Western Digital backs RISC-V
Announcement at the seventh RISC-V workshop boosts the use of open source processors.
Western Digital, the company best known for producing hard drives and other storage products, announced at the seventh RISC-V Workshop that it was shifting ( http://bit.ly/risc-workshop) towards open, purpose-built computer architectures. The aim is for future core, processor, and controller development to be begin moving across to RISC-V architecture.
In the press release announcing the US-based company’s ambition (which can be found at http://bit.ly/western-data), Western Digital states that the “transition will occur gradually and once completely transitioned, Western Digital expects to be shipping two billion RISC-V cores annually.” Furthermore, the company is “committed to advancing RISC-V technology for use in mission-critical applications so that it can be deployed in its products.”
While the RISC-V ecosystem is still in its early stages of development, the commitment of such a major player will be seen as a major boost to the open source instruction set architecture (ISA). As consumers and companies depend on everexpanding storage space, either locally or via a network, companies such as Western Digital need flexible and robust hardware to support those demands. Western Digital’s chief technology officer Martin Fink explains the appeal of RISC-V for the company, saying that, “The open source movement has demonstrated that innovation is maximised with a large community working toward a common goal… For that reason, we’re providing all of our RISC-V logic work to the community.”
For more information on the RISC-V Foundation and the events of the seventh RISC-V Workshop, head to https://riscv.org.