430: Interview with John Overton of Kove, Software Defined Memory
430: Interview with John Overton of Kove, Software Defined Memory  
Podcast: Destination Linux
Published On: Mon Aug 04 2025
Description: 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 Download as MP3 Support the show by becoming a patron at tuxdigital.com/membership or get some swag at tuxdigital.com/store 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