WD made it clear in there talk that this wasn't about saving on costs, but rather having control over the innovation in the data space.

I don't see any reason to doubt them. It's an incredible risk to switch their entire company over to a still-growing ISA. But being able to design and modify any particular core as they see fit without having to talk to lawyers or negotiate a new contract... that's an incredible power.

RISC-V is certainly more unencumbered, but there's always the ARM architecture license too. Pricey, but you can modify and build on a relatively more mature ISA

An architectural license doesn't give you free reign to extend the ISA, just to create your own implementation of the standard ISA.

Is this confirmed though?

Were they using ARM? ( Proberly, but may not be in everything they use ) Are they switching over from ARM? Or simply moving their inhouse controller to RISC-V?

The one time license fee were suppose to be a lot cheaper if you are shipping in billions of unit.

Because if they are switching from ARM, I think of it as ARM being lazy and not winning the battle they ought to win, purely from a business perspective.

See this: https://www.malwaretech.com/2015/04/hard-disk-firmware-hacki...

Not definitive for the whole product line, but at least evidence of one popular WD drive with a Marvell/ARM controller. Google "Western digital Marvell" for more...like https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marvell-achieves-si... (over one billion WD units with Marvell/ARM chips on board)

Western Digital's SanDisk SSDs almost exclusively use Marvell controllers, too.

Was I supposed to see the CSI Miami guy when I read that?

I know these comments aren’t really allowed but I laughed