14 DAY TRIAL // Seagate has already come forth with its intentions of entering the SSD market with upcoming products that are to become available sometime in 2009. However, recent details indicate that the company is currently working on such products, and that it is investing as much as $100 million in their development, according to the company's CEO, Mr. Bill Watkins.
One of the world's three greatest manufacturers of computer storage is now working on the development of its own range of SSDs and, in an interview with Pocket-Lint, Seagate's CEO further confirmed the initial beliefs that the company was planning to compete with other SSD manufacturers, which have already unveiled their own flash-based storage solutions. "We'd love to have an SSD range, that's why we're investing, as there are a lot of things that we like about them. But there are also some problems."
The problems that Mr. Watkins refers to appear to be related to a performance issue of the read/write cycles rendered by SSDs. In addition, these SSDs are far more expensive to develop, in comparison with traditional hard drives, hence they imply a higher price tag for the end-user.
However, the company appears to have found a way around these issues, as it is trying to develop a hybrid SSD that uses the two current technologies in the creation of the Solid State Drives, namely the SLC (single layer chip) and the MLC (multiple layer chip). Unfortunately, the company's CEO could not elaborate on the matter, but he did, however, say that Seagate was currently investing in the controller technology needed to implement such a solution.
In addition to the upcoming Seagate SSDs, users may also expect to receive some new storage products, designed for home use, according to the company. Basically, what Seagate plans is to deliver a network-attached storage solution to the end-users' homes, a product that is currently in development, according to Pat King, senior vice president of Global Marketing.
"The world has changed. In 1999, for example, we saw massive spending on storage by businesses worried about the Millennium Effect. Now homes are being flooded with content, such as HD movies and photographs, and all of this requires lots of storage. We now sell more storage into homes than we do into the enterprise arena," added Bill Watkins.