>> (enchanted music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another CUBE Conversation from our awesome Palo Alto Studios. We've got a great conversation today. We're going to be talking about flash memory, other types of memory, classes of applications, future of how computing is going to be made more valuable to people and how it's going to affect us all. And to do that we've got Scott Nelson who's the Senior Vice President and GM of the memory unit at Toshiba Memory America. And Doug Wong who's a member of the technical staff also at Toshiba Memory America. Gentlemen, welcome to the CUBE >> Thank you >> Here's where I want to start. That when you think about where we are today in computing and digital devices, etc., a lot of that has been made possible by new memory technologies, and let me explain what I mean. For a long, time storage was how we persisted data. We wrote transactions to data and we kept it there so we could go back and review it if we wanted to. But something happened in the last dozen years or so, it happened before then but it's really taken off, where we're using semi-conductor memory which allows us to think about how we're going to deliver data to different classes of devices, both the consumer and the enterprise. First off, what do you think about that and what's Toshiba's association with these semi-conductor memories been? Why don't we start with you. >> So, appreciate the observation and I think that you're spot on. So, roughly 35 years ago Toshiba had the vision of a non-volatile storage device. So, we brought to market, we invented NOR flash in 1984. And then later the market wanted something that was higher density, so we developed NAND flash technology, which was invented in 1987. So, that was kind of the genesis of this whole flash revolution that's really been disruptive to the industry as we see it today. >> So, added up, it didn't start off in large data centers. It started off in kind of almost unassuming devices associated with particular classes of file. What were they? >> So, it was very disruptive technology. So the first application for the flash technology was actually replacing audio tape and the phone answering machine. And then it evolved beyond that into replacing digital film. Kept going replacing cassette tapes and then if you look at today it enabled the thin and light that we see with the portability of the notebooks and the laptops. The mobility of content with our pictures, and our videos and our music. And then today, the smart phone, that wouldn't really be without the flash technology that's necessary that gives us all of the high density storage that we see. >> So, this suggests a pretty expansive role of semi-conductive related memory. Give us a little sense of where is the technology today? >> Well, the technology today is evolving. So, originally floating-gate flash was the primary type of flash that we created. It's called two-dimensional, cleaner, floating-gate flash. And that existed from the beginning all the way through maybe to 2015 or so. But, it was not possible to really shrink flash any further to increase the density. >> In the 2D form? >> In the 2D form, exactly. So, we to move to a 3D technology. Now Toshiba presented the world's first research papers on 3D flash back in 2007, but at that time it was not necessary to actually use 3D technology at that time. When it became difficult to increase the density of flash further that's when we actually moved to production of our 3D flash memory which we call BiCS flash. And BiCS stands for bit column stacked flash and that's our trade name for our 3D memory. >> So, we're now in 3D memory technology because we're creating more data and the applications are demanding more data, both for customer experience and new classes of application. So, when we think about those applications Toshiba used to have to go to people and tell them how they could use this technology and now you've got an enormous number of designers coming to you. Doug, what are some of the applications that you're anticipating hearing about that's driving the demand for these technologies? >> Well, beyond the existing applications, such as personal information appliances like laptops and portables, and also in data centers which is actually a large part of our business as well. We also see emerging technologies as becoming eventual large users of flash memory. Things like autonomous vehicles or augmented or virtual reality. Or even the emerging IOT infrastructure and that's necessary to support all these portable devices. So these are devices that currently aren't using large amounts of flash, but are going to be in the future. Especially as the flash memory gets more dense, and less expensive. >> So there's an enormous range of applications on the horizon. Going to drive greater demand for flash, but there's some business challenges of achieving that demand. We've seen periodic challenges of supply, price volatility. Scott, when we think about Toshiba as a leader in sustaining a kind of good flow of technology into these applications, what is Toshiba doing to continue to satisfy customer demand, sustain that leadership in this flash marketplace? >> So, first off as Doug had mentioned the floating-gate technology has reached its ability to scale in a meaningful way. And so the other part of that also, is the