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1.5% does sound significant, but does WD save 100% of those 1.5% by doing it in-house? Furthermore, those 1.5% covered more than just the CPU (peripherals, bus

1.5% does sound significant, but does WD save 100% of those 1.5% by doing it in-house? Furthermore, those 1.5% covered more than just the CPU (peripherals, buss technologies, patents, manufacturing know-how). I'm not saying WD is wrong, but I think they are overestimating how much they can save. This is probably just to get a better deal from arm.

phkahler 7y ago
From their public statements, this is not to get a better deal from ARM. they are all-in with risc-v and have already made public their first core (among other things), which is better than an equivalent from ARM. At this point I dont think ARM could bring much to the table for WD. They've invested way beyond what makes sense for getting better pricing.
hajile 7y ago
1.5% of a big number is still a big number. Western Digital's revenue in 2018 was 18 billion. Even if only 0.15% of their revenue went to ARM, that would be 27M or enough to hire 100 chip designers at 270K each. That would be enough people for a very advanced chip, but WD doesn't need to build the next supercomputer. Instead, they want a chip customized to handle their specific workload with high throughput and probably some specialized instructions to put some algorithms in hardware. Moreover, their RISCV chip design expense should reduce over time both because they don't need to change chip micro-architectures very often and because as more companies switch to shared, open hardware, the costs are reduced Another example is Nvidia. They continue to hold an ARM license for several ARM designs and another license for their own custom Denver/Carmel designs. Despite this, they still opted to use RISCV in their GPUs. These companies manufacture chip designs for a living. They certainly understand the costs involved and have determined the immediate and long-term costs are lower vs the provided benefits.

phkahler 7y ago

From their public statements, this is not to get a better deal from ARM. they are all-in with risc-v and have already made public their first core (among other things), which is better than an equivalent from ARM. At this point I dont think ARM could bring much to the table for WD. They've invested way beyond what makes sense for getting better pricing.

hajile 7y ago

1.5% of a big number is still a big number. Western Digital's revenue in 2018 was 18 billion. Even if only 0.15% of their revenue went to ARM, that would be 27M or enough to hire 100 chip designers at 270K each. That would be enough people for a very advanced chip, but WD doesn't need to build the next supercomputer. Instead, they want a chip customized to handle their specific workload with high throughput and probably some specialized instructions to put some algorithms in hardware. Moreover, their RISCV chip design expense should reduce over time both because they don't need to change chip micro-architectures very often and because as more companies switch to shared, open hardware, the costs are reduced Another example is Nvidia. They continue to hold an ARM license for several ARM designs and another license for their own custom Denver/Carmel designs. Despite this, they still opted to use RISCV in their GPUs. These companies manufacture chip designs for a living. They certainly understand the costs involved and have determined the immediate and long-term costs are lower vs the provided benefits.