Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corporation today celebrated the opening of the state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication facility, Fab7, at the Yokkaichi Plant in Mie Prefecture, Japan. Production capacity at Fab7 will ramp up in stages over time, in line with market trends. Total investment in phase one of Fab7 is expected to be approximately one trillion yen. Part of the capital investment in phase one of the Fab7 facility will be funded by a government subsidy that promotes cutting-edge semiconductor production facilities and ensures the stable production of semiconductors in Japan.

Fab7 has the capability to produce sixth-generation, 162-layer flash memory and future advanced 3D flash memory, is scheduled to start shipping 162-layer flash memory in early 2023. The facility uses artificial intelligence for enhanced production efficiencies and employs a space-efficient facility design that enlarges the space available for manufacturing equipment in its clean rooms. Fab7 is built for safety and sustainability, capable of absorbing earthquake shocks and implements the latest energy-saving manufacturing equipment.

Western Digital Corp today announced it has expanded its SanDisk Professional line of premium storage solutions with the new PRO-G40 SSD that supports dual-mode compatibility with both Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 interfaces. Inspired by the way people create and share data today, this new drive is the company's most rugged offering to date with a high-level IP68 rating, allowing professionals to immerse themselves in the action wherever their work or vision takes them.

"The nature of my work is unpredictable and as a result I must be incredibly flexible and versatile. I share the same expectations for every piece of equipment that I use from capture to archive which is why the SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 drive will immediately be a crucial part of my workflow," said Andy Handcock, action, portrait and reportage photographer, and PRO-TEAM ambassador. "I need storage solutions that are lightweight, compact, rugged, and insanely fast. This checks all the boxes for me. The PRO-G40 SSD can easily withstand the rigors of travel and location work while doing so with a minimal footprint. Thanks to SanDisk Professional products like these, workflow is one less thing I need to stress about which frees me to focus more on the creative. That is paramount."

Western Digital Corp., an industry-leading provider of storage technologies and solutions, today announced a new partnership with Epic Games and Nintendo to deliver the first officially licensed Fortnite SanDisk microSDXC card for Nintendo Switch. The exclusive Fortnite branded memory card for Nintendo Switch is designed to provide players with consistent and reliable storage as they drop into Fortnite, no matter how they play. The card has also been tested and approved for use with all Nintendo Switch Systems and is backed by a limited lifetime warranty to give gamers the peace of mind needed to land in command.

Inspired by the epic Skull Trooper (128 GB) and legendary Cuddle Team Leader (256 GB) Outfits, the exterior design of the cards pay homage to some of the most rare and popular Outfits in the game. As a bonus, fans who purchase the card will receive a code to redeem the rare Angular Flow Wrap, sure to mesmerize any squadmate.

ASUSTOR Inc. today updated the hard drive compatibility list by adding the Western Digital WD Red Pro 22 TB NAS drive, also known as WD221KFGX. WD Red hard drives are specifically designed for use in NAS devices and improve the performance and reliability of NAS devices. Designed for all types of storage, including home and business data, can be safely stored on an ASUSTOR NAS using WD Red Pro drives to ensure the best stability and performance.

ASUSTOR's Lockerstor Gen2 NAS devices provide an excellent high-speed storage device for professionals. In response to the storage needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and professional creators, the dual advantage of capacity and speed coming from the built-in dual 2.5-Gigabit network ports, support for PCIe 3.0 SSDs and dual USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 ports greatly improve the transmission speed without sacrificing quality. Use the Lockerstor Gen2 series to efficiently back up and transfer data easily no matter if it is for content creation or enterprise data storage. The Lockerstor Gen2 series combined with WD Red Pro ensure a quality and efficient experience for studios and enterprises.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 financial results. "I am proud of our team for driving strong fiscal year 2022 performance, during which revenue grew 11% and non-GAAP EPS increased 81%, demonstrating progress in unlocking the earnings potential of our business," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "In addition to strong financial performance, fiscal year 2022 was a hallmark year for Western Digital from an innovation, product development and execution perspective. The combination of our innovation engine and the multiple channels to deliver our products to the market puts Western Digital in a great position to capitalize on the large and growing opportunities in storage ahead even in the midst of macro dynamics weighing on near-term demand."

