• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Western Digital and IBM Announce Patent Acquisition and Cross-License Agreements

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
46,388 (7.68/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
Western Digital today announced that it has acquired more than 100 patent assets from IBM (NYSE: IBM). The parties also entered into a patent cross-license agreement. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Patents acquired by Western Digital are in distributed storage, object storage, and emerging non-volatile memory. Western Digital expects the IP to further strengthen its technology leadership position and drive value creation for the company and its customers. The patents will augment Western Digital's existing portfolio of more than 10,000 patents and patent applications.

"This agreement reflects our continued focus on innovation and sets the stage for even more rapid advancement and commercialization of new data storage solutions," said Mike Cordano, president and chief operating officer, Western Digital. "We are building on Western Digital and IBM's long-standing relationship and look forward to future collaborations and business opportunities."

"This agreement with Western Digital illustrates the value of patented IBM inventions and demonstrates our leadership in licensing access to our broad patent portfolio. We look forward to a productive relationship with Western Digital," said William LaFontaine, general manager, intellectual property for IBM.

IBM has led the annual list of U.S. patent recipients for 23 consecutive years.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
Joined
Nov 4, 2005
Messages
11,689 (1.73/day)
System Name Compy 386
Processor 7800X3D
Motherboard Asus
Cooling Air for now.....
Memory 64 GB DDR5 6400Mhz
Video Card(s) 7900XTX 310 Merc
Storage Samsung 990 2TB, 2 SP 2TB SSDs and over 10TB spinning
Display(s) 56" Samsung 4K HDR
Audio Device(s) ATI HDMI
Mouse Logitech MX518
Keyboard Razer
Software A lot.
Benchmark Scores Its fast. Enough.
So WD will be manufacturing IBM HDD's for enterprise storage moving forward in exchange for IP and probably some snazzy new proprietary connector and protocol for their mainframes, since Hitachi was making them before the buyout, and the contract likely expired or was going to expire.
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Messages
13,791 (1.93/day)
I wonder if they'll push forward the traditional HDD tech or they'll just stick with what they have now and simply drop HDD's once SSD's replace them. I mean, we just stack more data per cm2, but the read/write heads haven't evolved much just like the rest of the drive for that matter.
 
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
2,053 (0.29/day)
Location
Denmark
System Name Commercial towing vehicle "Nostromo"
Processor 5800X3D
Motherboard X570 Unify
Cooling EK-AIO 360
Memory 32 GB Fury 3666 MHz
Video Card(s) 4070 Ti Eagle
Storage SN850 NVMe 1TB + Renegade NVMe 2TB + 870 EVO 4TB
Display(s) 25" Legion Y25g-30
Case Lian Li LanCool 216 v2
Audio Device(s) B & W PX7 S2e
Power Supply HX1500i
Mouse Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition
Keyboard Scope II 96 Wireless
Software Windows 11 23H2
Well - I think WD is soon going to introduce the new SMR technology, much better performance than traditional HDD technology and more GB per platter.......
 
Top