430: Interview with John Overton of Kove, Software Defined Memory

Destination Linux

video: https://youtu.be/viTzTFszR_Q

In this episode of Destination Linux, we interview the founder of Kove, Dr. John Overton, about the journey from co-inventing distributed hash tables that powered the early cloud to his latest breakthrough Kove:SDM, a Software Defined Memory system that literally lets servers "download more RAM". Overton dives into the open source ethos that shaped his career. If you’re passionate about Linux, composable infrastructure, or tech that bends the laws of physics, this conversation is a must watch.

Forum Discussion Thread

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Hosted by:

Ryan (DasGeek) = dasgeek.net
Jill Bryant = jilllinuxgirl.com
Michael Tunnell = michaeltunnell.com

Links:

• https://kove.com/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table

Chapters:

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:21 Why we turned a 3-minute booth chat into a full interview
00:02:40 John Overton of Kove
00:03:48 Early career & inventing distributed hash tables
00:16:10 Foundational tech that made today's cloud possible
00:24:56 Sandfly Security, agentless Linux security [ad]
00:26:48 John's take on AI
00:39:52 The birth of Kove SDM – why it started
01:03:16 Making "download more RAM" real – memory-pool magic
01:17:40 Kove SDM vs. Compute Express Link (CXL)
01:24:54 What are there new challenges in computing you’re excited to tackle?
01:35:39 Lightning round – guilty pleasures, movies & more
01:40:03 Outro