SiFive, Inc., the leading provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, today announced it raised $61 million in a Series E round led by SK hynix, joined by new investor Prosperity7 Ventures, with additional funding from existing investors, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital.

"Global demand for storage and memory in the data center is increasing as AI-powered business intelligence and data processing growth continues", said Youjong Kang, VP of Growth Strategy, SK hynix. "SiFive is well-positioned to grow with opportunities created from data center, enterprise, storage and networking requirements for workload-focused processor IP."

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 financial results. "I am extremely proud of the way our team has navigated the complexities and uncertainties inherent in this unprecedented environment, as we continue to adapt to provide supply continuity and high-quality products to our customers and drive value for our shareholders," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "While we continue to navigate through a dynamic environment, we remain focused on managing the business for the long-term, including ramping two important product lines to high volume: our SSD products and our energy-assisted capacity enterprise drives. We will continue to deliver the quality, performance and cost-effectiveness our customers rely on, and I am confident that our end market diversity and breadth, broad customer base, channel reach, and innovative leadership all position Western Digital to benefit from the multi-year growth in data creation and storage."

In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, Western Digital's revenue increased 18% year-over-year to $4.3 billion, led by strength within Data Center Devices & Solutions and Client Devices end markets.

Western Digital announced it is extending the industry's highest capacity Ultrastar HDDs to a selection of its G-Technology products, empowering professionals with powerful, ultra-reliable solutions to manage massive volumes of content for optimized creative workflows. A first for the consumer and professional markets, the 18 TB enterprise-class Ultrastar drives are available in three G-Technology brand product families, including G-DRIVE, G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3, G-SPEED Shuttle with Thunderbolt 3 and G-SPEED Shuttle XL with Thunderbolt 3.

The commercially available enterprise-class 18 TB Ultrastar HDDs deliver the industry's highest areal density by leveraging innovative new technologies including Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording technology, the industry's first Triple Stage Actuator, and a 9-disk HelioSeal platform. The powerful 7,200 RPM drives come with a 2.5M hours MTBF rating and a 5-year limited warranty.

Continuously innovating to help organizations keep pace with rapidly expanding volumes of data, Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that it is extending its HDD technology and capacity leadership into its broader portfolio of data center solutions. Leveraging innovations from the Ultrastar 18 TB and 20 TB HDD technology platform, the WD Gold family now features new 16 TB and 18 TB CMR HDD capacities. Also available are an upgraded line of Ultrastar JBOD platforms and an Ultrastar hybrid storage server featuring Ultrastar 16 TB and 18 TB CMR HDDs. Through Western Digital's vertical integration capabilities and broad portfolio, the company continues to be uniquely positioned to help customers meet data demands as they design their storage infrastructures for better efficiency and productivity.

"Western Digital's expanded family of data center HDD solutions clearly addresses a variety of customer needs, which puts them in a unique early position to capitalize on cloud and OEM customer transitions to 18 TB, and even to 20 TB for those optimizing the benefits of SMR," said John Chen, vice president at TRENDFOCUS. "Capacity-enterprise HDDs will continue to dominate the nearline and secondary storage market as there is simply no other cost-effective substitute for data at scale. As a result, we expect nearline disk drive exabytes shipments to grow at a 32.5% CAGR, reaching 1.9 zettabytes by 2024."

Western Digital had already announced the Ultrastar DC HC550 drives back in late 2019, but only now have they actually been released for sale. The new drives make use of CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), where data is stored in parallel tracks that increase rewriting proficiency of the drives compared to SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording, in which data tracks are overlapped for higher data density). In addition to CMR, Western Digital is employing some form of energy assistance (the EA in EAMR), though the company hasn't slipped many technical details on what kind of energy assistance is actually employed.

The drives are available in either SATA or SAS connections, with a data density of up to 1,022 gigabits per square inch in these 18 TB drives. Nine platters are employed, with speeds rated at 270 MB/s at 7,200 RPM. A 512 MB cache helps increase overall data speeds, and WD is offering their usual 5-year warranty with continuous operation and 550 TBW per year ratings. Street pricing for these Ultrastar DC HC550 18 TB drives seems to over around €630.

