Every business seems to love an award and the Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) 2025 event has Best of Show Awards-a-plenty. There were a record-breaking number of nominations, with 24 Most Innovative something or other categories, 16 of them in the Most Innovative Technology area, and 26 winners. The excess of winners over awards comes from there being three winners for the Most Innovative Technology – Industry Standards category.
Having three winners in the same category can be seen as three equal first places but, surely, one of them must be the actual best of show? Some people might say that, if three of them are best of show, then none of them are best of show. But it’s a good idea to recognize the work of the standards bodies.
The show attracted 45 exhibitors and a total of 43 sponsors in 8 categories.
The Best of Show Award Winners are:
1. Most Innovative Customer Implementation – HPC Solution
- DDN – Cineca Supercomputing Center with DDN Data Intelligence Platform.
2. Most Innovative Enterprise Business Application – HPC Solution
- Graid Technology – Graid SupremeRAID.
3. Most Innovative Consumer Application
- Sandisk – WD BLACK SN8100 NVMe SSD.
4. Most Innovative Startup Company – Virtualization IT Infrastructure
- Verge.IO – VergeIQ.
5. Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation
- Pure Storage – DirectFlash QLC.
6. Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Application – Media and Entertainment Solution
- VAST Data – VAST Data Platform and the NHL.
7. Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Application – Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Workflow
- Infinidat – InfiniBox Platforms.
8. Most Innovative Sustainability Technology
- Western Digital – Advanced Rare Earth Material Capture Program.
9. Most Innovative Technology – Industry Standards
- SNIA Technical Work Groups – CXL Memory Hackathon & EDSFF E2 Form Factor.
- UALink Consortium – UALink 200G 1.0 Specification.
- CXL Consortium – CXL 3.X Specifications.
10. Most Innovative Technology – 3D NAND Flash Memory
- YMTC – Xtacking 4.0.
11. Most Innovative Technology – NAND Flash Solution
- Sandisk – High Bandwidth Flash (HBF).
12. Most Innovative Technology – High Bandwidth Memory Technology
- NEO Semiconductor – X-HBM Memory Solution.
13. Most Innovative Technology – DRAM Solution
- Micron – 1-Gamma Node LPDDR5X LPDRAM.
14. Most Innovative Technology – AI Accelerator
- Pliops – LightningAI FusIOnX.
15. Most Innovative Technology. Computational Memory
- XCENA – MX1 CXL3.X.
16. Most Innovative Technology – Networks
- UnifabriX – Memory-over-Fabrics.
17. Most Innovative Technology – Memory Controller
- Innodisk – CXL Memory Module
18. Most Innovative Technology – Memory Controller
- Silicon Motion – SM2514-AT Automotive SSD Controller.
19. Most Innovative Technology – 3D Memory Technology
- Adeia – Hybrid Bonding for Memory Device.
20. Most Innovative Technology – SSD Technology
- Kioxia – LC9 Series 245.76 TB SSD with BiCS FLASH generation 8 Memory.
21. Most Innovative Technology – Enterprise SSD
- Samsung – PM1763 16-Channel PCIe Gen6 SSD.
22. Most Innovative Technology – SSD Software Technology
- FADU – FADU Flexible Data Placement (FDP).
23. Most Innovative Technology – SSD Technology
- Solidigm – Liquid Cooled Hot Swappable NVMe SSD.
24. Most Innovative Technology – All-Flash Storage Server Solution
- Supermicro – ARS-121L-NE316R 1U Storage System.
The AI area dominated much of the show with its seemingly insatiable demand for more memory amd more and faster-accessed storage.
