Company to Transition Consumption of Over
One Billion Cores Per Year to RISC-V to Drive Momentum of Open
Source Processors for Data Center and Edge Computing
Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) announced today at the 7th
RISC-V Workshop that the company intends to lead the industry
transition toward open, purpose-built compute architectures to meet
the increasingly diverse application needs of a data-centric world.
In his keynote address, Western Digital’s Chief Technology Officer
Martin Fink expressed the company’s commitment to help lead the
advancement of data-centric compute environments through the work
of the RISC-V Foundation. RISC-V is an open and scalable compute
architecture that will enable the diversity of Big Data and Fast
Data applications and workloads proliferating in core cloud data
centers and in remote and mobile systems at the edge. Western
Digital’s leadership role in the RISC-V initiative is significant
in that it aims to accelerate the advancement of the technology and
the surrounding ecosystem by transitioning its own consumption of
processors – over one billion cores per year – to RISC-V.
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Western Digital to Accelerate the Future
of Next-Generation Computing Architectures for Big Data and Fast
Data Environments (Graphic: Business Wire)
As Big Data and Fast Data environments proliferate, they break
the boundaries of traditional infrastructure and system
architecture. The “general-purpose” technologies and architectures
that have been in place for decades are reaching their limits of
scalability, performance and efficiency. General-purpose workloads
that are supported by general-purpose architectures typically have
a uniform ratio of processing resources, such as operating system
(OS) processing, specialty offload processing, memory, data storage
and interconnect. As Big Data gets bigger and faster, and Fast Data
gets faster and bigger, the “one size fits all” approach of
general-purpose computing is failing to meet the increasingly
diverse application workloads of our data-centric world.
Data-Centric Environments
As the diversity of Big Data and Fast Data workloads expand,
data-centric compute architectures will need the ability to scale
resources independent of one another. The architectures for
tomorrow will need to go beyond the limited, standard resource
ratios of general purpose compute architectures and enable
purpose-built solutions with data-optimized levels of OS
processing, specialty processing, memory, storage and interconnect.
The extreme data and compute workloads for analytics, machine
learning, artificial intelligence and smart systems demand
purpose-built environments.
“Western Digital is a leader in storage products and
technologies, and we are now expanding that leadership to open,
data-centric compute architectures,” said Mike Cordano, president
and chief operating officer, Western Digital. “RISC-V will allow
the entire industry to realize the benefits of next-generation
architectures while also enabling us to create more purpose-built
devices, platforms and storage systems for Big Data and Fast Data
applications. We are moving beyond just storing data to now
creating entire environments that will enable users to realize the
value and possibilities of their data.”
Moving Compute Closer to Data
Western Digital is a leading provider of solutions to capture,
preserve, access and transform data. RISC-V will enable the company
to participate in, and leverage a broad community of inventors
focused on bringing increasing amounts of processing power closer
to data. As we bring compute power closer to data, customers will
be able to minimize data movement at the edge and within their data
centers, optimizing processing that is based on location, workload
or a time-value need.
Accelerating the RISC-V Ecosystem
To contribute toward the advancement and success of the RISC-V
ecosystem, Western Digital plans to transition future core,
processor, and controller development to the RISC-V architecture.
The company currently consumes over one billion processor cores on
an annual basis across its product portfolio. The transition will
occur gradually and once completely transitioned, Western Digital
expects to be shipping two billion RISC-V cores annually. The
company is committed to advancing RISC-V technology for use in
mission-critical applications so that it can be deployed in its
products.
Western Digital is engaged in active partnerships and
investments in RISC-V ecosystem partners. The company recently
completed a strategic investment in Esperanto Technologies, a
developer of high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions
based on the open RISC-V architecture. Esperanto, which is
headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., includes a seasoned team of
experienced processor and software engineers with the goal of
making RISC-V the architecture of choice for compute-intensive
applications, such as machine learning.
“The open source movement has demonstrated to the world that
innovation is maximized with a large community working toward a
common goal,” said Fink. “For that reason, we are providing all of
our RISC-V logic work to the community. We also encourage open
collaboration among all industry participants, including our
customers and partners, to help amplify and accelerate our efforts.
Together we can drive data-focused innovation and ensure that
RISC-V becomes the next Linux success story.”
For further information on today’s RISC-V announcement or to
view a webcast replay of Martin Fink’s keynote at the 7th RISC-V
Workshop, visit http://innovation.wdc.com.
For more information on the RISC-V Foundation and the 7th RISC-V
Workshop, visit https://riscv.org.
About Western Digital
Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. The
company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture,
preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of
data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile
sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver
the possibilities of data. Western Digital® data-centric solutions
are marketed under the G-Technology™, HGST, SanDisk®, Tegile™,
Upthere™ and WD® brands.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements,
including statements regarding the RISC-V Foundation and its
initiatives; our contributions to and investments in the RISC-V
ecosystem; the transition of our devices, platforms and systems to
RISC-V architectures; shipments of RISC-V processor cores; our
market positioning, business strategy and technology development
efforts; market trends and data growth and its drivers. There are a
number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these
forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among
others: volatility in global economic conditions; business
conditions and growth in the storage ecosystem; impact of
competitive products and pricing; market acceptance and cost of
commodity materials and specialized product components; actions by
competitors; unexpected advances in competing technologies; our
development and introduction of products based on new technologies
and expansion into new data storage markets; risks associated with
acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in
manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the
company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the
"SEC"), including the company’s Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on
Nov. 7, 2017, to which your attention is directed. You should not
place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which
speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no
obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect
subsequent events or circumstances.
Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, G-Technology,
SanDisk, Tegile, Upthere and WD are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the
U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks, registered
trademarks, and/or service marks, indicated or otherwise, are the
property of their respective owners.© 2017 Western Digital
Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Western Digital Corp.Media Contact:Jim
Pascoe408.717.6999jim.pascoe@wdc.comorInvestor Contact:Bob
Blair949.672.7834robert.blair@wdc.com
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