Western Digital SVP, Christopher Bergey said there will be a continuous rapid growth drove by internet of things, smart phone and intelligent vehicle.

With the development of technologies such as electric appliance, cloud storage of big data, Internet of Things, intelligent monitoring and smart phone, there is a memory chips booming in recent years. As there is a huger demand of China, Christopher Bergey, the SVP of Western Digital device product division, gave a lecture called “Western Digital latest technology and market application”, in CFMS earlier.

The lecture “Western Digital latest technology and market application” delivered by Christopher Bergey, the SVP of Western Digital

    Lots of people are unaware of the development of flash memory technology is most rapidly of all chips technologies. Not only does process lead the way to 7nm, but also the number of transistors in flash memory exceeds its growth rate in CPU. The SVP of Western Digital device product division, Christopher Bergey(image above) said 3D NAND flash memory developed at a staggering rate. There are 170 billion transistors in a 3D module with one WD and 512Gb capacity, however, there are usually between 10 to 20 billion transistors in a CPU. 3D flash memory helps engineers to storage more information in a smaller volume, which keeps economical in cost.

Data center Exabyte memory in is delivered on enterprise memory devices which is introduced in Christopher Bergey’s lecture

    It is also mentioned whether hard disk will be replaced by SSD or not in Christopher’s lecture. By the year 2020, there will sill be about 90% of data center Exabyte stored in disk and CAGR will be around 40%. Flash memory keeps pace with disk storage technologies in the era of big data, and both of them have a bright prospect. And it is the reason why China invested hundreds of billions of money in memory chips manufacturing to make a national storage concept.

    The driving force of flash memory market is still strong

    There were two strong drivers so that the memory market were in flourish said by Christopher. One is new automobile four modernizations including electrification, intelligentialize, networking and sharing, which contains the changing of lots of data infrastructures. The other is smart phone. Nowadays, users no longer payed attention to mobile processor, but focused on its memory. The prices difference of capacity falling into 125G, 256G and 512G were even larger than various processors, said by Christopher.

    In addition, there were 4(may be 5) Chinese brands among the first seven global mobile brands. Western Digital put into Chinese mobile sales and marketing, meanwhile, its product development team also had a close cooperation with Chinese mobile manufacturers. On one hand, they would share their roadmap with mobile manufacturer clients in two to three years, on the other hand, they would design products according to clients and consumers.

    The vice president of Western Digital product marketing department, Zhu Haixiang, said there were six brands Western Digital, which covered whole series of storage devices fell into enterprise server, consumer terminal and emerging market.

Western Digital Creating Environments for Data to Thrive

    “G-Technology is dedicated to radio and TV industry, which is a system product used our own storage medium and device. WD is mainly for consumer products, SanDisk for example. Tegile is system product with all flash, which is used in some application scenario, such as database, virtual desktop. Tegile memory array and HDST are our enterprise brands which belong to Western Digital in the future. Upthere is a cloud disk service manufacturer newly acquired by us. It is an international cloud disk service provider which haven’t been popularized in China.” explained by Zhu Haixiang, the vice president of Western Digital product marketing department, during the interview of an electronics enthusiasts journalist.

Annual downward trend comparation of HDD and flash memory SSD $/TB in Christopher Bergey’s lecture

    Christopher also mentioned Western Digital MAMR in his lecture, which will keep competitive edge of SSD against hard disk in cost. MAMR utilized energy assistance generated by STO microwave field. STO generated microwave field to overturn magnet in hard disk, which had not only innovativeness, but also transformative effect in hard disk design.

Image: The SVP of Western Digital device product division, Christopher Bergey and the vice president of Western Digital product marketing department, Zhu Haixiang in an interview of CFMS.

    Electronics enthusiasts journalists asked some questions, for example, a big problem of smart phone was that flash back and being stuck always unfriendly happened without clearing up for a long time, because there were many files stored under the directory of WeChat APP and they occupied a lot of space. A mobile SoC processor manufacturer considered that it is a storage management technology, the only way to solve this problem was deleting all pictures and video files by themselves. However, those files are significant for users and some of them are key information. Thus, deleting is not the best way to handle it.

    Christopher Bergey said he had learned about Chinese users were relying on WeChat heavily, so deleting wasn’t a proper way to solve the problem. And he would get those problems specifically researched when he returned to find solution in the future.

    In addition, the journalists also questioned the application of Western Digital storage technology in Internet of Things, especially whether it supported the promising RISC-V operating system in Internet of Things or not. Christopher Bergey responded, “Internet of Things is applied with some small Western Digital memory card and memory chips which are in great demand. Western Digital gives recognition and is optimistic for RISC-V, and it will gain our product and technical support. Our support to RISC-V is always open and transparent. RISC-V has a advantage that it is similar to an open source platform, supporting many new application which are customized and innovative. We will provide an open interface to adapt those brand new applications. Especially in LTE market, there will be plenty of bran-new market and application demands, and we will support development demand of those bran-new controllers.”

    For the value of 96-layer stacking technology introduced by some leading flash memory manufacturers and it bringing what applications, Christopher Bergey responded the 96-layer 3D NAND was a milestone technology node. He believed that, “We can provide 96-layer 3D NAND on single wafer with larger capacity and lower cost. We believe it is the change brought by 96-layer to the industry.”  

Image: The group photo of Christopher Bergey, the SVP of Western Digital device product division, and Zhu Haixiang, the vice president of Western Digital product marketing department on booth.