Shared Everything

On this episode of the Shared Everything podcast, Nicole Hemsoth sits down with Sven Breuner, Field CTO at VAST Data and one of the pioneers of modern parallel file systems, to discuss how AI is reshaping data infrastructure. Drawing on two decades of experience in HPC storage, Sven explains why the industry is moving beyond a singular focus on performance toward making data easier to access, auto...

On this episode of the Shared Everything podcast, Nicole talks with Maxime Martinasso, head of engineering at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, about the design of the Alps supercomputer and how CSCS is supporting both traditional scientific computing and modern AI workloads. They discuss flexible infrastructure, secure environments for healthcare and research data, the role of storage and...

On this episode of the Shared Everything podcast Nicole sits down with Dan Nishball, Ellie Holbrook, and Harley Blackard of SemiAnalysis to explore one of the most ambitious ideas in AI infrastructure: space datacenters. Using SemiAnalysis's orbital compute cost model and detailed report as a starting point, the conversation examines the real economics behind deploying AI infrastructure beyond Ear...

SciNet, one of Canada's primary academic supercomputing centers, recently deployed a new infrastructure platform built around AMD CPUs, H100 GPUs, NDR InfiniBand, and VAST Data. The deployment provides a useful look at how modern HPC environments are evolving as traditional simulation workloads increasingly share infrastructure with AI. In discussing the design, operation, and future direction of...

In this episode of the Shared Everything podcast, Derrick Harris speaks with Oxford Nanopore VP of Machine Learning Mike Vella about the company’s relatively unique approach to doing AI in the fast-moving field of genomics. From hand-programming CUDA kernels to dealing with the gigabyte per second of data coming off its DNA sequencers, Vella explains how his team balances the promise of fast, inex...

On this episode of the Shared Everything podcast from VAST, Nicole talks with Chris Powell, Quantum Information Science Lead at SAIC, about what “data” actually means in a quantum system. We move past storage and into representation, where problems have to be mapped into mathematical forms like Hamiltonian matrices and expressed directly into quantum hardware with no traditional memory or register...

In this episode of the Shared Everything podcast, Nicole Hemsoth Prickett speaks with Norm Marks, VP of Automotive at NVIDIA, about how autonomous systems are evolving from detection to prediction and now reasoning-driven AI. Marks explains how that shift is driving massive increases in GPU scale, synthetic data generation, and simulation, forcing companies to rethink infrastructure as training pi...

In this episode of Shared Everything, we sit down with Jeff Denworth, co-founder of VAST Data, and Scott Shadley of Solidigm to unpack what’s actually driving the current flash supply crunch. The conversation moves from NAND physics and fab constraints to hyperscaler buying behavior and the sudden surge in AI-driven demand, explaining why this cycle is fundamentally different from past downturns....

On today's episode of the Shared Everything podcast, Nicole is live at SC25 with Dan Stanzione, Executive Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), for a look at why Horizon required a fundamental architectural reset. Stanzione explains how rising GPU power densities, liquid cooled 20 megawatt racks, and an increasingly irregular IO profile forced TACC to abandon long held assumption...

In this episode Nicole talks to Jeff Denworth, Co-Founder of VAST Data, about the deep architectural shifts behind the 5.4 release, delving into how a new distributed runtime, native vector database, and event-driven compute layer transform VAST from a storage platform into a fully programmable AI operating system. Jeff explains how real-time vector inserts, parallelism without inter-node communic...

On today’s episode of the Shared Everything podcast, Nicole talks to Jason Vallery, who just joined VAST after a 13-year career at Microsoft where he helped build the Azure cloud from the ground up. Jason reflects on the early days of object storage and cloud-native computing, when scaling from petabytes to exabytes redefined what infrastructure meant, and explains how lessons from Azure’s hypersc...

In this episode Nicole talks to Chris Powell, Chief Scientist at SAIC, and Kartik, Chief Scientist at VAST Data, about how the foundations of supercomputing are being rewritten by quantum advances, new architectures, and the collapse of distance between data and compute. Together they explore what happens when data becomes the environment of computation itself, how proximity and randomness define...

In this episode Nicole talks to Laurent Sifre, co-founder and CTO of H Company and former DeepMind scientist behind AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and Chinchilla. They explore how his discoveries in model scaling shaped the design of H Company’s computer-use agents, including the Surfer H platform that learns to navigate software through perception and action instead of APIs. The conversation dives into data...

