Josh Guyer | Storage Device Qualification Engineer
IBM

Josh works at IBM as a storage device qualification engineer and project manager. He has been at IBM for 4 years and was hired as a college new-graduate from Iowa State University with a BS in Computer Engineering. Throughout Josh's time at IBM, he has been focused on created storage device test automation tools that can work across the wide range of IBM products. With his leadership, the team has improved both the test development process and the qualification process for IBM's internal teams as well as our many key HDD and SSD suppliers

Appearances:

Future of Memory and Storage - Day 2 @ 08:55

Near-line drives vs QLC … what about Near-line killer?

The storage industry is entering a period of rapid transformation as near line HDDs, QLC SSDs, and emerging high capacity solid state alternatives respond to unprecedented pressures from AI and tightening global supply. AI inference workloads are generating massive volumes of warm and cold data, driving severe near line HDD shortages with lead times now exceeding 52 weeks, with users locking in drive supply more than a year in advance at times. This shortage, coupled with limited HDD manufacturing expansion is causing hyperscalers to accelerate the adoption of high capacity SSD solutions even for cold data tiers. As a result, AI driven demand and supply chain constraints are reshaping the near line segment, with HDDs expected to remain a key part of the landscape for the near term, but as QLC capacity grows, will there be “Near Line Killers” that displace HDDs? We will examine the trade-offs and trends and discuss possible scenarios for future.

Dave Verburg, Senior Technical Staff Member, Storage Technology, IBM