For you as an end-user? Nothing. For WD? They escape paying ARM licensing fees on every drive. They'll see an extra couple points of margin on every hard drive they sell.

Smaller designs, easier to license designs, simpler and more attractive ISA extension mechanisms, no royalties, no license negotiation periods, no incremental cost to adding more cores of different designs.

It's a bid deal for RISC-V enthusiasts, who are delighted to see it in consumer products.