and reliability to AI in enterprise applications throughout 2024.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠
Allyson Klein: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/

Guest:
Matthew Wallace, CTO and Cofounder of KamiwazaAI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewwallaceco/

Follow Utilizing Tech
Website: ⁠⁠https://www.UtilizingTech.com/⁠⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech ⁠⁠

Tech Field Day
Website: ⁠⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠⁠
LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠⁠
X/Twitter: ⁠https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @KamiwazaAI, @TechFieldDay, #AIFD4, #AI, #UtilizingAI,