Thursday, August 12th 2010
Seagate and Samsung Enter Agreement to Jointly Develop Enterprise SSD Controller Tech
Seagate Technology plc, the world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that they have entered into a joint development and licensing agreement. Under the agreement, the two companies will jointly develop and cross-license related controller technologies for solid state drive ("SSD") storage devices to attain the high levels of performance, reliability and endurance demanded by enterprise storage applications.
The joint development effort builds on the existing SSD capabilities of each company while combining Seagate's leadership in enterprise storage technology with Samsung's flash memory technology specific to 30 nanometer-class MLC NAND. The jointly developed controller will be utilized in Seagate's enterprise-class SSDs. "Seagate has long recognized that solid state technology has an important role to play in the comprehensive solutions the storage industry will deliver today and in the future, particularly in the enterprise market," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "Today's agreement with Samsung will help us bring a compelling set of SSD innovations to the enterprise storage market, with benefits that range from enhanced performance, endurance and reliability to cost and capacity improvements. Overall, this agreement with Samsung strengthens our SSD solutions strategy, and positions Seagate well as global demand for storage continues on its strong growth path."
"We are pleased to be jointly developing a high-performance SSD controller with Seagate for the enterprise storage market," said Dr. Changhyun Kim, senior vice president and Samsung Fellow, Memory product planning & application engineering, Semiconductor Business, Samsung Electronics. "Our green memory solution is designed to enable more energy-efficient server applications, which is expected to increase the use of NAND-based SSD storage in enterprise applications."
The joint development effort builds on the existing SSD capabilities of each company while combining Seagate's leadership in enterprise storage technology with Samsung's flash memory technology specific to 30 nanometer-class MLC NAND. The jointly developed controller will be utilized in Seagate's enterprise-class SSDs. "Seagate has long recognized that solid state technology has an important role to play in the comprehensive solutions the storage industry will deliver today and in the future, particularly in the enterprise market," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "Today's agreement with Samsung will help us bring a compelling set of SSD innovations to the enterprise storage market, with benefits that range from enhanced performance, endurance and reliability to cost and capacity improvements. Overall, this agreement with Samsung strengthens our SSD solutions strategy, and positions Seagate well as global demand for storage continues on its strong growth path."
"We are pleased to be jointly developing a high-performance SSD controller with Seagate for the enterprise storage market," said Dr. Changhyun Kim, senior vice president and Samsung Fellow, Memory product planning & application engineering, Semiconductor Business, Samsung Electronics. "Our green memory solution is designed to enable more energy-efficient server applications, which is expected to increase the use of NAND-based SSD storage in enterprise applications."
18 Comments on Seagate and Samsung Enter Agreement to Jointly Develop Enterprise SSD Controller Tech
Bottom line, we can expect either colossal hybrid drives (2TB with 16GB of NAND would be nice) or another competitor on a SSD area. We'll see.
As for this topic, I'm sticking to WD.
Meanwhile my WD Raptor 70GB is still going strong, and my 2 1TB Greens, my 250GB RE and the WD in my laptop. All of them are fine. Seagate has let me down since they acquired Maxtor.
Trust me when I say Samsung will do most of the manufacturing and design specs here. I see Seagate doing the research, marketing, and final assemble. I can also see Samsung working into the deal a way for them to keep the license on a few of the manufacturing traits to ad to their own HDD's and SSD's (when available) in the future.
My guess would be Seagate releasing a better Hybrid drive with a 16 GB section instead of the 4 GB one they have now in 3 to 4 months. Then a full SSD drive first quarter of next year. Sammy will follow with their Hybrid drive and SSD 6 months after Seagate's two release dates.
I had a 1tb fail after 6 months of light use. RMA was good, but I put it in my server set up and it still shows to run hotter than all my other drives even when I have changed around the location. I feel Seagate drives just run hotter and that leads to them being less reliable.
If you are just buying some NANDs from Sammy, you don't call it a joint project. You don't hear PSU companies claiming they are doing join projects with CWD and they make entire PSU's for other companies.
Frankly, I'd much rather see far MORE cooperation in the industry. Too much "I'm better than you!" schoolyard nonsense can be pretty tiring.