Western Digital Corporation

05/09/2022 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/09/2022 10:23

Western Digital Launches New Family of High-Capacity SSDs to ...

What's Next Western Digital Event - Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that it is now sampling its new Ultrastar® NVMe™ PCIe® 4.0 SSDs to select hyperscale customers. Built upon its strong vertical integration capabilities, these new SSDs are purpose-built to provide performance at scale while reducing TCO for public cloud deployments.

Today, cloud infrastructures are increasingly disaggregated providing elasticity, scalability and predictability for growing as-a-service offerings. Disaggregating storage from compute also enables a new segment of high-capacity data center NVMe SSDs that improve storage utilization and increase data center rack densities for virtualized and multi-tenant environments. Whether it's the ongoing digital transformation to the cloud or simple storage for the massive amounts of new data generated from IoT, the new Ultrastar NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs accelerate the deployment of cloud services and data center scaling.

"The cloud is becoming home to virtually every business- or mission-critical application and must deliver uncompromised performance at scale. As a result, SSDs are taking up a greater portion of the data center," said Rob Soderbery, EVP and GM, Western Digital's Flash Business Unit. "Our new family of high-capacity SSDs gives cloud customers the ability to manage, scale and provision infrastructures with high-capacity, low TCO and better QoS consistency. This allows them to provide flexible cloud services that can adapt and scale to the changing demands of the digital world around us."

New High-Capacity NVMe SSDs for Performance at Scale

The new Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe SSD family includes a 2.5-inch form-factor for traditional infrastructure and the slimmer, ruler E1.L form-factor, both with capacities up to 15.36TB1, next-generation BiCS5 3D TLC NAND and a PCIe 4.0 interface.

The Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe SSDs improve storage resource utilization by increasing the number of virtualized hosts per SSD and by consolidating larger application datasets. These datasets for big data analytics and AI/ML also benefit from moving to higher capacities by unlocking low latency and higher throughput of the DC SN650 NVMe SSD, which translates into faster time-to-insights and real-time analytics. The slimmer E1.L form-factor significantly increases rack storage density, thereby reducing TCO while improving storage manageability, serviceability and efficiency. The DC SN650 E1.L NVMe SSD is compliant with the OCP Cloud Specification 1.0a.

Leveraging Western Digital's in-house SSD controller designs, firmware development, and vertical integration, the new drives underscore the company's continued strengths in developing innovations that allow customers to unlock the potential of data.

Western Digital is now sampling the Ultrastar DC SN650 drives and expects to begin production shipments in the second half of 2022.

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About Western Digital
Western Digital is on a mission to unlock the potential of data by harnessing the possibility to use it. With Flash and HDD franchises, underpinned by advancements in memory technologies, we create breakthrough innovations and powerful data storage solutions that enable the world to actualize its aspirations. Core to our values, we recognize the urgency to combat climate change and have committed to ambitious carbon reduction goals approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. Learn more about Western Digital and the Western Digital®, SanDisk® and WD® brands at www.westerndigital.com.

1One terabyte (TB) is equal to one trillion bytes and one petabyte (PB) is equal to one thousand terabytes. Actual user capacity may vary depending on the operating environment.

© 2022 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Western Digital, the Western Digital design, the Western Digital logo and Ultrastar are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. The NVMe word mark is a trademark of NVM Express, Inc. PCIe is a registered trademark and/or service mark of PCI-SIG in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Product specifications are subject to change without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products will be available in all regions of the world.

Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding expectations for the available uses and applications for the company's products; expectations for the availability and performance of the company's products, and the development of future products; and expectations for demand and market trends. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among others: future responses to and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; volatility in global economic conditions; impact of business and market conditions; impact of competitive products and pricing; our development and introduction of products based on new technologies and expansion into new data storage markets; risks associated with cost saving initiatives, restructurings, acquisitions, divestitures, mergers, joint ventures and our strategic relationships; difficulties or delays in manufacturing or other supply chain disruptions; hiring and retention of key employees; our substantial level of debt and other financial obligations; changes to our relationships with key customers; disruptions in operations from cyberattacks or other system security risks; actions by competitors; risks associated with compliance with changing legal and regulatory requirements and the outcome of legal proceedings; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's most recently filed periodic report, to which your attention is directed. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.