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Thao Nguyen

Thao Nguyen Founder & CEO TORMEM INC.

Founder & CEO · San Jose, CA

About Thao

Thao Nguyen, CEO and Founder of TORmem Inc., has a wealth of experience in hardware design, product development, manufacturing operations, and supply chain management. He is a well recognized professional known for building innovative hardware for the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley, USA, EU and Asia. Thao’s expertise in building hardware over the past 35 years includes compute servers, storage servers and NetApp appliances. As VP Hardware Engineering, Distinguished Hardware Engineer at Equinix-Packet Host and Principal Technical Staff Hardware Engineer at Facebook, Thao was a pioneer in global operations manufacturing and quality engineering. He built and deployed millions of OCP servers for Facebook data centers worldwide and was a founding team member and Director of Open Compute Compliance and Interoperability at Facebook. Thao served as a Technical Staff member in the Compute and Storage Engineering division at NetApp. Beginning in 1985, Thao was involved in product development and product engineering of VLSI Applications and Logic Design at IBM. Thao started career with BSEE University of Missouri Rolla and MSEE Syracuse University.

Company

Who is TORmem?

Our Mission
TORmem was founded with one clear goal in mind: to bring innovative disaggregated memory technologies to market that will enable new applications, new computing system designs, and vastly improved cost efficiency and performance for customers from enterprise to hyperscale.

One Memory for All represents this vision through our commitment to changing the landscape of our industry by bringing about In Memory Computing (IMC) and supercomputer-like performance for the mass market, where many servers can centralize their memory needs in a single appliance.

Solving Real Problems
Today, many applications are limited by their ability to access fast memory. For real-time processing, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML), the ideal type of memory is Random Access Memory (RAM). However, an individual server in the data center can only support so much RAM, as it is installed locally in each server and cannot be shared between servers. If servers do not have enough RAM, their performance is limited, and if they have too much, significant portions of that RAM may go wastefully unused.

TORmem’s innovative approach is to create disaggregated memory appliances which contain vast amounts of RAM, which are connected to the servers in a rack using very high-speed interconnection technologies. These technologies, such as Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Generation 5.0 (PCIe 5.0) and Compute Express Link (CXL), are significantly faster than Ethernet or other more traditional technologies used to interconnect servers, allowing the memory within the TORmem appliance to be used by each server almost as if that same RAM was installed locally within each server.

The end result is a solution for disaggregated, high-speed memory at data center scale, which enables new applications, accelerates existing ones and allows for lower individual server cost.


Technologies and Products
Creating these products requires the development of new technologies to provide the speed, resilience and scalability that are needed. TORmem uses a balanced combination of leading-edge industry standards and custom development to meet these needs, with innovation in high-speed interconnects, memory controller design, and resource allocation.

Company Stage

Development

Funding Raised

$1m to $5m

Team Size

5-10 employees

Annual Revenue

$0 to $100k

Location

San Jose, CA

Founded

2021

Industry

Technology

Skills

TechnologyHardware EngineeringFounderLeadershipProduct DevelopmentManufacturing OperationsPioneer in Global OperationsProject ManagementSupply Chain ManagementDirector of Open Compute ComplianceEducation

Technology

Deep knowledge and experience in the technology industry, particularly in hardware and memory solutions.

Hardware Engineering

Thao has over 35 years of experience in hardware design and product development, focusing on innovative hardware for the high-tech industry.

Founder

Founded TORmem Inc. with a mission to innovate in memory technologies.

Leadership

As CEO and Founder of TORmem Inc., Thao leads the company in innovative memory technology solutions.

Product Development

Extensive experience in product development, particularly in compute servers, storage servers, and memory technologies.

Manufacturing Operations

Pioneered global operations manufacturing and quality engineering, building and deploying millions of servers.

Pioneer in Global Operations

Recognized for pioneering global operations manufacturing and quality engineering at major tech companies.

Project Management

Managed multiple projects related to hardware engineering and product development.

Supply Chain Management

Expertise in managing supply chain operations for hardware products.

Director of Open Compute Compliance

Served as a founding team member and Director at Facebook, focusing on compliance and interoperability.

Education

Holds a BSEE from the University of Missouri Rolla and an MSEE from Syracuse University.

Experience

job

Technical Staff, Compute and Storage Engineering

NetApp

Worked on product development and engineering for storage solutions.

Contributed to the development of innovative storage technologies.

job

VP Hardware Engineering, Distinguished Hardware Engineer

Equinix-Packet Host

Oversaw hardware engineering and manufacturing operations.

Pioneered global operations manufacturing and quality engineering.

job

Founder & CEO

TORmem Inc.

Leading the development of innovative disaggregated memory technologies for high-performance computing.

Founded the company with a mission to revolutionize memory technology in data centers.

job

Product Development Engineer

IBM

Involved in product development and engineering of VLSI Applications and Logic Design.

Started career in hardware engineering and product development.

job

Principal Technical Staff Hardware Engineer

Facebook

Led hardware engineering efforts and was a founding team member of the Open Compute Project.

Built and deployed millions of OCP servers for Facebook data centers worldwide.