Data Unchained

The global SSD shortage is reshaping data infrastructure, storage planning, and enterprise scale workloads. In this episode of Data Unchained, we talk with storage journalist Chris Mellor of Blocks and Files about the causes behind the NAND supply crisis, the pressure on GPU pipelines, the rise in flash pricing, and the limited fab capacity that will continue into 2027. We explore the future of disk technology, the growth of vector driven data, the increasing demand for high bandwidth memory, and the expanding role of hybrid cloud strategies as organizations struggle to secure fast storage. Chris explains how metadata rich automation, smarter tiering, high bandwidth flash, and new caching approaches can help enterprises navigate shortages, optimize existing resources, and prepare for the next twelve months of accelerated change across the storage and compute ecosystem.Follow Chris on his website: https://www.blocksandfiles.com/Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this episode of Data Unchained, Molly Presley sits down with storage industry legend Tom Coughlin to break down the surge in global demand for NAND, DRAM, SSDs, and hard drives. AI is reshaping the storage market faster than anyone anticipated, and this conversation delivers the clearest look yet at what is happening, why it happened, and what enterprises can do about it.Tom and Molly dive deep into pricing spikes, long lead times, supply chain pressures, workflow strategies, data movement challenges, and the new architectural patterns emerging as AI continues to consume storage at historic levels. If you are responsible for data infrastructure, AI readiness, cloud strategy, or capacity planning, this episode is essential.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this episode of Data Unchained, we sit down with Hao Zhong, CEO and Co-Founder of ScaleFlux, for an in-depth conversation on the future of storage, the rise of computational SSDs, and the massive shift underway in data center architecture. Hao shares the evolution from HDD to SSD, the impact of PCIe and NVMe on performance, how modern acceleration frameworks emerged, and why high-density storage is becoming essential for today’s rapidly scaling workloads. The conversation explores supply chain pressures, SSD shortages, hyperscaler demand trends, and how new architectures are shaping performance, reliability, and cost efficiency across the industry.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this Supercomputing edition of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley is joined live from the St. Louis Convention Center by Ari Berman, former Founder and CEO of Fireteam and current member of the Starfish team. The conversation explores the growing convergence of high performance computing, AI, and large scale data management, with a focus on unstructured data visibility, global file systems, and shared data stewardship across science, life sciences, and enterprise environments. Ari and Molly discuss why knowing what data you have is foundational to innovation, how organizations can reduce silos, and how platforms like Starfish and Hammerspace work together to enable discovery, collaboration, and smarter use of data at scale.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley is joined by Carl Watts of the Library of Congress for a deep dive into what it takes to manage and preserve one of the largest and most complex data environments in the world. Carl shares firsthand insight into overseeing more than 150 petabytes of historical data, navigating large scale tape migrations, and confronting the governance, copyright, and operational challenges that come with applying AI to national archives. The conversation explores whether artificial intelligence can responsibly unlock siloed collections across text, audio, video, and web archives, and what it truly costs to move, protect, and future proof America’s digital memory at petabyte scale.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this Supercomputing 25 edition of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley talks with Hunter Hagewood of Vanderbilt University’s ACCRE research computing center about the urgent storage and performance challenges that pushed Vanderbilt to rethink its entire HPC strategy. Hunter explains how procurement delays, faculty chargeback pressures, millions of small medical imaging files, manual GPU data staging, and rapidly growing research datasets created a breaking point that traditional appliance based storage could not solve. He shares how Hammer Space helped eliminate the 20 percent of workloads that were bottlenecking the cluster, enabled modular growth at scale, improved GPU performance for AI driven workflows, and positioned Vanderbilt to save nearly two million dollars over four years while supporting future research expansion.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this landmark 100th episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley sits down with Jonathan Flynn, Director of Applied Systems at Hammerspace, live from Supercomputing 2025. Together they explore the performance engineering breakthroughs that enabled Hammerspace and Samsung to deliver a historic IO500 10 Node Production result using only standard Linux, the upstream NFSv4.2 client, and off the shelf NVMe hardware.This episode breaks down how the Hammerspace Data Platform delivered more than a 33 percent gain over earlier submissions, doubled overall bandwidth, and achieved an unprecedented 809 percent improvement in the IO Hard Read test using Samsung PM1753 Gen 5 NVMe SSDs. Jonathan explains the Linux kernel innovations, metadata advancements, IO path optimization, parallel file system breakthroughs, and multi instance file placement strategies that allowed Hammerspace to reach genuine HPC class performance without proprietary clients or custom networking.Listeners get a detailed walkthrough of the architectural differences between Research and Production IO500 submissions, the impact of metadata redundancy, the performance benefits of NFSd direct and NFS direct, the role of ZFS locking improvements, and how upstream Linux contributions directly advanced the state of HPC and AI data infrastructure. Jonathan also highlights the evolution of MLPerf benchmarking, the benefits of tier zero storage, and how Hammerspace performance engineering is unlocking new levels of efficiency and scalability for AI training, scientific workloads, and large scale analytics.This episode is essential for AI architects, HPC engineers, kernel developers, data scientists, and infrastructure leaders building the next generation of high performance data platforms.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In this episode of Data Unchained we sit down with Ellison Anne Williams, Founder and CEO of Enveil, to explore one of the most important questions in modern technology: how do you protect your data from AI. In this conversation, Ellison Anne breaks down how data can be used securely across environments you do not own, trust, or control, why AI models silently leak sensitive information, and how encrypted computation is transforming the future of AI, cybersecurity, finance, and national security. Learn how privacy enhancing technologies are reshaping enterprise data protection, how secure AI evaluation works, and what technologies organizations must adopt to stay ahead of the next wave of cyber risk.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

As we count down to the 100th episode of Data Unchained, we’re revisiting one of the conversations that perfectly captures the spirit of this show: how data mobility is transforming business.In this look-back episode, host Molly Presley welcomes Harry Carr, CEO of Vcinity, for a deep dive into the technology that’s redefining how enterprises access and move data across distributed environments. Harry explains why hybrid cloud exists, how Vcinity accelerates data access without duplication or compression, and why the future of data architecture lies in making data available anywhere—instantly.From connecting global AI workflows to eliminating the need to move massive datasets, this episode explores what true “data anti-gravity” looks like and how it’s reshaping the modern enterprise.Listen as Molly and Harry discuss the evolution of data architectures, the synergy between Hammerspace and Vcinity, and what it means to build a world where applications and data connect seamlessly, no matter where they live.Cyberpunk by jiglr | https://soundcloud.com/jiglrmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US