Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company today announced it will extend the use of Intel NAND Flash technology as part of a cooperative agreement with Intel Corporation on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drives (SSDs). Since 2008, HGST has successfully worked with Intel to develop industry-leading enterprise-class SAS SSDs for servers, workstations and storage systems. The resulting products have combined HGST's enterprise storage experience with Intel's NAND Flash expertise, and are the foundation for HGST's leading position in SAS SSDs.

Intel's focus and investment in NAND flash memory research and SSD development provides industry-leading advancements in next-generation NAND lithography and offers high-endurance SSD technology. HGST brings proven enterprise storage expertise in SAS design, firmware, reliability, customer qualification and system integration. This combination enables HGST to deliver world-class solutions with the performance, endurance and reliability that enterprise storage customers demand.

The combination of technologies from HGST and Intel has already resulted in four generations of successful HGST SAS SSDs. This announcement reflects HGST's plans to continue use of Intel's NAND Flash technology in HGST's enterprise-class SAS SSDs for three more years. These solutions will continue to be marketed and sold exclusively by HGST, and are part of HGST's comprehensive portfolio of HDDs, SSDs, software and solutions that help data center managers build tomorrow's IT infrastructures today.

"We are proud of what HGST has accomplished in working with Intel over the past six years," said Mike Gustafson, senior vice president and general manager of HGST Flash Platforms Group. "HGST continues to invest significantly in the enterprise SSD area, and strategic engagements are a key element of our strategy. Intel complements our proven enterprise storage capabilities with its NAND Flash expertise, resulting in our leading position. We look forward to the continued success of the HGST Ultrastar SAS SSD product line."

"Our work with HGST underscores the importance we place on developing the best SSD solutions for high-performance enterprise workloads," said Rob Crooke, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "This product development effort advances our NAND Flash technology innovations into the important SAS SSD market by addressing critical data center pain points related to scalable and flexible solutions that help deliver system compatibility and ease of integration into new and existing system designs."