Cloud applications today are driving innovations in hard drives and solid state storage. Storage devices are being tuned to better align with cloud demands of scale, adaptability, and performance.

Hard drives are evolving with technologies that increase capacity, provide online re-configurability, and enhance access density. Solid state drives are utilizing the latest in 3D NAND and cloud-friendly form factors to deliver the higher quality of service demanded by the Cloud.

Working with our partners to combine these innovations in the data center, Western Digital is enabling the next generation of environments for data to thrive.

Massive growth in data volume has, in recent years, challenged the traditional two tier paradigm of memory and storage where enterprises had to choose between the performance of memory and the persistence of storage for their data applications and accept the tradeoffs that came with each approaches. The memory tier in a traditional computing architecture, while providing the performance needed for data intensive applications, is small, expensive and volatile. The storage tier, while being more affordable and offering capacity, involved compromises in data performance. Modern data centers are increasingly handling large server workloads that require both the persistence of storage and the performance of memory, driving the need for a new memory-storage tier that can overcome historical constraints and pave the way for extreme data efficiency and performance.

Persistent memory is a new disruptive tier that redefines memory and storage hierarchy to deliver maximum flexibility in data management for today’s mainstream as well as entirely new classes of emerging data applications. The new Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory redefines traditional architectures, offering a large and persistent memory tier at affordable cost. With breakthrough performance levels in memory intensive workloads, virtual machine density, and fast storage capacity Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory—combined 2nd gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors—accelerates IT transformation to support the demands of the data era, with faster-than-ever-before analytics, cloud services, and next-generation communication services.

Storage technology has evolved rapidly in past few years due to the change of storage media from spindle hard drive to SSD. Meanwhile, AI and machine learning with GPU acceleration also speed up the revolution of storage, bring up the new technology like persistent memory. In this section, we will talk about this technology trend and it’s implication to the market and customers.

Most people put livability and quality of life at the heart of digital city. No matter how smart the city is, we need it to be safe and environmental friendly. We will take Hong Kong as an example to share the current ranking, smart city initiative and the road ahead. We will also share some other cities work has been done and how the digital concept can be applied to enterprises to become digital organizations.

1. Market Trend: From Device to Cloud to Edge

2. Cloud Transformation
- Before 5G and after
- Increased Computing Performance Requirement

3. How Big will be Edge Computing

Current:
1. 2019 market briefing
2. Server DRAM update
3. Sufficiency and ASP

Future:
1. Beyond 2020
2. Next generation memory solutions