Computer component manufacturers, in general, are significantly expanding their product portfolios. Seagate is widely known for manufacturing hard drives, but the company is moving into other segments. They have just announced that they are working on designing their own RISC-V architecture processors . Specifically, Seagate announced that they are manufacturing a high-performance RISC-V processor and a low-power version.
For those unfamiliar with RISC-V architecture, it's a highly regarded open-source architecture. Just a few days ago, a single-core RISC-V processor was even revealed that reached 5.0GHz with a 1W power consumption. Furthermore, it's an architecture known for its high reliability and excellent security.
[amazon box=»B07H289S79″ title=»Seagate IronWolf 4 TB» star_rating=»none» template=»table»]Seagate enters the processor market thanks to RISC-V
The announcement was made during the RISC-V Virtual Summit 2020. Seagate indicates that they have been collaborating with RISC-V International for several years and have considered that they are ready to publicly report on how things are going.
Compared to the high-performance RISC-V processor, it enables three-fold performance on critical hard disk workloads in real time for today's computing solutions. This core allows you to dramatically increase the processing power in real time. Furthermore, it enables finer positioning by implementing algorithms on the server.
On the other hand, the consumer-optimized RISC-V processor has a highly configurable architecture and features. It has been created to save space and also energy consumption. Allows auxiliary workloads, support, or background operations. It allows to execute security-sensitive computing operations.
We see significant potential for open and extensible architectures like RISC-V. The open source implementation of OpenTitan takes advantage of the open nature of RISC-V, enabling the transparency, trust and security of pan-industry silicon. Because Seagate understands the RISC-V promise for security, we are excited to partner with Seagate on the open source silicon root of trust that we are currently developing.
Project Director at OpenTitan and Head of Engineering at Google Cloud.
