How a Hardware Engineer Anticipates the Future

You don't become a leader in the enterprise SSD space without a bit of foresight. For Ryan Payne, Senior Director and Head of SSD Hardware Engineering at Sandisk, success depends on anticipating the problems of tomorrow and building those solutions today.

"For us, anticipation isn't just about where the market is heading. It's understanding where the market needs to go," Payne said.

But Payne's work requires more than clairvoyance. Solving the hardest problems in such a technical industry demands hard work, industry expertise, and the confidence to make bold bets.

AI's capacity crunch

When Payne started his career designing circuit boards for consumer drives, the industry was a little different, and HDDs and SSDs had more distinct niches. Hard disk was the king of capacity, while flash offered speed. When LLMs and AI took the world by storm, though, the lines began to blur.

"Prior to AI, SSDs were used in data centers for speed (IOPS) and HDDs for capacity. However, with AI use cases, including data lakes in the AI workflow, SSD presented an opportunity to pair both capacity and speed together," Payne said. After the AI arms race kicked off, data centers found themselves playing catch-up—and, largely, they still are.

"Even now our partners need way more than they have, and that's one of the key challenges we're working on right now: how can we meet those capacity demands today while building a platform that tomorrow's breakthroughs depend on," said Payne.

This is a challenge Sandisk is particularly well-suited to meeting. In those pre-AI years, Sandisk's highest capacity drives were technologically superlative, but they outpaced customer demand. Now, as the capacity crunch settles on top of the industry, Payne and his team are ready to lead from the front.

"We're finding that our customers are seeking higher capacities than they had planned for, and this is where I see our competitive advantage playing out," Payne said.

His quiet confidence radiates as he explains the intricacies of the company's roadmaps and innovations. There's a surety of purpose, a fire in his eyes as he talks about his team and their hard work. Payne's happy to talk about what Sandisk is doing today, but it's the future that truly excites him—that's where the most important projects and problems live.

"Total cost of ownership is another challenge we're tackling. SSDs, at the same capacity points as HDDs, are physically smaller and more power efficient. We're hoping to drive the industry toward smaller, more efficient data centers through these high-capacity SSDs," he said.

Capacity, power, physical space, and operating costs are the arenas where Payne sees Sandisk competing and potentially winning. But the race is on, and there are no guarantees in this industry. All Payne and his team can do is work hard and believe in their ability to deliver world-class products to a booming industry.

"We're no longer jogging as an industry. AI's spurred us on, and we're in a full-on sprint. But we're ready for it," he said.

Generations and generations of PCIe

Transitioning from one PCIe generation to the next is another opportunity for Payne to peer into the future. These transitions are years in the making, so getting them right is paramount for manufacturers and customers alike.

Stargate, the PCIe Gen 5 platform from Sandisk, touting the latest innovations in QLC and CBA technology, pairs the company's high-capacity leadership with the speed and bandwidth that data centers need. This is an accomplishment in its own right, but Payne is more excited about the platform it provides.

"In Stargate, we've built an architecture that we can extend across multiple form factors to support all of our customers: channel distribution, OEMs, and hyperscalers," he said. What's more, Payne's team built it in record time.

"In two years, we anticipated the market demands, engineered high-quality solutions, and started the manufacturing process. We've really shown that we understand the market and can execute," said Payne, beaming with pride. His team worked hard, and he's happy to give them praise.

In navigating the transition from the fourth to the fifth generation of PCIe, Payne and his team proved that Sandisk can make big things happen fast. Stargate's roadmap is set through 2027, but Payne and his team are already looking to the future.

"There's a market for PCIe Gen 5, and we're ready to meet that market right now, but we're well-positioned to get the jump on Gen 6. This industry never stops, so neither can we," said Payne.

Collaborators and competitors

The future of data storage, especially for enterprise applications, is wide open with a dizzying array of possibilities. Payne and his team wake up every day and try to figure out the best path forward, but the stakes are high.

"When you start leading, everything must change, especially your behavior. That's where we're at right now, changing how we behave in the market," said Payne. Never overwhelmed or outmatched, Payne starts with the basics: communication and fact-finding.

"Staying connected with the industry is absolutely vital for us. Summits, conferences, and collaborating with our partners and customers help us understand what the market needs. We also need to understand how our peers are performing to get a good sense of our playing field," he said.

It's relatively easy to listen to and learn from peers, partners, and customers. The tricky part, of course, is taking the information and plunging headfirst into the future. Looking back, there are trends and standards and lessons learned. There's no precedent when you start looking forward, though.

"We gather all that information that everyone has access to, and then we have to make our own assertions about what to do with that information. We anticipate the market, and we make our wagers, but at the end of the day, every single product we build is something we believe in," said Payne.

Inevitably, the process of building out a roadmap involves some big bets and bold claims. Not every product becomes the cornerstone of the data center, but that's not the point for Payne.

"Placing your bets, knowing what to invest in... that's the craft of making decisions," he said.

Winning wagers

The tech world is full of big bets and huge opportunities, but they require vision and planning. Payne, with foresight and expertise, is willing to bet on Sandisk to take a huge leap forward. Innovation and hard work chartered the course thus far, and he's confident they'll keep pointing the way forward.

"This is an exciting time for Sandisk, and I really believe we have a big role to play in pushing the industry forward. That's what we're here to do, after all. It's not just about selling products; it's about taking on the biggest challenges in our field and building world-class solutions for them."