The company generated $295 million in cash flow from operations, made a scheduled and discretionary debt repayment of $150 million and ended the quarter with $2.33 billion of total cash and cash equivalents.

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corporation announced today that their joint venture Fab 7 manufacturing facility at Yokkaichi Plant has been approved to receive up to 92.9 billion yen subsidy from the Japanese government. The subsidy will be granted under a designated government program aimed at facilitating corporate investment in cutting-edge semiconductor production facilities and securing stable production of semiconductors in Japan.

Leveraging their 20-year joint venture partnership, Kioxia and Western Digital will continue to accelerate the development and production of cutting-edge flash memory at the Yokkaichi Plant, the largest semiconductor plant in Japan. In addition, the two companies will contribute to the development of semiconductor-related industries and talent.

When it comes to data, everything is growing - quantity, size, format, resolution, use cases, applications, value and more. As people and businesses look for solutions to effectively and efficiently store their data in the zettabyte era, Western Digital HDDs continue to play a critical role in delivering massive capacity, performance and reliability.

Extending its innovation and technology leadership across its portfolio, Western Digital today announced that it is now shipping new 22 TB HDDs targeting three key segments: WD Gold HDDs for IT/data center channel customers; WD Red Pro for network attached storage (NAS); and WD Purple Pro for smart video/surveillance. As highlighted in its What's Next Western Digital Event, these new drives are loaded with industry-firsts, including OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal to deliver the industry's highest areal density at 2.2 TB per platter, delivering 22 TB CMR HDDs for its customers.

Western Digital Corp. and Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC ("SIE") teamed up to deliver the industry's first official PlayStation -licensed M.2 SSD for PlayStation 5 (PS5) to gamers across the globe. The WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD for PS5 Consoles enables players to expand the high-speed storage capacity of their PS5 console and gives them peace of mind knowing that their new and favorite titles are stored on a drive that's been battletested to take on the most intensive PS5 gameplay.

Optimized for the newest-generation console, Western Digital validated drive performance through multiple scenarios to ensure the drive has been fully tested for the PS5. This process included hundreds of hours spent rigorously testing some of the most graphic-rich titles across various genres to ensure that with games stored on the drive, gameplay is fast, smooth and visually immersive.

Western Digital Corporation, ("Western Digital") (Nasdaq: WDC) today announced that it is reviewing potential strategic alternatives aimed at further optimizing long-term value for its shareholders. The Executive Committee of the Western Digital Board, chaired by Western Digital CEO, David Goeckeler, will oversee the assessment process and fully evaluate a comprehensive range of alternatives, including options for separating its market-leading Flash and HDD franchises. Following constructive dialogue with many of Western Digital's shareholders, including one of the company's largest investors, Elliott Investment Management L.P. (together with its affiliates, "Elliott"), this review builds on Western Digital's ongoing efforts to drive innovation-led growth and create shareholder value.

"The Board is aligned in the belief that maximizing value creation warrants a comprehensive assessment of strategic alternatives focused on structural options for the company's Flash and HDD businesses," said Goeckeler. "Through this process, we are actively engaging in a broad range of strategic and financial alternatives that will help further optimize the value of Western Digital, including Elliott's offer to invest incremental equity capital in our Flash Business. We look forward to continuing our constructive dialogue with Elliott as this process unfolds."

Elliott Managing Partner Jesse Cohn and Senior Portfolio Manager Jason Genrich said, "Western Digital is strongly positioned in an industry that represents a compelling growth opportunity, and we have confidence in David and his management team's execution, strategic vision and focus on shareholder value. We're encouraged by the positive direction of our discussions so far, and by Western Digital's openness to considering a full separation of its Flash business. We are pleased that Western Digital's Board is conducting this review, and Elliott is prepared to provide strategic resources and additional capital to help the company realize the full value of both of its businesses."

