--- description: Brian Beeler sits down in Montreal with Solidigm’s Scott Shadley after a tour of Hypertec to dig into what really matters for AI storage. title: "Podcast #142: What's Next For Storage in the AI Era?" image: https://www.storagereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/storagereview2-2.jpg --- [![Storage Review]()](https://storagereview.com/) --- [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/@storagereview) [X (Twitter)](https://twitter.twitter.com/storagereview) [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/storagereview/) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/storagereview-com) [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/storagereview?sub_confirmation=1) [Email](mailto:info@storagereview.com) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1y6VnznABhHeOSMOmbDTz0) [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/StorageReview/) [Discord](https://discord.gg/TwMHb4azdC) [RSS Feed](https://www.storagereview.com/rss.xml) [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@storagereview) [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/@storagereview) [X (Twitter)](https://twitter.com/storagereview) [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/storagereview/) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/storagereview-com) [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/storagereview?sub_confirmation=1) [Email](mailto:info@storagereview.com) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1y6VnznABhHeOSMOmbDTz0) [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/StorageReview/) [Discord](https://discord.gg/TwMHb4azdC) [RSS Feed](https://www.storagereview.com/rss.xml) [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@storagereview) [![StorageReview.com]()](https://www.storagereview.com) ≡ Menu - [Home](https://www.storagereview.com/) - [Storage Reviews](https://www.storagereview.com/review) - [Consumer Reviews](https://www.storagereview.com/consumer) - [Enterprise Reviews](https://www.storagereview.com/enterprise) - [Ubiquiti Reviews](https://www.storagereview.com/best/ubiquiti-reviews) - [SR Merch](https://store.storagereview.com) - [Leaderboards](https://www.storagereview.com/best) - [Best Storage Arrays](https://www.storagereview.com/best/storage-arrays) - [Best Enterprise SSDs](https://www.storagereview.com/best/enterprise-ssds) - [Best Servers](https://www.storagereview.com/best/servers) - [Best Desktops for Local AI](https://www.storagereview.com/best/desktops-local-ai) - [Best Laptops for Local AI](https://www.storagereview.com/best/laptops-local-ai) - [Best Local LLM Tools](https://www.storagereview.com/best/local-llm-tools) - [Agentic AI Hardware](https://www.storagereview.com/best/agentic-ai-hardware) - [Best SSDs & Hard Drives](https://www.storagereview.com/best_drives) - [Best Portable SSDs](https://www.storagereview.com/best/portable-ssds) - [Best Business Laptops](https://www.storagereview.com/best/business-laptops) - [Best Mobile Workstations](https://www.storagereview.com/best/mobile-workstations) - [Best Desktop Workstations](https://www.storagereview.com/best/desktop-workstations) - [Best Laptop Battery Life](https://www.storagereview.com/best/laptop-battery-life) - [Storage Reference Guide](https://www.storagereview.com/storage-reference-guide) - [About SR](https://www.storagereview.com/about-storagereview) - [StorageReview.com Sweepstakes Rules and Regulations](https://www.storagereview.com/storagereview-com-sweepstakes-rules-and-regulations) Search [Home](https://www.storagereview.com/) » [Podcast](https://www.storagereview.com/podcast) » Podcast #142: What’s Next For Storage in the AI Era? # Podcast #142: What’s Next For Storage in the AI Era? by Harold Fritts on November 12, 2025 [Enterprise](https://www.storagereview.com/enterprise)  ◇  [Enterprise Storage](https://www.storagereview.com/enterprise/enterprise-storage) Brian and crew recently landed in Montreal to tour the Hypertec lab facility and witness some interesting immersion-cooling trends with the leader in the field. Following the lab tour and product demos, Brian sits down with Scott Shadley, Director of Leadership Narrative at Solidigm. Scott and Brian have a lively, candid discussion as they trace the evolution of cooling, flash storage, and breaking away from legacy hard-drive form factors. However, it’s not all about immersion technology. Brian and Scott discuss signal integrity challenges in PCIe Gen5/6 and the trade-off between performance and reliability. Of course, there can’t be a podcast without an AI segment, so we cover topics such as AI-driven data growth, RAID resiliency, and large-drive “blast radius” management. Scott discusses Solidigm’s focus on developing products that customers want, rather than guessing what the industry needs. This only works when vendors work closely with customers to understand their pain points. Scott gets into the collaboration with NVIDIA. It is easy to hear the excitement in Scott’s voice. Of course, because it is a massive hardware environment, Brian has a hard time wiping the smile from his face. This podcast covers everything from early Fibre Channel drives to flash and NVMe, and also explores edge computing applications, AI inference offload, and immersion-qualified SSD developments. This pod is a must for anyone interested in the evolution of immersion cooling and flash storage, as well as why a strong partner ecosystem is crucial for customer success. If you have an extra 35 minutes, give this a listen or watch it from end to end; it’s worth the time. If you’d like to explore specific topics, we have broken it down into five-minute segments. **0:00 – 5:00 | Immersion Cooling and Industry Trends** **Highlights:** - Opening from Montreal with Solidigm and Hypertec. - Discussion of **immersion cooling**, **liquid vs. air cooling**, and touring Hypertec’s facility. - Mention of OCP and how data center engineers are “becoming plumbers” due to widespread liquid‑cooled infrastructure. - Solidigm’s collaboration with partners on **direct‑to‑chip liquid cooling solutions** is co‑designed with NVIDIA. - Philosophy of open innovation: Solidigm contributes IP to industry standards via SNIA to ensure interoperability. - Emphasis on **customer‑driven innovation** over chasing the next PCIe or interface generation. **5:00 – 10:00 | Evolution of Flash Storage and Form Factors** **Highlights:** - Reflecting on early enterprise flash (Intel X25, SAS/Fibre Channel SSDs). - Transition from legacy hard drives to SSDs and the “breaking the box” moment with NVMe. - Emergence of new form factors (EDSFF → E1.S, E1.L, E3). - Discussion about how **standardization is evolving** beyond traditional 2.5” and 3.5” drive designs. - Design challenges with immersion environments and high‑density flash platforms. - Importance of **thermal stability:** consistent environments improve endurance and reliability. - Cooling innovations directly tie to longer SSD lifespans and greater efficiency. **10:00 – 15:00 | PCIe Generations, Signal Integrity, and System Design** **Highlights:** - Talk about **connector design** challenges in next‑gen cold‑plate and PCIe Gen 5 and 6 environments. - Signal integrity issues grow from PCIe 3→5→6: Every generation increases susceptibility to noise. - Analogy: PCIe evolution from 3G to 5G: more nodes, shorter distance, tighter tolerances. - Solidigm’s view: optimize **system architecture and density** instead of chasing raw drive speed. - Many enterprise customers remain on Gen4 because it’s “fast enough” for distributed workloads. - Shift from pure performance toward holistic **throughput, reliability, and efficiency**. **15:00 – 20:00 | Reliability, Capacity, and Customer Trust** **Highlights:** - Performance is balanced with **quality, longevity, and consistency**. - SSDs reaching “reliability of a DIMM.” Many customers stop swapping drives; they fail “eloquently.” - Customer satisfaction and trust are top priorities; Solidigm scores highly in vendor ratings. - Rise of ultra‑dense drives like **122TB models (**[D5‑P5336 family](https://www.storagereview.com/review/solidigm-122-88tb-d5-p5336-review-high-capacity-storage-meets-operational-efficiency)**)** and discussion of adoption. - Larger capacities are no longer halo products. - Manufacturing challenge: Smaller drives are harder to produce as NAND density increases. - Drives sized for **total cost of ownership (TCO)** optimization; approach to “replace spinning disks.” **20:00 – 25:00 | Data Growth, AI, and Blast Radius Concerns** **Highlights:** - Industry shift from deleting data to **keeping everything, fueled** by **AI training and inference** needs. - “Data sovereignty” trend: Regional training data sets lead to more localized capacity requirements. - Growing demand for **massive local storage** to adapt global models like GPT. - Discussion of “blast radius” and the risk of losing a 100 TB drive. - Hardware RAID for NVMe is back; GPU‑accelerated parity rebuilds are gaining traction. - SSD rebuilds are fast. Downtime rather than permanent data loss is the genuine concern. - Many operators now **design for failure‑in‑place architectures** instead of manual swaps. **25:00 – 30:00 | Future Directions, AI Edge, and Innovation Opportunities** **Highlights:** - Reflection on industry-wide stock shortages driven by the AI boom and NAND supply lags. - Unique opportunity to **rethink architectures and possible** new form factors or integrated flash + networking. - Edge innovation: NVIDIA’s **Spark and Jetson** products blur the boundaries between data centers and desktops. - Exploration of **NVMe offload for inference and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)**. - Hope for a future where storage innovations take center stage at GTC alongside compute and DRAM. - Emphasis on **cross‑industry collaboration. SNIA’s** new “Storage.AI” working groups integrate storage, networking, and AI alignment efforts. **30:00 – 34:00 | Closing Thoughts and On‑Site Testing** **Highlights:** - Returning to Hypertec’s immersion servers for real‑world tests with Solidigm drives. - Discussion of **thermal stability advantages**: consistent temperatures equal no throttling. - Solidigm is working toward **fully qualified SSDs for hydrocarbon‑based immersion liquids**. - Closing conversation: Mutual excitement about hands‑on experimentation, performance consistency, and hardware innovation. - Wrap‑up and goodbyes from Montreal. **Engage with StorageReview** [Newsletter](https://www.storagereview.com/storage_newsletter) |  [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/StorageReview "Opens in a new window") | Podcast  [iTunes](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storagereview-com-storage-reviews/id1060681115 "Opens in a new window")/ [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1y6VnznABhHeOSMOmbDTz0 "Opens in a new window") |  [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/storagereview/ "Opens in a new window") |  [Twitter](https://twitter.com/storagereview "Opens in a new window") |  [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@storagereview? "Opens in a new window") |  [RSS Feed](https://www.storagereview.com/rss.xml) ♫ [Solidigm-Hypertec-Pod.mp3](https://www.storagereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Solidigm-Hypertec-Pod.mp3 "Opens in a new window") ![]() ### Harold Fritts I have been in the tech industry since IBM created Selectric. My background, though, is writing. So I decided to get out of the pre-sales biz and return to my roots, doing a bit of writing but still being involved in technology. Previous post: [Podcast #141: Graid Delivers Enterprise RAID Functionality to AI Workloads](https://www.storagereview.com/podcast/podcast-141-graid-delivers-enterprise-raid-functionality-to-ai-workloads) Next post: [Podcast #143: KIOXIA 245TB SSDs Are Here!](https://www.storagereview.com/podcast/podcast-143-kioxia) Trusted Vendors Products and solutions from our affiliate partners: - [ ![Ubiquiti Logo]() Ubiquiti](https://store.ui.com/us/en?a_aid=StorageReview "Opens in a new window") - [ ![Newegg Logo]() Newegg](https://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=g5terNMDhz0&offerid=1207190.18&subid=0&type=4 "Opens in a new window") - [ ![Amazon Logo]() Amazon](https://amzn.to/4fLJUEW "Opens in a new window") Newsletter Subscribe to the StorageReview newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news and reviews. 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