LSI and Seagate Collaborate on PCIe SSDs

OCZ is not the only company announcing new developments on the SSD front. Seagate and LSI Corporation have announced that they would be jointly working on the development of enterprise-aimed PCI Express solid state storage solutions. This move is consistent with IDC's predictions that the enterprise storage market will reach $2 billion by 2013, with PCIe-based storage being a significant portion of it. The two companies will combine LSI's SAS and PCIe technology with Seagate's SSD technology.

"Solid-state drives remain in the spotlight as a technology and an area of growth in the storage market," Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, Hard Disk Drive Components and Solid-State Drives at IDC, said. "Future market requirements related to price per gigabyte, performance, power consumption and reliability align well with the benefits of solid-state storage, and PCIe-based SSS solutions are poised to meet these requirements in data center environments where higher performance is at a premium."

"LSI is uniquely positioned to execute a broad solid-state storage strategy," Jeff Richardson, executive vice president and general manager, Semiconductor Solutions Group, LSI, added. "We’re already deeply engaged in delivering solid-state storage technologies, from custom silicon to storage systems. Entering the emerging PCIe-based SSS market segment is a natural extension of our core competencies. By building upon the industry’s most widely deployed SAS software stack, OEMs and system builders will gain a proven, lower-risk path to market and continuity across technology generations."

The new drives are expected to boast higher levels of performance while featuring ease of use and significantly higher reliability. The partners will also address the architectural challenges that have, so far, limited the adoption of solid state storage (SSS) solutions in the enterprise segment.

"IT professionals want server and storage solutions that can deliver the performance and efficiency benefits of solid-state technology without impacting system resources or further complicating already complex enterprise storage environments," David Mosley, executive vice president, Sales, Marketing, and Product Line Management, Seagate, shared. "These new LSI products will accelerate enterprise application processing and help reduce I/O latency by using standards-based interfaces and protocols to minimize the impact to existing end user enterprise infrastructures. The collaboration extends Seagate's enterprise solid-state strategy, which is focused on delivering the best-fit solutions for IT using both traditional hard disk drives and solid-state storage."

The first board-level product samples for data-center and cloud-computing environments are set to become available during the second quarter of the ongoing year.