innovation.wdc.comInnovations | Western Digital

Tealium Sync: end -- Tealium: end -- ⚲ Support Partners Blog Company SHOP Products DATA CENTER Storage Platforms JBOF & JBOD Storage Servers COMPOSABLE INFRASTRUCTURE Data Center Drives Solid State (SSD) Hard Disk (HDD) Mobility, Edge & Computing Embedded & Removable Flash Automotive Connected Home Industrial and IoT Smartphone & Tablet Surveillance Internal Drives Computing Enterprise Gaming NAS Surveillance View Products A-Z For personal storage solutions visit these Western Digital brands At G-Technology® we design some of the highest-performing and most reliable leading-edge storage solutions for end-to-end creative workflows. Every day, millions of people count on the performance, quality, and reliability of SanDisk®-branded products. WD® is a leading global data storage brand that empowers people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content on a range of devices. Drive your Game The WD BLACK SN750 M.2 NVMe SSD packs a powerful punch, delivering read speeds up to 3,470MB/s* to intensify your gaming experience. Learn More *Up to the stated speed. Values derived from internal testing; performance may vary depending upon drive capacity, host device, OS and application. Solutions Industries Automotive & Transportation Banking & Finance Government Health Care & Research Media & Entertainment Oil & Gas Telecommunications Use Cases Application Workload Big Data Data Protection & Management Hybrid Cloud IoT & Edge Surveillance Virtualization For personal storage solutions visit these Western Digital brands At G-Technology® we design some of the highest-performing and most reliable leading-edge storage solutions for end-to-end creative workflows. Every day, millions of people count on the performance, quality, and reliability of SanDisk®-branded products. WD® is a leading global data storage brand that empowers people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content on a range of devices. BUCKLE UP Counterpoint Research estimated the storage capacity requirement for autonomous vehicles to balloon over 2TB in the next decade Download Now Innovations Innovations Our Technology Focus Academic Collaborations Research publications image/svg+xml Enabling a New Era of Open Data-Centric Computing Architectures. Learn More GAME CHANGER SERIES Profiling the technologies and innovation that are moving the industry forward. Learn More A History of Innovation Contact Products Data Center Storage Systems Cloud Object Storage Storage Platforms JBOF & JBOD Storage Servers COMPOSABLE INFRASTRUCTURE Data Center Drives Solid State (SSD) Hard Disk (HDD) Mobility, Edge & Computing Embedded & Removable Flash Automotive Connected Home Industrial and IoT Smartphone & Tablet Surveillance Internal Drives Computing Enterprise Gaming NAS Surveillance Personal Storage Solutions G-Technology SanDisk Upthere WD All Products A-Z Solutions Industries Automotive & Transportation Banking & Finance Government Health Care & Research Media & Entertainment Oil & Gas Telecommunications Use Cases Application Workload Big Data Data Protection & Management Hybrid Cloud IoT & Edge Surveillance Virtualization Innovations Our Technology Focus Academic Collaborations Publications Risc-V A History of Innovation Partners Support Company Blog Contact SHOP ⚲ Company Innovation at Western Digital: The Data Revolution Begins Here Innovation has always fueled and nurtured growth at Western Digital. It is as important now, as any time in our history. From advanced data centers to mobile devices, artificial intelligence to IoT, revolutionary data analysis to tomorrow’s brightest technology, data is transforming our lives and helping us to thrive. THE SCIENCE OF DATA Technology Focus Learn about some of the ongoing investigation topics within the CTO Office by clicking the tiles below, these investigations support storage of data, gaining insights and generating value from data. Memory Centric Compute Memory Centric Compute Big Data applications, like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, require access to a large dataset to train the algorithm or neural network. This creates a need to move all the data required by the application to the processor. Moving large amounts of data over a network takes time, money, and ties up network bandwidth. This is not a sustainable or optimum approach. The root cause resides in the current von Neumann computer architecture, followed for over 30 years. In this model, the rest of the computer system revolves around the processor (termed a “general computing architecture.”). One proposed solution is to make the memory the focal point of the computer architecture–memory-centric computer architecture. However, implementation is complex since all current operating systems and applications are built around the von Neumann computer. Multiple processors, using a large pool of memory, need to implement cache coherency to avoid two processors attempting to access or rewrite a memory location that might be needed by another processor. The move to highly-parallel processing has made some inroads into multiple cores accessing memory cache and coherency, however they have used a relatively small memory space. Expanding the shared memory to multiple TB’s of data adds more complexity to the shift in architecture. Our investigations are directed at understanding what it will take to transition to a memory-centric architecture. Non-Volatile Memory Non-Volatile Memory Two different memory technologies are currently used as the memory that is accessed by the CPU, SRAM and DRAM. Both are volatile, meaning data stored will be lost when the power fails or is turned off. A new class of memory (Persistent or Storage Class Memory, SCM) is being developed that is non-volatile i.e. data does not disappear when power is lost Memory located close to the CPU needs fast access time, or latency close to the CPU clock speed, for it to be used as CPU cache memory. The latency of both SSD and HDD data storage devices is too slow to be used. Differentiating memory from storage is key when discussing this topic (here, memory refers to bit-addressable memory utilized for registers and cache accessed by the CPU, while storage refers to devices using systems to organize and store data, and is not bit-addressable). Some designs of non-volatile memory with low latency can compete with DRAM: these are called MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) or STT-MRAM (Spin Transfer Torque Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory). Other technologies that are between DRAM and SSD in latency are PCM (Phase Change Memory) or ReRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory). Western Digital has researched non-volatile memory for several years, ranging from basic materials research (including cell physics and design), to memory cell array fabrication and testing. All these efforts will be combined when a product is launched into this emerging market. These three areas are the “hardware” side of this technology. Other research targets the “software” implications of the transition to non-volatile memory. Persistent Memory Programming Models Persistent Memory Programming Models Software programmers have been writing software for years using volatile DRAM and SRAM, consequently there are many provisions in the code to deal with this fact. What will happen if DRAM is replaced with persistent nonvolatile memory? Additionally if memory is added to the computer or server that is close to DRAM in latency, how would this new SCM (Storage Class Memory) be used? What changes would need to be made to the kernel and operating system? How does this impact the SaaS (Storage as a Service) segment of the industry? How does this impact the disaster recovery segment? In reality every segment of the software hierarchy will need to review how this change would impact their products and services. Changes do not happen overnight, so there will ...