Western Digital today announced new solutions that provide the foundation for next-generation data infrastructures designed around Ultrastar NVMe SSDs and supercharged by NVMe-oF. Building upon the company's innovative design and integration capabilities - from NAND Flash to storage platforms - the new dual-port, performance Ultrastar DC SN840 NVMe SSDs and in-house RapidFlex NVMe-oF controllers are standalone solutions that combine to create the new OpenFlex Data24 NVMe-oF Storage Platform, a new shared storage JBOF (Just a Bunch of Flash) enclosure that extends the value of NVMe to multiple hosts over a low-latency Ethernet fabric network. These new solutions further expand Western Digital's data center portfolio to help customers transition to higher efficiency NVMe SSDs and more advanced shared storage architectures to meet the evolving demands of performance-driven applications and workloads.

In today's global digital economy, microseconds count. As hyperscale cloud and enterprise data centers constantly work to remove bottlenecks to ensure uncompromised performance and availability of essential applications, while also keeping pace with unprecedented data growth, customer adoption of NVMe and NVMe-oF solutions continues to accelerate. Industry analyst firm IDC expects hyperscalers, OEMs and end-user IT organizations to continue to transition away from legacy SATA and SAS interfaces, with NVMe on track to reach more than 55 percent of total enterprise SSD units shipped in 2020 and grow at a 2018-2023 CAGR of 38 percent.

We want to thank our customers and partners for your feedback on our WD Red family of network attached storage (NAS) hard drives. Your real-world insights shared through in-depth reviews, blogs, forums and from our trusted partners are directly contributing to our work on an expansion of models and clarity of choice for customers. Please continue sharing your experiences and expectations of our products, as this input influences our development.

Due to the fact that the range of use cases for NAS has become increasingly diverse, we are now making it easier for users to match the right drive with their applications and workloads - from moderate small office/home office (SOHO) workloads to intensive small- and medium-business (SMB) use, as well as more demanding environments.

Western Digital started selling an 18 TB variant of its WD Gold line of "enterprise class" SATA hard drives (model: WD181KRYZ). The WD Gold series tops the company's SATA HDD lineup and its in the gray area between client and scalar enterprise segments, where the company sells its HGST Ultrastar HDDs. WD Gold drives are still rated for 24x7 operation, and can be safely used in large RAID arrays. The drives are confirmed to lack SMR and DM-SMR; and are confirmed to use CMR (conventional magnetic recording), which ensures predictable write speeds and random-write performance. The WD Gold WD181KRYZ features 7,200 RPM spindle speed, HelioSeal technology (the main disk chamber is sealed and filled with inert helium gas), and 2.5 million-hour MTBF. Performance numbers and cache size for the 18 TB model are unknown, but the 14 TB variant in this series offers up to 267 MB/s sequential transfers, and features a 512 MB DRAM write cache. The WD181KRYZ is listed on UK store SCAN for £520.

Western Digital has been hit by a class-action lawsuit over alleged false advertising over some of its WD Red hard drives featuring undocumented DM-SMR (drive-managed shingled magnetic recording), a physical layer data writing technique that maximizes capacity at heavy costs of random write performance, that effectively render the drives unfit for RAID applications that are common with NAS setups. Trouble brewed for Western Digital in April, as a Blocks & Files report exposed presence of SMR on certain popular WD Red drives as an explanation as to why the drives couldn't be added to RAID volumes.

Western Digital initially tried to defend its position by explaining what DM-SMR is, that the standard WD Red has been tested on most SOHO NAS devices, that they're not meant for serious (> 8-drive) NAS setups; and pointing people to their pricier WD Red Pro, or enterprise-segment Ultrastar HDDs, leading to more community backlash. Days later, Western Digital finally came out with a list of its HDDs that use SMR. Bellevue Washington-based Hattis & Lukacs, class-action specialists, are leading the charge against Western Digital, and are inviting aggrieved U.S. residents to join the class.

According to the latest investigations by the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, NAND Flash bit shipment in 1Q20 was relatively on par with 4Q19. The overall ASP of NAND Flash products also climbed during the period. As a result, the global NAND Flash revenue for the quarter went up by 8.3% QoQ to US$13.6 billion.

In 1Q20, demand for enterprise SSDs exceeded supply because cloud service providers' procurement for data centers had been growing progressively since 4Q19. Also, inventories of NAND Flash suppliers mostly returned to normal during the period. Consequently, most NAND Flash products for the major applications experienced a rise in contract prices. As for the impact of COVID-19 during the Lunar New Year, TrendForce's investigations at the time found that the server supply chain managed to make a better recovery than the supply chains for notebook computers and smartphones. The impact of the outbreak on the storage demand from the cloud services sector was thus quite limited. On the other hand, the production of notebooks and smartphones was affected by logistical problems and breakage in the component supply chain. Because of this, notebook and smartphone manufacturers have gradually resumed production since March.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal third quarter 2020 financial results. "I joined Western Digital a little over a month ago because I have strong conviction in the digital transformation that is reshaping every industry, every company and how all of us live our daily lives," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "While I couldn't have anticipated the unprecedented series of events that have transpired, I'm very proud of how the company has responded to an extremely dynamic environment with dedicated focus both on our employees' safety as well as delivering our market leading technology to our customers. As the only company in the world to provide a broad array of NAND flash, Solid State Drives (SSD) and Hard Disk Drives (HDD) solutions, I'm confident our innovation will drive significant new value for customers around the world."