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

Last week, Micron revealed its NAND flash plans and so did Western Digital during its investors day. The different NAND flash manufacturers use similar, but far from identical ways to manufacture their NAND flash and WD is working together with Kioxia and the two are using a process called bit column stacked or BiCS NAND. This year the two companies will move to its sixth generation of BiCS NAND which is stacking 162-layers of NAND flash. Most of their competitors are already at 176-layer stacks, although WD and Kioxia still deliver the same capacity NAND chips as its competitors. WD claims that their die size is smaller than the competition, which could be an advantage due to more dies per wafer.

In its presentation, WD listed a single wafer capacity of 100 TB, which is an increase from around 70 TB per wafer in 2020. Although it's not something we can verify, WD claims to have the world's best charge trap cell, which the company claims leads to higher performance compared to its competitors. The slide provided by WD claims a 20 MB/s lead of the competition at 60 MB/s vs. 40 MB/s. Although Western Digital and Kioxia claim to have to invest less to increase their capacity, it would appear that they're behind the competition when it comes to the amount of layers they can stack. The two are only planning what they call BiCS+ at over 200-layers for 2024, which is well over a year behind Micron. The roadmap stretches all the way to 2032, when we should apparently be seeing 500-layer NAND flash, assuming everything goes according to plan. The first BiCS+ NAND will be for datacenter products and WD claims that their first product should see a 60 percent increase in transfer speeds, a 15 percent increase in program bandwidth and a 55 percent increase in bit growth per wafer over the current BiCS6 NAND.

Western Digital Corp. revealed new innovations from its SanDisk and SanDisk Professional brands, including a modular SSD ecosystem and the world's fastest UHS-I SD and microSD memory cards, designed to empower professionals and creators around the world. Whether in the studio creating the next big picture or out in the field capturing footage for a project, the company's new solutions are centered on delivering high-performance, scalable, and reliable solutions that enable today's creators to actualize their aspirations. "The SanDisk Professional brand delivers storage solutions for those who have something to say," said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Consumer Solutions, Western Digital. "We are excited to build upon the momentum since the brand's launch this time last year and add to our already robust portfolio of offerings. From the inception of the idea to its final manifestation, creative professionals can count on our innovations to capture and preserve the content that means everything to them."

Western Digital today announced an innovative, premium storage solution: the SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE Modular SSD Ecosystem. Designed to meet the need for multiple, super-fast portable storage devices to quickly ingest, edit, and copy large volumes of high-resolution content, the powerful PRO-BLADE ecosystem lets users easily swap out lightweight, high-capacity PRO-BLADE SSD mags so they can carry terabytes of storage without excess bulk. The exceptionally versatile PRO-BLADE modular SSD ecosystem is built to transform the entire workflow with scalable capacity and time-saving convenience on location and back in the studio.

Inspired by the way people work today, Western Digital Corp. introduced the Western Digital PC SN740 NVMe SSD to help address the unique needs of the hybrid workforce and elevate the computing experience. "Hybrid and remote work environments have become the 'new normal' for businesses over the past few years and have driven tremendous growth in PC shipments," said Eric Spanneut, vice president, Client and Enterprise SSDs, Flash Business Unit, Western Digital. "As work habits and locations change, there is a tremendous opportunity to support our corporate and commercial PC OEMs with storage solutions that are thin and light, have advanced security features and pack more performance while preserving power efficiency."

Featuring a DRAM-less architecture and leveraging Western Digital's in-house SSD controller design, BiCS5 3D NAND, firmware development, and vertical integration, the new SN740 NVMe SSD underscores the company's strengths in developing innovations that allow customers to unlock the potential of data.

Today at its What's Next event, Western Digital Corp. announced two new additions to its growing WD_BLACK gaming portfolio, the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD and WD_BLACK P40 Game Drive SSD. Designed to elevate the gaming experience, the expanded portfolio offers players more options to upgrade their PC or console storage. "AMD is delighted with its continued collaboration with Western Digital to deliver exceptional gaming experiences," said Joe Macri, Compute and Graphics CTO and Corporate Fellow at AMD. "As games become more immersive, the expectation for fast, seamless gameplay increases. AMD strives to remove latency between the system, memory and connected devices like Western Digital's SSD gaming solutions with the adoption of the latest PCIe technologies and memory and latency optimizations within AMD CPUs and GPUs. Our combined solutions enable richer visuals, faster load times and more consistent gameplay."

