Utilizing Tech - The Podcast Series about New and Emerging Technologies

Industrial control and operational technology systems face the same forces as IT applications and are rapidly being integrated into comprehensive edge infrastructure. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Andy Foster of IOTech to discuss standardization of industrial IoT with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. There are many more similarities between industrial control systems and information tech...

Media and entertainment is one industry generating and moving vast amounts of data at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Jimmy Fusil of Tsecond into a discussion with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett about the unique data challenges in media and entertainment. There is a great need for local processing, secure data transport, and efficient storage utilization in managing the ever-in...

Edge computing comes in many forms and brings many challenges, including bandwidth limitations, network reliability issues, and limited space. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Brian Chambers, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett together to discuss the state of the edge in 2023. Industries like retail, multi-tenant environments, and industrial IoT find practical applications, but defining the...

In this episode of the Utilizing Tech podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alison Klein, and Gina Rosenthal discuss dark data in edge computing. Dark data is unutilized or unknown data collected by organizations. The distributed nature and use of third-party apps can make it challenging to handle dark data, limiting insights and posing security risks. Establishing a stronger IT-business connection is crucial...

Although we use Intel's NUC as a shorthand for the type of hardware deployed at the far edge, this recently-cancelled platform isn't all there is. This episode of Utilizing Edge looks beyond the NUC, to platforms from Lenovo, Nvidia, and more, with Julian Chesterfield of Sunlight, Andrew Green, and Stephen Foskett. ARM-based solutions, many using the Nvidia Jetson platform, are particularl...

Edge infrastructure is susceptible to many of the same security risks as datacenter and cloud, but is often run in less protected environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Craig Nunes, Co-Founder and COO of Nebulon, talking to Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the provision of reliable infrastructure services at the edge. Nebulon's product presents storage to servers in a ma...

Perhaps no company is more important to the datacenter than VMware, but how are the company’s technologies applied at the edge? This episode of Utilizing Edge features Saadat Malik, VP and GM of Edge Computing at VMware, discussing the evolution of VMware at the edge with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett. The discussion delves into the evolution of VMware’s presence at the edge, highlighting the...

Datacenter IT is used to having tight control over infrastructure and applications, but this is challenging to maintain at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Pierluca Chiodelli of Dell Technology discussing the modern edge application platform with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. A typical edge environment features many different platforms, devices, and connections that must be d...

Between the so-called last mile and first mile lies the middle mile, the realm of colocation and network service providers. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Roy Chua and Allyson Klein, discussing the middle mile with Stephen Foskett. This middle area includes content delivery services like Varnish and Akamai, as well as companies like Cloudflare that are delivering content and compute there...

When it comes to edge computing, money is not limitless. Joining us for this episode of Utilizing Edge is Carlo Daffara of NodeWeaver, who discusses the unique economic challenges of edge with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Cost is always a factor for technology decisions, but every decision is multiplied when designing edge infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of nodes. Total Cost of Ow...

Although everyone wants high availability from IT systems, the cost to achieve it must be weighed against the benefits. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on HA solutions at the edge with Bruce Kornfeld of StorMagic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Although it might be tempting to build the same infrastructure at the edge as in the data center, but this can get very expensive. Thinking ab...

The edge isn't the same thing to everyone: Some talk about equipment for use outside the datacenter, while others talk about equipment that lives in someone else's location. The difference between this far edge and near edge is the topic of Utilizing Edge, with Andrew Green and Alastair Cooke, Research Analysts at Gigaom, and Stephen Foskett. Andrew is drawing a line at 20 ms roundtrip, th...

One of the main differentiators for edge computing is developing a scalable architecture that works everywhere, from deployment to support to updates. This episode of Utilizing Edge welcomes Dave Demlow of Scale Computing discussing the need for scalable architecture at the edge. Scale Computing discussed Zero-Touch Provisioning and Disposable Units of Compute at their Edge Field Day presentation,...

There is a long-standing gulf between developers and operations, let alone infrastructure, and this is made worse by the scale and limitations of edge computing. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Carl Moberg of Avassa discussing the application-first mindset of developers with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett. As we've been discussing, it's critical to standardize infrastructure to...

Edge has many different stakeholders, applications, and needs, and this is especially true in distributed retail environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Simon Gamble of Mako Networks talking with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the complexities of technology at the retail edge. The key according to Gamble is segmentation of brands, franchisees, and technical applications. In...

Edge environments were historically very specialized, but virtualization and cloud technology is enabling companies to deploy commodity platforms at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Raghu Vatte of ZEDEDA discussing this commoditization with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Although the transition is still getting started, standard compute platforms are rapidly being exploited a...

Although the technology is roughly similar to datacenter or cloud, the unique challenges of edge computing require new approaches to storage, networking, orchestration, deployment, and more. We were kicking off a new season of Utilizing Tech focused on edge computing, featuring Alastair Cooke and Brian Chambers as co-hosts along with Stephen Foskett. One of the key differences for edge computing i...

We're wrapping up this season of Utilizing Tech by asking the key question: Why would a system architect choose to utilize CXL in their designs? This episode of Utilizing CXL features Stephen Foskett, Nathan Bennett, and Craig Rodgers discussing the practical prospects and benefits of CXL. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Craig Rodgers: https://www.twitter.com/CraigRodgersm...

Perhaps no one can tell the story of Compute Express Link (CXL) better than Jim Pappas, who was involved in the development of nearly every related technology, from PCI to UCIe. This episode wraps up the season of Utilizing Tech with Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers discussing the evolution of CXL with Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives at Intel and Chairman of the CXL Consortium. No...

Moving memory and other resources off the system bus to CXL is exciting, but how do we ensure that these systems will be reliable, available, and serviceable? This episode of Utilizing Tech features Mark Orthodoxou, VP of Strategic Marketing for Datacenter Products at Rambus discussing with Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers the technology and standards required for mass adoption of CXL-attached me...

CXL grew out of a long history of Intel platform technology and promises to revolutionize this platform. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Allyson Klein of TechArena, who shares her vision for the future of disaggregated servers with Craig Rodgers and Stephen Foskett. The foundation for CXL was laid with coherent interconnects and fabrics in previous decades, and the concept of tiered memory...

Memory expansion is the first application for CXL, and memory pooling is coming next, but this technology will eventually support storage, Ethernet, and more. This episode of Utilizing CXL brings Ronen Hyatt, CEO of UnifabriX, to discuss memory and more over CXL with Nathan Bennett and Stephen Foskett. UnifabriX demonstrated high-performance compute benchmarks using their Smart Memory Node at Supe...

Tiered memory will have different performance, so operating systems will need to incorporate techniques to adapt to pages with different characteristics. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Hasan Al Maruf, part of a team that developed transparent page placement for Linux. He began his work enabling transparent page placement for InfiniBand-connected peers before applying the concept to NUMA no...

Bringing CXL to market requires a wide variety of components, and Marvell is a key supplier to datacenter and cloud. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Shalesh Thusoo of Marvell, who discusses the many solutions they are creating to bring CXL to market. Current products are directly connecting memory to CPUs via CXL but soon we will see products enabling the sharing of memory between hosts to...

The CXL Consortium is an open industry standard group responsible for technical specifications and standards. This episode of Utilizing CXL brings Siamak Tavallaei, CXL president, to discuss the emergence of Compute Express Link. The goal of CXL is to disaggregate servers, moving memory away from the CPU and enabling users to compose servers more flexibly. We have already disaggregated storage fro...