We generated $142 million in cash from operations during the fiscal third quarter of 2020 and ended the quarter with $2.9 billion of total cash and cash equivalents. We returned $149 million to shareholders through dividends and used $212 million to reduce debt. On February 13, 2020, we declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of common stock, which was paid to shareholders on April 17, 2020. Going forward, we are suspending our dividend to strengthen our reinvestment in growth and innovation and to support our ongoing deleveraging efforts. We will reevaluate our dividend policy as leverage ratios improve.

Western Digital on Tuesday (27/04) announced availability of its WD Purple QD101 line of ultra-endurance microSDXC cards for use as internal storage in surveillance devices, such as smart security cameras. The card implements 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, is capable of 500 P/E cycles, and 256 TBW for its top of the line 512 GB variant. The card is particularly useful as a failsafe storage device for cameras in case their link to the NVR server is severed, and is rated for 24x7 operation. The card comes in capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB. The card is now shipping to NVR and smart camera manufacturers.

Western Digital on Thursday (23/04) released an updated statement about the company's stand on SMR (shingled magnetic recording) being used on certain internal hard drives, including certain client-segment WD Red models recommended by the company for NAS applications, without proper disclosure on the product's marketing materials or data-sheets. It's surprising to note that SMR is being used not in some of the higher-capacity models (8 TB or higher) as previously thought, but rather lower-capacity ones, 6 TB or lower, including a 2 TB 3.5-inch drive, and a 1 TB 2.5-incher.

Perhaps SMR is being used in these lower-capacity drives to reduce the number of platters, by cramming in more data per recording surface. As on 22nd April (when the list was internally compiled by Western Digital), there are 9 client-segment hard drives that use SMR, four of which are from the company's WD Red family, two each from the WD Blue 3.5-inch and WD Blue 2.5-inch families; and one from the 2.5-inch WD Black family. Among the WD Red series drives with SMR are the 2 TB WD20EFAX, the 3 TB WD30EFAX, the 4 TB WD40EFAX, and the 6 TB WD60EFAX.

Western Digital gave its first response to allegations of the company implementing SMR (shingled magnetic recording) on its WD Red internal hard drives without properly documenting it. The WD Red series is extensively marketed as being "NAS optimized," which caused many NAS and RAID DAS enthusiasts to pick it up for home-office use, only to discover that the company's implementation of drive-managed SMR (DM-SMR) makes them effectively unfit for RAID use, as DM-SMR is vital for some of the higher-capacity WD Red models to achieve their nameplate capacity, while coming at a heavy cost of random write performance.

"SMR is tested and proven technology that enables us to keep up with the growing volume of data for personal and business use. We are continuously innovating to advance it. SMR technology is implemented in different ways - drive-managed SMR (DMSMR), on the device itself, as in the case of our lower capacity (2 TB - 6 TB) WD Red HDDs, and host-managed SMR, which is used in high-capacity data center applications. Each implementation serves a different use case, ranging from personal computing to some of the largest data centers in the world.," Western Digital writes.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced its SSD business continues to grow at a strong rate following an astounding 2019. SSD demand through Q1 2020 remained high due to continued growth in the client, enterprise and OEM sectors. Since 2019, Kingston has broadened its SSD portfolio with three new client SSDs, five data center-specific drives - two of which achieved VMware Ready status - and launched its first U.2 NVMe PCIe solution.

Market share data for 2019 from analyst research companies Forward Insights and TRENDFOCUS showed Kingston in a strong leadership position. Forward Insights ranked Kingston in first place in worldwide channel SSD shipments with 18.3 percent market share, ahead of semiconductor manufacturers Western Digital and Samsung (16.5 percent and 15.1 percent, respectively). According to Forward Insights, almost 120 million SSDs were shipped in the channel in 2019.

