Western Digital bets big on risk-v for data processing

Western Digital will focus on deploying the risc-v architecture for the use of data processing products. WD will contribute significantly to the development of the architecture and, among other things, design its own risc-v-cores.

WD’s focus on risc-v was announced by the company’s CTO, Martin Fink, at the Risc-v Workshop held last week, for which WD was one of the major sponsors this year. According to Western Digital, the flexibility and openness of the architecture means that risc-v can be used for big data on the one hand and fast data on the other. In the future, the corporate market would need both: larger amounts of data that must be processed ever faster.

Fink did not mention specific WD products in which the chips should end up. The CTO said that users may not be aware that future products will contain a risc-v processor, just as they do not know what chips are in SSDs and USB sticks. Today, he says, WD already delivers more than a billion cores per year through its storage products and is expected to double that number. In the coming years, Western Digital plans to release devices, platforms and systems with chips based on risc-v.

Risc-v is an open source isa that originated at the Computer Science Division of the University of California. The aim of the project, which was started in 2010, is to make CPU designs freely available under a bsd license.