WD's billion-dollar flash slurps: All this tech, and STILL no deal with chip-fryers

Ethnod · September 10, 2013

By the looks of it Western Digital and getting into the Flash Memory big time with an investment of $1.1 billion dollars. This will be interesting

Analysis WD has splashed or intends to spend a whopping $1.1bn on building its flash technology and products portfolio, in the most aggressive series of moves yet by a hard disk drive vendor into flash, and yet it still hasn't inked a long-term chip supply deal with a flash foundry.

Just yesterday it paid $685m for Virident. So what are its plans?

Here's a list of the flash tech it currently has or intends to acquire soon:

a line of military specification SSDs which came in with the March 2009 $65m SiliconSystems acquisition;

a line of Ultrastar enterprise SSDs with the HGST SSD line developed using Intel SSD technology;

a line of enterprise SSDs with the ongoing sTec acquisition, which also gives WD its Kronos PCIe flash cards, and is costing it $340m;

server SSD caching software from Velobit, bought earlier this year for, we estimate, $25m; and

server PCIe flash cards and storage memory-like software from Virident, along with its cross-server flash store data sharing software, bought yesterday for $645m in cash, net of Virident's own cash.

WD has also invested in all-flash array startup Skyera back in March, although it is unclear how much it contributed to the funding round pot.

If you add all of this up – discounting the Skyera investment, of course – it comes to a total total of $1.075bn ($65m + $340m + $25m + $645m). This purchase alters the flash landscape, particularly that part representing the hard disk manufacturers' part of that landscape:

HDD suppliers and flash

HDD manufacturer's flash tech capabilities.

More at link below

Source:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/10/aftershocks_of_the_wd_virident_acquisition/

NinjaStyle013 · September 10, 2013

Yay! This means were gunna get WD quality on SSDs and finally have a big HDD manufacture also producing SSDs.

No more silly ram companies. Also means prices are gunna go straight down which means consumers will actually consider an SSD and laptop makers especially will make it the norm.