Earlier this week, Western Digital was in the line of fire when it emerged that several of its WD Red family of "NAS-optimized" hard drives allegedly employ some form of shingled magnetic recording (SMR), a physical-layer data writing technique that maximizes density at a heavy cost of random write performance that effectively makes the HDDs unfit for use in RAID volumes, and in turn most NAS applications that commonly employ RAID and encourage end-users to build RAID volumes for data redundancy. A new report by Blocks & Files finds that the issue is more widespread than previously thought, and that even Seagate employs it without disclosure on certain models.

Several of Seagate's higher capacity Barracuda desktop internal hard drives use SMR without disclosing it in their data-sheets. These include the 8 TB ST8000DM004, and 5 TB ST5000DM000. Both these drives are sold under the Barracuda Compute brand, which markets "home servers, entry-level DAS, and desktop computers" among its use-cases. Seagate does market its Archive and Exos lines of HDDs are employing SMR, but mention of the technique is buried in their data-sheets, and not prominently in product marketing or packaging. Archive and Exos are targeted at bulk cold storage setups where capacity is more important than performance. Meanwhile, Toshiba has confirmed that its Desktop HDDs too employ SMR. The company's MQ04 2.5-inch and DT02 3.5-inch HDDs employ "managed SMR" (i.e. use conventional recording and switch to SMR as the platters are running out of space).

Western Digital launched the WD Red line of hard drives and solid state drives specifically for NAS applications. The rigors of NAS involves not just near 24x7 uptime, but also the ability to work in RAID volumes, as most NAS servers ease the process for end users to set up RAID volumes for data redundancy. Data Storage-focused tech publication Blocks & Files alleges that some WD Red HDDs are shipping with shingled magnetic recording (SMR), a physical-layer data recording technique that makes the drive unfit for RAID, and in turn unfit for most serious NAS setups.

SMR is a recording technique that aims to achieve higher data density per platter, by partially overlapping tracks, by taking advantage of write tracks being wider than read tracks. Think of it as trying to cram a little more than one line of text per ruling, in a ruled notepad. The biggest trade-off with cramming in more data using SMR is a heavy loss in random write performance. The controversy of Western Digital shipping SMR WD Red drives came to light when Alan Brown, a network administrator with the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, noticed that a brand new WD Red HDD kept getting kicked out of RAID arrays during resilvering (rebalancing of data with the addition of a new disk to an existing RAID array).

Western Digital is enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to easily transition to NVMe storage and dramatically improve application performance with a new addition to its portfolio of data center NVMe SSDs: the first enterprise-class NVMe SSD in the WD Gold family. Industry analyst firm IDC expects NVMe unit shipments to reach more than 79 percent of the market by 2023. With advancements in multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs, legacy storage technology has become a bottleneck to maximum application performance.

Shipping in early cQ2 2020, the new WD Gold NVMe SSDs will be available in four capacities to channel partners and end customers. The WD Gold NVMe SSD is designed to be the primary storage in servers delivering superior response times, higher throughput and greater scale than existing SATA devices for enterprise applications. WD Gold NVMe SSDs complement recently launched WD Gold HDDs by providing a high-performance storage tier for applications and data sets that requires low latency or high throughput.

According to the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, 4Q19 NAND flash bit shipment increased by nearly 10% QoQ thanks to demand growth from data center clients. On the supply side, contract prices made a successful rebound due to shortages caused by the power outage at Kioxia's Yokkaichi production base in June. In sum, 4Q19 NAND flash revenue reached $12.5 billion, an 8.5% increase QoQ.

The stronger-than-expected 4Q19 performance from the demand side helped improve supplier inventory back to normal levels. In response, NAND suppliers were able to reduce their allocations to the wafer market and instead focus on shipping products with comparatively higher margins.

Western Digital announced that it has started shipping the industry's highest-capacity HDD samples to enterprise OEMs and hyperscale customers worldwide. The 20 TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDDs and 18 TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs, first previewed in June 2019, and announced in September 2019, feature its first-ever commercial implementation of energy-assisted magnetic recording technology on a nine-disk platform, enabling customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments with unmatched total cost of ownership.

With zettabyte-scale data growth, the need for higher-capacity data storage across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads can be reliably met only with high Capacity Enterprise HDDs. The industry-leading capacities of Western Digital's Ultrastar 20 TB SMR and 18 TB CMR HelioSeal HDDs enable customers to deploy up to 22 percent fewer racks and reduce their TCO by up to 11 percent, along with the corresponding reductions in power consumption, cooling costs, and data center infrastructure needs when compared with today's 14 TB CMR HDDs.

