4DS - Anything but Charting, page-17058

@hashtagyolo

Hey Hash, WDC has basically gone the riskv way of things by the looks.... And that's also why they are now offering SoC!!!




But have a look at what that means with Apples current woes in sourcing from China and WDC's elegant solution if it comes off... hahahaha

WD ROLLS ITS OWN RISC-V CORE Western Digital Opens Superscalar Swerv CPU Source to Others By Bob Wheeler (February 4, 2019)

Storage vendor Western Digital (WD) has declared independence from licensed CPUs by designing its own RISCV core. SSD controllers are the first application for its new Swerv EH1 RISC-V CPU. Flash-based products now represent about half its revenue, and WD designs both 3D NAND chips and associated controllers. Over the next several years, it plans to move most of its controller shipments—representing more than one billion CPUs—from licensed to inhouse designs. The company has also made the Swerv design available as open source.

The Swerv EH1 is similar to SiFive’s new E76 CPU, which achieves slightly lower clock speeds and CoreMarks per megahertz. Last April, WD announced an investment and multiyear license agreement with SiFive, but Swerv is separate from that agreement. Instead, the two companies independently developed dual-issue RISC-V CPUs. Owning Swerv gives WD maximum control over deeply embedded designs. At the same time, it can use third-party RISC-V CPUs or processors (chips) for higher-end products such as storage systems.

Control Over Controllers WD has numerous reasons for developing Swerv, some technical and others business related. In the former list, it cites 40% performance, 30% power, and 25% area improvements over the unnamed licensed cores (which we believe are Synopsys ARC designs) it currently employs. One issue that straddles the technical and business realms is the ability to add custom ISA extensions without exposing them to an intellectual-property (IP) vendor. In a recent talk, CTO Martin Fink cited open interfaces as the top reason WD chose RISC-V. He believes traditional IP vendors are “locking down” interfaces—that is, making them proprietary. The company wants open coherence fabrics as well as memory and I/O buses. Finally, it’s no surprise that a company shipping one billion CPUs would like to eliminate royalties.Risking Independence

The clear loser in WD’s plan is Synopsys. It’s an early sign the open-source RISC-V movement is hurting traditional CPU-IP suppliers. Among the products for which WD develops its own controllers, a handful of chip designs likely drive most of its CPU volume. These deeply embedded designs have a relatively small and proprietary code base, minimizing software-compatibility concerns in adopting RISC-V.







WDC now offers Soc designs and is tied in heavily with kioxia which can circumvent the trade tariff issues for Apple...

9 Major Companies Tied to the Apple Supply Chain
Updated May 17, 2021
The Bottom LineApple (AAPL) is one of the most valuable companies in the U.S. with a market cap of over $1.3 trillion as of April 2020.1 A big part of its success has come from its ability to be a true innovator in personal technology. Millions of customers are willing to pay top dollar for the quality, design, and features of Apple devices, making products like the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, and Apple Watch top sellers.

To achieve this greatness though, Apple doesn't depend on its own manufacturing alone. It has over 200 suppliers that it relies on for procuring components for assembly.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Apple releases a supplier list annually.
Apple has established high standards for managing supplier relationships.
Apple’s 2019 suppliers list reports on 200 suppliers and shows over 800 production facilities.
Apple puts a great deal of effort into the monitoring of its suppliers. Relationships that help to make the tech giant a manager of one of the most efficient supply-chain management systems on the market right now. Each year it releases a progress report outlining its supplier relationship efforts as well as a list of its top 200 suppliers, which account for 98% of its procurement. Below discusses nine of the most prominent.

TaiwanTaiwan is Apple’s number one supplier region, but this is somewhat of a smokescreen.
1 Hon Hai Precision Industry: Foxconn (HNHPF)
Hon Hai Foxconn is one of the major reasons that Taiwan is on the map for Apple. Foxconn is one of Apple’s oldest and largest suppliers. The company has its headquarters in Tucheng, New Taipei City.
However, while being based in Taiwan, Foxconn is often thought of as Apple’s largest China supplier because of its vast number of Chinese supplier locations. In 2018, Foxconn had 35 supplier locations servicing Apple from Taiwan, China, India, Brazil, Vietnam, and the United States, and 29 of its 35 locations are in China. Foxconn has also helped Apple to branch out to India with one location there.

2 Wistron
Wistron is another Taiwan-based company that’s also helping Apple expand into India. Wistron has five supplier locations with three in China and two in India. A focus for Wistron in India has been printed circuit boards for iPhones.

3 Pegatron
Pegatron is another company rounding out the Taiwan lineup. It has its headquarters in Taiwan with only one Taiwan supplier location in Taoyuan. Pegatron’s other 17 locations include 12 sites in China along with sites in the Czech Republic, Singapore, Korea, Japan, and the United States. Pegatron is similar to Foxconn in that it provides iPhone assembly.

China
In general, China is a very important global region for Apple. The 2019 suppliers list shows Chinese and Hong Kong-based suppliers growing to account for a larger share than America and Japan, second only to the region of Taiwan. By physical location, China accounts for 380 of the total 809 production facilities.2 However, Apple has shared some concern over its dependence on China given the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak as well as the Trump Administration’s new tariff rules.

4 Goertek
Goertek and Luxshare are two Chinese companies that have been in the Apple supplier spotlight. Both companies agreed to set up productions in Vietnam to improve the manufacturing cost efficiency of the Airpod. Goertek has three supplier locations, two in China and one in Vietnam. The company has its headquarters in Weifang, China.
5 Luxshare
Luxshare is also in partnership with Apple for the production of the Airpods. It has eight supplier locations with seven in China and one in Vietnam.

Apple is hamstrung by the American China Trade War...

Ergo

Why Micron and Western Digital Want to Buy Kioxia
Currently, Kioxia is one of the world’s largest and most advanced manufacturers of flash memory products.The firm’s offerings became increasingly appealing to PC and smartphone manufacturers in the post-pandemic digitalization boom. That development pushed its estimated market value from $16 billion last September to $30 billion this month. It also recently developed a layered manufacturing technique that produces components with enhanced density, capacity, and performance.In addition,
Kioxia owns and operates six fabs and is building its seventh fabrication site.

Because of those attributes, Micron and Western Digital would greatly benefit from taking the corporation under their umbrellas. By acquiring the company, both chipmakers would significantly expand their share of the global NAND market. The two providers would also make their supply chains more robust by reinforcing them with the acquired firm’s production capacity.Plus, Kioxia is a Japanese provider, meaning its output should not be subject to tariffs related to the U.S.-China trade war.