LSI Announces Agreement to Acquire SandForce

LSI Corporation has announced earlier today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SandForce, a consumer and enterprise SSD processor manufacturer, well known for its high-performance products.

SandForce's decision is hardly surprising as the company was looking for a buyer able to provide it with the validation methodology and the resources to help it test its SSD controllers.

The company has been facing many problems in that area lately, as its second-generation controllers have proven to cause a lot of issues in consumer drives which affected the SSDs produced by many of its partners, including OCZ and Corsair.

Little is known at this point in time about LSI's plans for SandForce, but since the company doesn't have so much experience in the consumer market it's pretty safe to assume that it will try to focus its efforts on the enterprise space.

Under the agreement between the two companies, LSI will pay approximately $322 million in cash, net of cash assumed, and assume approximately $48 million of invested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees.

"Flash-based solutions are critical for accelerating application performance in servers, storage and client devices," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI president and chief executive officer.

"Adding SandForce's technology to LSI's broad storage portfolio is consistent with our mission to accelerate storage and networking.

“The acquisition represents a significant, rapidly growing market opportunity for LSI over the next several years," concluded the LSI representative.

The transaction is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2012 subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Upon closing, the SandForce team will become part of LSI's newly formed Flash Components Division, with Michael Raam, SandForce's president and CEO, as general manager.

LSI is already selling the WarpDrive series of PCI Express SSDs powered by SandForce controllers to its enterprise clients.