FMS 2024: Western Digital Reveals New Solutions

Western Digital Corp. is unveiling solutions and technology demos at FMS 2024 that raise the bar for performance, capacity and efficiency for transformative AI Data Cycle workloads. These innovations cater to diverse market segments from hyperscale cloud to automotive and consumer storage. Attendees were also gain insights from a keynote address by Rob Soderbery, EVP and GM, flash business unit, Western Digital, August 6. During the keynote, he was delve into the strategic advancements propelling the future of NAND, AI and storage from the data center to the edge.

OpenFlex Data24 4200 NVMe-oF storage platform

“As AI technologies advance and become increasingly embedded in the world around us, the demand for storage will only continue to grow,” said Soderbery. “Western Digital’s product and technology roadmaps are strategically aligned to ensure our customers have the most advanced, reliable solutions to stay ahead in the rapidly changing AI landscape. This holistic approach ensures that our customers receive the most power-efficient, high-performing and high-capacity solutions tailored to their specific needs. We are excited to showcase our full range of products and new technologies and demonstrate how they can transform AI now and into the future.“

AI innovation from data center to edge
The rapid rise of AI, ML, and large language models (LLMs) is challenging companies with two opposing forces. Data generation and consumption are skyrocketing, while organizations face pressure to quickly derive value from this data. Performance, scalability, and efficiency are essential for AI technology stacks as storage demands rise. Western Digital offers a storage technology portfolio tailored to support every stage of the evolving AI Data Cycle. Here are some of the company’s show highlights:

Data Center:

Showcasing the company’s data center products announced in June – including a PCIe Gen5 enterprise-class SSD (eSSD) for compute-intensive applications, a new 64TB eSSD for storage-intensive applications, and a world’s first 32TB ePMR SMR HDD for massive data storage at scale.
BiCS8 128TB high-capacity QLC eSSD technology demonstration for fast AI data lakes and capacity-intensive performance applications.

OpenFlex Data24 4200 NVMe-oF storage platform front and rear

The RapidFlex interposer, which converts PCIe SSD signals to Ethernet so now PCIe eSSDs can be deployed in either an Ethernet-switched or a PCIe-switched system architecture as found in the newly enhanced OpenFlex Data24 4200 NVMe-oF storage platform. Disaggregated NVMe-oF storage is a key enabler to making AI workflows more effective and manageable. Come see a captivating demonstration with the Ingrasys ES2100 based on NVIDIA Spectrum Ethernet switch technology and NVIDIA’s GPUDirect Storage (GDS) that enables visualization and analysis of large-scale 3D datasets in real time, highlighting a direct data path between NVMe-oF storage and GPU memory to drive scalable, high-performance and efficient utilization of storage and GPU resources for intensive AI applications. The RapidFlex Interposer is available and is currently being licensed by Ingrasys Technology, Inc.

RapidFlex Interposer

Client:

Technology demonstrations of BiCS8 performance and mainstream PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSDs for AI PCs, gaming rigs, workstations, laptops and other mobile client PCs.

Automotive:

The firm’s AT EN610 NVMe SSD is an automotive-grade, high-performance, wide–temperature range storage solution designed for the demanding requirements of next-generation high-performance centralized computing (HPCC) architectures. With flexibility through high-capacity TLC with the option to fully or partially configure the drive to high-endurance SLC, the AT EN610 comes in M.2 Type 1620 BGA form factor and offers up to 1TB of storage capacity. The AT EN610 is sampling.

The company is also previewing its iNAND AT EU752, targeting advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), infotainment systems (IVI), and other autonomous driving systems. The EU752 is 1 of the of a most advanced automotive-grade storage solutions, which includes additional features beyond the UFS 4.0 spec like automatic device refresh to prevent data corruption, 100% content pre-loading and more for added performance and reliability. Built on BiCS8 NAND technology, it delivers up to 1TB and blazing data transfer speeds. The AT EU752 will being sampling in 1Q25.

Consumer:

A first look at the company’s high-capacity, high-performance flash-based consumer products that push the boundaries of what’s possible. The company is introducing a world’s first SanDisk 4TB^(*) microSDUC UHS-I card and world’s first SanDisk 8TB ^(*) SDUC UHS-I card, built for tomorrow’s smartphones, gaming devices, drones, cameras and laptops.

SanDisk Desk Drive

Demonstrations of its super-sized SSDs – a first-ever 16TB ^(*) portable SSD proof of concept, and the 16TB (*) SanDisk Desk Drive, featuring unprecedented space and performance to keep up with the ever-growing creation and consumption of rich and engaging content.

^(*) 1TB is equal to 1 trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may vary depending on the operating environment.