Kristine Schroeder
Senior Director of Business Development
Avalanche Technology
The SmallSat Conference in Salt Lake City felt different this year, like an industry in transition. Usually anchored by university research and academic participation, the conference has evolved to become more commercial. The second year in its larger venue along with dates that overlap with the start of the academic year underscored the shift. With the same international draw of thousands, there were more exhibit booths, and more talk of investments. Walking the show floor and talking with many colleagues there, here’s what I observed:
In-Orbit Innovation Takes Priority.
The exhibit hall offered a clear view of where investment is going. Overall, I saw A LOT more company booths showing innovation in propulsion technology (efficient orbital propulsion, not just launch), driven by increasing emphasis on Dynamic Space Operations. Autonomous edge computing was another strong theme, as missions require faster decisions and real-time responses without waiting for instructions or processing from the ground.
Partnerships Accelerate Industry Scale.
There also appeared to be more partnerships focused on making the industry easier to scale. I heard of many alliances aimed at streamlining operations and improving manufacturing for go to market scalability and speed to deployment.
Technical Leaders Take Center Stage.
The booth staffing reflected this, with technical and program management leaders leading booth conversations in higher numbers. At many booths I often could skip the preliminary Avalanche pitch and get directly into technical discussions with the engineers and program leads building their systems. More broadly, it suggests that the industry is intensely focused on developing high-quality solutions and doing so as efficiently as possible.
Reliable Storage Demand Is Growing.
Demand for reliable data storage, suited for the rigors of Space, is clearly growing. Yet, for all the focus on advanced processing, a clear gap remains. Many current and prospective customers recognize that traditional flash-based SSDs hit their limits in this environment. Customers know they need more dependable storage to be proliferated broadly, but they are not always sure how to achieve it, not realizing that MRAM solves the exact reliability issues they’re facing, in terms of survivability and wearout. Some remain caught in long-running make-versus-buy discussions without reaching a clear conclusion. And what few yet realize, the power of radiation resilient non-volatile memory that is also random access, facilitating high IOPS for multiprocessing applications, advanced edge computing is enabled in a way that flash-based SSDs simply cannot. And finally, while considered storage class, these new drives can offer another solution to a growing need…reliable OS boot across an array of orbital environments, dovetailing with Avalanche’s position as the dominant FPGA & SoC boot solution in recent years.
I left the conference tired yet utterly motivated. The appetite for better hardware is clear and, given the ease with which MRAM-based storage solutions fit into the architecture customers are building today, my focus on beating the drum far and wide has heightened priority.