In this episode of the Shared Everything, reasoning models take center stage. No longer just text predictors, they now loop, branch, and drag in outside data, which blows open context windows and GPU limits. Alon Horev, CTO of VAST Data, unpacks how this shift strains infrastructure, while Kevin Deierling, SVP of Networking at NVIDIA, explains how NVIDIA Dynamo moves KV caches and workloads across...

On this episode, Nicole sits down with Danny McGinniss, VP of Product Management for Cisco Compute, Jacob Liberman, Director of Enterprise Product at NVIDIA, and John Mao, VP of Business Development and Alliances at VAST, to pull apart what it really means when three of the biggest forces in infrastructure line up behind the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, an architecture that brings together...

In this episode, Nicole speaks with Aaron Chaisson and Blake Golliher of VAST Data about how the company is reframing its mission for the AI era, centering on the idea of becoming the Operating System for AI. Aaron lays out the strategy behind this shift, while Blake—drawing on his deep background in building large-scale data platforms explains how the VAST SyncEngine enables customers to move and...

In this episode, we explore how SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest wireless carrier and now a major force in AI infrastructure, joined forces with VAST Data to tackle one of the most difficult problems in large-scale computing: building a sovereign AI cloud that doesn’t compromise on speed, security, or scalability. Facing the nation’s mandate to keep AI models, data, and infrastructure fully under...

In this episode, Nicole talks with Ken Patchett, VP of Datacenter Infrastructure at Lambda, about how hyperscale AI and sovereign LLMs are redefining datacenter and data management strategies. Ken highlights the challenge of data gravity, emphasizing the critical role of co-locating extensive storage infrastructure alongside ultra-high-density compute to support increasingly data-hungry workloads....

Stacks of federal reports tell countless stories of IT investments gone sideways, yet the stakes have never been higher as artificial intelligence reshapes government. David Hinchman, Director of IT and Cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), joins Shared Everything to dissect why federal technology initiatives often falter and how these invisible fault lines could dangerously...

In this episode of Shared Everything, Glenn Lockwood, just named Principal Technical Strategist at VAST Data, shares what decades at the bleeding edge of large-scale systems design have taught him about architecting for an AI future that refuses to stay put. From building the first all-NVMe 30PB Lustre file system to designing Azure’s training clusters, Glenn walks us through why performance alone...

00:00 – 02:00 Intro and Kartik’s background in physics and industry evolution; early days of personalized medicine and genomic research. 02:00 – 04:30 Breakdown of three main advances in life sciences: genomics, gene editing (CRISPR), and long-read sequencing technologies like Oxford Nanopore and PacBio. 04:30 – 06:30 Deep technical dive into nanopore sequencing: how it works, why it matters, and...

In this episode from GTC Paris, Nicole chats with Andy Pernsteiner, Global Field CTO at VAST Data, for an insider's view of Europe's quickly evolving AI landscape. From the sidelines of Nvidia’s packed event—strategically co-located with Viva Tech—Andy shares candid insights on the shift from heavy-lifting AI infrastructure builds toward practical, profitable services built on those investments. S...

Podcast Timeline: Dan Stanzione (TACC) & Don Schulte 00:00–02:07 Introduction by Nicole; guests Dan Stanzione (Executive Director, TACC) and Don Schulte (VAST Data). 02:08–03:51 Reflections on TACC’s history, reputation for innovation, and pioneering adoption of new technologies. 03:52–05:57 Discussing dramatic shifts in HPC due to increased emphasis on power consumption, driven by the end of Denn...

In this conversation with host Nicole Hemsoth Prickett, experts Wes Brewer (Oak Ridge National Lab) and Adrian Jackson (EPCC) discuss the evolving landscape of digital twins, particularly in the context of supercomputing and AI. They explore the distinctions between digital twins and traditional simulations, the real-world applications of digital twins, and the infrastructure challenges faced in t...

00:00 – Introduction Nicole introduces Jeff Denworth, reminiscing about the Big Data era (~2010–2014). 01:15 – Big Data to Big Metadata Jeff reflects on the Big Data era (Hadoop, analytics, NoSQL). Today's valuations (Snowflake, Databricks) suggest Big Data's continued relevance. 02:11 – The Rise of Big Metadata Jeff describes the shift from Big Data to Big Metadata. AI creates new categories and...