The explosion of sensors, AI, IoT and other data-generating innovations means that device storage requires a fresh approach, and fast.
Western Digital Corp. is looking to answer that need by reinventing hard disk drive storage with an effort to combine HDD with embedded iNAND flash storage, resulting in the new integrated OptiNAND storage architecture.
OptiNAND, which the company announced during it HDD Reimagine event this week, will give companies such as hyperscale cloud, CSPs, enterprises, smart video surveillance partners, NAS suppliers and others greater capacity, performance and reliability to help them meet future needs.
“The biggest observable immediate gain [from OptiNAND will be in areal density [track storage capacity] and the ability to realize more tracks per inch,” according to Siva Sivaram, president, global technology and strategy at Western Digital. “We are allowing capacity growth without the need for additional heads or disks.”
Sivaram explained that OptiNAND is not like “old-fashioned hybrid drives” that use flash to store additional data. Instead, the company has vertically integrated iNAND with its energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) HDD technology, along with a “novel, innovative proprietary firmware algorithm,” the company’s triple-stage actuator and HelioSeal technologies, and other system-on-a-chip innovations.
The first devices leveraging the new drive architecture will deliver an unsurpassed 2.2TB per platter, extending capacities gains on Western Digital’s ePMR technology.
In terms of performance upgrades, the firmware in OptiNAND also will improve drive latency with a reduced requirement for adjacent track interference refreshes and less need for write cache flushes in write cache-enabled mode, the company said. In addition, OptiNAND will allow for 50x more customer data to be retained in the event of an emergency power-off scenario, translating to greater reliability.
Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, executive vice president and general manager of the HDD business at Western Digital, said OptiNAND already is sampling in the firm new nine-disk, 20TB ePMR flash-enhanced drives that have been shipped to select customers.
“The customer gains in capacity, performance and reliability won’t stop with this launch,” he said. “There is a roadmap and pipeline of enhancements and improvements to OptiNAND already planned. Our goal is to have a 50-terabyte ePMR drive with OptiNAND in this decade.”
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