Flash Memory Summit 2013

Flash Memory Summit continues to grow, the organizers are expecting record attendance levels. Brian Berg hosted a great session on Flash Memory Based Architectures. This technical discussion covered NAND Lithography trends, PHY Units for advanced design, and Solving the Power Cycling Challenge. The nearly full audience was eager for more. The lead-off keynote saw Jason Taylor explain just how Flash is used at Facebook. It is amazing to hear that in just a few years they have gone from Hard Drives to Flash Cached Hard Drives and now to pure Flash SSDs for storage. No rotating media! The Beer and Pizza chat with the experts on Tuesday evening had an attendance of over 400 people, and plenty of tables and topics. I co-hosted the Software table with Amit of Skyera. Each company does software, but each at different ends of the spectrum, if SSDs are right in the middle. SSDs were less of a direct focus at the show, with more attention paid to the underlying Flash technology once again. This is the reason Datalight attends the show, and I for one was happy to hear about breakthroughs in latency, throughput and security. Speaking of breakthroughs, the exhibition floor opens today at noon. I expect to see some 3D NAND, and Smart Modular has a large booth this year.