During the fiscal third quarter earnings call, Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler gave some very interesting details about the company’s SSD roadmap. Facing demand for higher capacities, which are needed to handle the ever-increasing volumes of data generated by artificial intelligence and analytics big dataWestern Digital intends to meet these needs with disks of up to 30 and even 60 TB.
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Currently, the company’s flagship data center SSD model is the 30.72TB SN640, but larger capacity models are therefore in the works. These new storage units, which have enough capacity to store around 12,000 Blu-ray movies or millions of hours of ultra-high-definition video, could radically change the configuration of data infrastructures.
The densification of storage on a single 2.5-inch medium represents a major step forward for the efficiency and management of data centers. And the operators of these centers are always looking for savings, particularly in terms of space and energy.
In parallel with the expansion of its SSD catalog, Western Digital continues to develop its HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology, which makes it possible to increase the density of traditional hard drives, up to 50 to 60 TB. This technology uses laser heating to allow more data to be stored per magnetic platter.
Although WD already sells 20TB hard drives using older PMR technology, the adoption of HAMR is seen as a future pillar of Western Digital’s high-density storage offering.
Regarding fears of cannibalization of the HDD market by SSDs, David Goeckeler made things clear: the two technologies have complementary roles in the life cycle of AI data storage. HDDs are crucial for the data “ingest” phase, they will house oceans of information and raw data sets; SSDs are increasingly used for specific uses such as training and inference in artificial intelligence.
David Goeckeler also explained that there was a virtuous cycle where increasing the capacity of SSDs and HDDs contributed to a “general uplift” of the sector, rather than substitution. According to him, this dynamic is a driving belt for the entire industry: each technological advance leads to others, thereby amplifying overall data processing and storage capacities.
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