Not long ago, filmmakers like David Zvi Levine had to wait for digital video footage to arrive at an editing studio by courier before he could begin the post-production process (editing). But with the evolution of the cloud, creatives like Levine are now able to collaborate remotely and in real time. Levine is a creative producer on Western Digital’s video content team. An industry veteran, he founded one of San Francisco’s first production companies to adopt digital editing in the 1990s. He remembers a time when he had to convince people they could edit on a computer. “My desktop was a beast ..read more

The ocean is in constant flux. Tides and currents swoosh and swirl in mercurial cycles, cascading nutrients and dispersing life through the vast waters. This dynamism makes the ocean so fascinating, but it also makes it difficult to study. Now scientists are finding new ways to explore the ocean’s lifecycle by leveraging advances in storage and computing to process data out at sea. And it has the potential to transform oceanographic science. The secret lives of plankton The Marcus G. Langseth is a 3,834-ton research vessel (R/V). It’s bigger than an NHL hockey rink, houses 12 laborat ..read more

In the autonomous vehicles (AVs) industry, engineers, data scientists, and business leaders have all identified true self-driving vehicles as not just a priority, but an eventuality. That narrative is so strong, however, it’s easy to forget that the mass deployment of AVs still faces significant challenges that extend beyond training AI. Every step of autonomous vehicle development has been met with obstacles surrounding data, whether it be training machine learning models or reading/writing data quick enough for vehicles to respond. Engineers must work to balance the rewards that assistive AV ..read more

This is part one of a three-part series about data storage in the new space age. Design by Aisha Alkinaey. Space is austere. It’s an airless vacuum. Temperatures can swing from hundreds of degrees near the sun to so cold that atomic motion slows to a crawl. For engineers and scientists designing satellites and other spacecraft, “keeping it operating as long as possible” is often the most significant challenge after surviving launch. Space electronics Rafał Graczyk is a research scientist at the SnT, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust, at the University of L ..read more

New storage solutions will bring the data center to the remote edge From stoplights to space stations, IoT, 5G, and cloud have fueled the rise of edge computing. Increasing amounts of compute and storage are deployed outside of the data center, closer to where data is captured and generated. Today, Gartner reports, less than 10% of enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud, and that figure could reach 75% by 2025. At the computing or network edge – networks can be slow, intermittent, expensive, or nonexistent. The edge could be in ..read more

Can AI functions be programed into NAND? How much computational power can storage possess? And, what will it take to secure data when it’s ubiquitously accessible across devices, the edge and the cloud? These questions are just a glimpse into Dr. Siva Sivaram’s Flash Memory Summit (FMS) keynote. As president of technology and strategy at Western Digital, next-generation solutions are Siva’s everyday normal. And, his FMS keynote brought together three of Western Digital’s brightest technology minds to discuss what’s next. What’s next is different. There is a seminal, foundational shift happenin ..read more

Over 116 million network cameras were shipped in the professional surveillance market last year, with the capability to generate almost 9 petabytes of video each and every day. [1] As video demand and the use of AI increases, these numbers continue to grow, and it’s forcing us to rethink edge architectures. Seeing Eye to AI –  How Computers View Our World If there’s one thing we’ve learned about AI in the last few years, it is that AI can do narrow tasks incredibly well. Computer vision isn’t necessarily about teaching computers to see the world as we (humans) would. It is about ..read more

5G could make content and media more immersive and responsive than ever through higher bandwidth and lower latency. These changes could enable 8K video streaming, accelerated mobile gaming, and a host of other applications. In this article, I’ll cover four key trends that the next wave of 5G devices might make possible. 1) 5G Unites Augmented and Virtual Reality Under Extended Reality (XR) You might already be familiar with one popular use of virtual reality (VR) in VR gaming. One major issue with this technology has been tethering. VR headsets have historically been physically connected to a ..read more

The way in which we are interacting with the world is changing. Is technology or are humans leading the way? You don’t need a crystal to foresee the hype around the ‘Edge.’ There is certainly no buzz lacking. Whether it’s data centers in a box, autonomous vehicles, contextual location services or the knight in shining armor that will revitalize commercial real estate[1] – the edge may be foggy, but it’s unquestionably hot! The pundits seem to agree. Gartner predicts that 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud by 202 ..read more

Recently, I gave the opening remarks and sat in on a panel at A Data-Driven Future, an automotive industry event hosted by Western Digital and WIRED magazine. Our theme centered on a simple question: In 2039, what might the future of mobility and transportation look like? The answer to this question, understandably, is much more complicated. It depends greatly on progress in self-driving and connected cars by OEMs and automotive startups – not to mention the federal policies that regulate them. At the same time, automakers will have to deal with collecting, storing, and computing data onboard ..read more