Western Digital unveiled the WD Blue SN550 line of M.2 NVMe SSDs. A successor to the WD Blue SN500, the SN550 is updated with a new controller that utilizes PCI-Express 3.0 x4 (compared to just x2 on the SN500). Designed in-house by WD and SanDisk, the controller is based on the same architecture as the one that drives the WD Black SN750, but is DRAM-less, and has fewer flash channels. Speaking of which, WD deployed 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash, and wants the drive to compete in pricing with QLC NAND-based drives such as the Crucial P1. The 250 GB variant is priced at USD $54, the 500 GB variant $65, and the 1 TB variant $99.

All three variants take advantage of the increased PCIe bandwidth to offer sequential read speeds of up to 2,400 MB/s (the SN500 capped out at 1,700 MB/s). Write speeds vary, with the 250 GB variant offering up to 950 MB/s, the 500 GB variant up to 1,750 MB/s, and the 1 TB variant up to 1,950 MB/s. Endurance figures (TBW) of the three variants are rated at 150 TB for the 250 GB variant, 300 TB for the 500 GB variant, and 600 TB for the 1 TB variant. An interesting design choice with these drives is pushing the NAND flash chip and the controller as far apart on the PCB as possible, for less concentration of heat. All three models are backed by 5-year warranties.

Western Digital Monday unveiled the Ultrastar DC SS540, an enterprise SSD with the SAS 12 Gbps interface and the endurance of a tank. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with 15 mm thickness, the drive comes in capacities ranging from 800 GB all the way up to 15.36 TB. The 800 GB, 1.6 TB, 3.2 TB, and 6.4 TB variants offer endurance of 3 drive-writes per day (DWPD), while the 960 GB, 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, and 15.36 TB models offer 1 DWPD endurance.

Under the hood, the drive uses 3D TLC NAND flash, and depending on the model, sequential read speeds range between 1,985 MB/s to 2,130 MB/s, sequential writes between 1,024 MB/s to 2,109 MB/s. Random access performance, which is more relevant to enterprise environments, ranges between 237,000 to 470,000 IOPS reads, and 88,133 to 240,000 IOPS writes, depending on the model. MTBF on all models is rated at 2.5 million hours.

Western Digital Corp. today reported revenue of $4.0 billion for its first fiscal quarter ended October 4, 2019. The operating loss was $129 million with a net loss of $276 million, or ($0.93) per share. Excluding certain non-GAAP adjustments, the company achieved non-GAAP operating income of $235 million and non-GAAP net income of $101 million, or $0.34 per share.

In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $5.0 billion, operating income of $686 million and net income of $511 million, or $1.71 per share. Non-GAAP operating income in the year-ago quarter was $1.1 billion and non-GAAP net income was $906 million, or $3.04 per share. The company's first fiscal quarter of 2020 was a 14-week fiscal quarter, compared to a 13-week fiscal quarter for the year-ago quarter.

Western Digital Corp., today addressed head-on the need to optimize storage for video and AI analytics at the network edge. The increased use of smart cameras and ever-rising video resolutions are driving the requirement for on-camera storage. Western Digital introduced the WD Purple SC QD101 Ultra Endurance microSD card designed specifically for equipment makers, resellers and installers in the mainstream security camera market. In addition, the company announced a compelling new addition to the hard disk drive portfolio, WD Purple 14 TB HDD for surveillance, which is compatible with wide range of security systems.

According to IHS Markit Technology, global professional video surveillance camera shipments are expected to grow from 140 million to 224 million between 2018 and 2023, and those with onboard storage are expected to grow by an average of approximately 17 percent per year. 4K-compliant cameras are expected to grow from 3.6 percent of all network cameras shipped in 2018 to over 24 percent by 2023, and the up to 5.7X increase in bits generated by 4K vs.1080p video illustrates a fast-growing demand for more storage.

Western Digital today introduced an array of purpose-built storage solutions for small businesses and home offices leveraging NAS environments. The solutions include the first-ever WD Red SSDs, which enhance performance and caching abilities in a hybrid NAS environment, as well as a 14 TB capacity for the WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs.

With the increase in virtualization, 10GbE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and higher connectivity speeds are becoming an essential feature set in modern NAS systems. To help minimize a performance bottleneck, SSD speeds are crucial. To fully support the requirements of these environments, storage device durability, speed and capacity remain heavily in demand. Building on the proven reliability of Western Digital's WD Red product portfolio, the solutions are built to transform pain points to profits for the end user. When utilized as a caching solution in a NAS system, the WD Red SA500 SSD helps to boost performance while the new higher capacity WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs offer more storage space in the same NAS device.