"We're inspired by the unique ways in which players experience their games and are committed to working with the best technology partners, like AMD, to develop solutions that help them break barriers," said Rob Soderbery, executive vice president and GM, Flash Business Unit, Western Digital. "Our diverse WD_BLACK portfolio ensures that gamers are equipped to conquer today's games and prepared for what's next."

Building on significant technology innovations cultivated over decades, Western Digital today announced that it is sampling its new industry-leading 22 TB and 26 TB UltraSMR HDDs to select hyperscale cloud customers, further expanding its areal density leadership and delivering customer value by driving TCO lower. Western Digital's HDD technology portfolio and areal density leadership puts it at the center of storage innovation. Leveraging its unique OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA), HelioSeal and now UltraSMR technologies, Western Digital is on a clear path to delivering 30+ TB with ePMR.

"As a longstanding partner of the industry's leading cloud providers, we understand their unique requirements in building next-generation cloud infrastructure and invested in several HDD innovations we developed alongside our areal density technology," said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, EVP and GM, HDD Business Unit, Western Digital. "Our intent with taking this development strategy was not only to address the capacity demands of the world's largest cloud titans but to deliver on a roadmap that would also support the evolving economics of their data centers for decades to come. With ePMR, OptiNAND and now UltraSMR as the foundation of Western Digital's HDD roadmap, our cloud customers can continue rapidly scaling their business by taking advantage of our innovations to lower their storage TCO."

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) have finalized a formal agreement to jointly invest in the first phase of the Fab 7 (Y7) manufacturing facility at Kioxia's industry-leading Yokkaichi Plant in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. With construction of the first phase of Y7 completed, the joint-venture investment will enable initial production output beginning in the fall of this year. This marks another important milestone in the 20-year strategic joint-venture partnership between the two companies.

"We are very pleased to further deepen our strategic partnership with Western Digital through this joint investment in Y7," said Nobuo Hayasaka, President and CEO of Kioxia. "The rapid digitization of societies underpins accelerating use of memory products. We will continue to leverage our technological partnership and economies of scale to develop and produce cutting-edge semiconductor products and achieve organic corporate growth."

Samsung and Western Digital today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that implies that the two companies will join their efforts to create next-generation data placement, processing, and fabrics (D2PF) storage technologies. The MOU states that the two companies will collaborate on creating Zoned Storage devices, including ZNS (Zoned Namespaces) SSDs and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) HDDs. The ZNS SSD initiative is a challenge of creating entirely new SSDs that work on the ZNS principle instead of traditional block-based drives. Opposite to data in traditional SSDs written in blocks, ZNS SSDs will place data into zones and have software understand where each bit of information is written without excessive read/write action. Another benefit of ZNS is that managing data allows less garbage collection, thus higher efficiency.

Software adoption for ZNS makes it hard, and Samsung's conjoined efforts with Western Digital aim to simplify it. Western Digital notes that "In addition, this collaboration is expected to serve as a starting point to expand zone-based (e.g. ZNS, SMR) device interfaces, as well as future-generation, high-capacity storage devices with enhanced data placement and processing technologies. At a later stage, these initiatives will be expanded to include other emerging D2PF technologies such as computational storage and storage fabrics including NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF)." So, with further development of ZNS, Samsung and Western Digital will collab on more advanced storage options as well.

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced it will begin construction of a state-of-the-art new fabrication facility (Fab2) at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan for the possible expansion of production of its proprietary 3D Flash memory BiCS FLASH. Construction of the facility is scheduled to commence in April 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2023.

The new Fab2 facility will utilize AI-based cutting-edge manufacturing to increase production capacity of the entire Kitakami Plant and further enhance product quality, allowing Kioxia to expand its business organically and take advantage of the medium to long term growth of the flash memory market driven by the accelerating adoption of cloud services, 5G, IoT, AI, automated driving and the metaverse.