limitation on the dye density so the market demand for these applications are asking for a higher density, higher performance, lower latency type of applications. And so because floating-gate has reached the end of its usefulness in terms of being able to scale, that brought about the 3D. And so the 3D, that gives us our higher density and then along with the performance it enables these applications. So, from Toshiba's point, we are seeing that migration that is happening today. So, the floating-gate is migrating over to the 3D. It's not to say that floating-gate demand will go away. There's a lot of applications that require the lower density. But certainly the higher density where you need a dye level 256 512 giga bit even up to terabit of data. That's where the 3D's go into play. Second to that really goes into the cap back. So, obviously that requires a significant amount of cap backs not only on the development but also in terms of capacity. And that, of course, is very important to our customers and to the industry as a whole for the assurance of supply. >> So, we're looking so Toshiba's value to the marketplace is both in creating these new technologies, filling out a product line, but also stepping up and establishing the capacity through significant capital investments in a lot of places around the globe to ensure that the supply is there for the future. >> Exactly right. You know, Toshiba is the most experienced flash vendor out there and so we led the industry in terms of the floating-gate technology and we are technology leaders; industry's migrating into the 3D. And so, with that, we continue with a significant capital investment to maintain our presence in the industry as a leader. >> So, when we think about leadership, we think about leadership both in consumer markets, because volume is crucial to sustaining these investments, generating returns, but I also want to spend just a second talking about the enterprise as well. What types of enterprise relationships do you guys envision? And what types of applications do you think are going to be made possible by the continued exploitation of flash in some of these big applications that we're building? Doug, what do you think? >> Well, I think that new types of flash will be necessary for new, emerging applications such as AI or instant recognition of images. So, we are working on next generation flash technology. So, historically flash was designed for lowest cost per bit. So that's how flash began to take over the market for storage from hard drives. But there are a class of applications that do require very low latencies. In other words, they want faster performance. So we are working on a new flash technology that actually optimizes performance over cost. And that is actually a new change to the flash memory landscape. And as you alluded to earlier there's a lot of differentiation in flash now to address specific market segments. So that's what we are working on, actually. Now, generically, these new non-volatile memory technologies are called storage class memories. And they include things like optimized flash or potentially face change memories resistive memories. But all these memories, even though they're slower than say the volatile memories such as D-ram and S-ram they are, number one they're non-volatiles which means they can learn and they can store data for the future. So we believe that this class of memory is going to become more important in the future to address things like learning systems and AI. >> Because you can't learn what you can't remember. >> Exactly. >> I heard somebody say that once. In fact, I've got to give credit. That came straight from Doug. So, if we think about looking forward the challenges that we face ultimately is have the capital structure necessary to build these things. The right relationships with the designers necessary to provide guidance and suggest about the new cost of applications, and the ability to consistently deliver into this. Especially for some of these new applications as we look forward. Do you guys anticipate that there will be in the next few years, particular moments or particular application forms that are going to just kick a lot of or further kick some of the new designs, some of the new technologies into higher gear? Is there something autonomous vehicles or something that's just going to catalyze a whole new way of thinking about the role that memory plays in computing and in devices? >> Well, I think that building off of a lot of the applications that are utilizing NAND technology that we're going to see now we have the enterprise, we have the data center that's really starting to take off to adopt the value proposition of NAND. And as Doug had mentioned when we get into the autonomous vehicle we get into AI or we get into VR a lot of applications to come will be utilizing the high-density, low-latency that the flash offers for storage. >> Excellent. Gentlemen, thanks very much for being on the CUBE. Great conversation about Toshiba's role in semi-conductor memory, flash memory, and future leadership as well. >> Thank you, Peter. >> Scott Nelson is the Senior Vice President and GM of the memory unit at Toshiba Memory America. Doug Wong is a member of the tactical staff at Toshiba Memory America. I'm Peter Burris. Thanks once again for watching the CUBE. (enchanted music)