Although 20 TB hard drives aren't a new thing by now, Western Digital's latest drive for NAS appliances are doing things a bit differently by incorporating WD's OptiNAND technology. The WD Red Pro family is Western Digital's higher-end family of NAS drives and have a generally good reputation in the market. The drive is made up out of nine ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) platters, each coming in at 2.2 TB. As with the previously launched drives in the Red Pro family, we're looking at a 7,200 rpm drive with a SATA 6 Gbps interface. The internal transfer rate is said to reach up to 268 MB/s which makes it the second fastest drive in the series, just behind the 18 TB version.

What makes the 20 TB SKU unique in the Red Pro series though is the inclusion of 64 GB of WD's own iNAND flash. Western Digital's iNAND could be considered a DRAM-less SSD in a single chip package and in this case, it's used as a large chunk of cache for the hard drive. One other benefit of the OptiNAND technology according to WD is that up to 100 MB of data in the 512 MB DRAM write cache that the drive also has, can be flushed to the iNAND in case of an unexpected power cut to the drive. This could help save important data that is in transit during a worst case scenario and seems like a great addition to a hard drive that's targeting NAS applications. The WD Red Pro 20 TB is on sale now for US$499.99.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

China is reacting to new outbreaks of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus with partial lockdowns. This could further delay the availability of laptops with 12th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA's Ti graphics cards, which debuted at the beginning of the year. The first factories have already been closed in Suzhou in the east of the country. Supply chain and logistics bottlenecks, a shortage of certain chip types and price increases are already on the horizon.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today announced that contamination of certain material used in its manufacturing processes has occurred and is affecting production operations at both its Yokkaichi and Kitakami joint venture, flash fabrication facilities. Western Digital's current assessment of the impact is a reduction of its flash availability of at least 6.5 exabytes. The company is working closely with its joint venture partner, Kioxia, to implement necessary measures that will restore the facilities to normal operational status as quickly as possible.

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. As a leader in data infrastructure, the company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital, G-Technology, SanDisk, and WD brands.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal second quarter 2022 financial results. "I'm proud of the Western Digital team for delivering another quarter of strong results that exceeded guidance, even in the midst of ongoing supply chain disruptions and COVID-related challenges," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "While we continue to experience strong demand across our end markets, these challenges continue to present a headwind to near-term results. We've executed well in building a solid foundation for future profitable growth driven by innovative products within our flash and hard drive businesses. As these transitory headwinds subside, we expect to emerge in a stronger position to drive better through-cycle results, creating value for our shareholders, employees and customers."

The company generated $666 million in cash flow from operations, made a total debt repayment of $2.21 billion, issued $1.00 billion in notes and ended the quarter with $2.53 billion of total cash and cash equivalents. During the quarter, the company fully repaid the remaining balance of its Term-Loan B-4 in an amount of $943 million, and repaid $1.27 billion on its Term-Loan A-1. In addition, the company closed a public offering of $1.00 billion aggregate principal amount in senior unsecured notes, bringing total gross debt outstanding to $7.40 billion at the end of the fiscal second quarter.

Western Digital has expanded its WD Black series of SSDs with yet another model today and the SN770 seems like yet another dilution of the Black brand, as it's WD's second PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less Black series drive. On the upside, capacities range from 256 GB to 2 TB, unlike the SN750 SE which tops out at 1 TB and sequential speeds are also up, with read speeds rated at up to 5150 MB/s and write speeds of up to 4900 MB/s. This is still a far cry from the SN850, which should be considered the only high-end consumer SSD from WD at the moment.

WD did also provide some random performance numbers in the shape of up to 740K IOPS read and 800K IOPS write, which should make this one of the fastest DRAM-less SSDs currently on the market. WD claims the SN770 is 20 percent more power efficient than the SN750 SE, without providing any further details. WD provides a five year warranty for all SKUs and have rated the drives at a 1.75 million hour MTTF time, with the 1 TB SKU having a 600 TBW or 0.33 DWPD write endurance rating. Pricing starts at US$59.99 for the 250 GB SKU, with the 500 GB SKU coming in at US$79.99, the 1 TB at US$129.99 and the 2 TB at US$269.99. This places the 1 TB SKU at US$30 less than the SN850 and the same amount more than the SN750 SE. The SN770 is available as of today.