SandForce gets OCZ SSD design win

This is not just Flash, this is consumer Flash

By Chris Mellor • Get more from this author

Posted in Storage, 12th November 2009 08:02 GMT

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El Reg wondered why SandForce was talking about consumer flash in a job advert: now we know. OCZ will be making consumer and enterprise flash product using SandForce controllers.

OCZ is going to make the products using SandForce's SF-1500 (enterprise) and SF-1200 (client device) flash storage processors. It will use both 3GBit/s SATA and 6GBit/s SAS interfaces with fast single-level cell (SLC) and capacious and more affordable multi-level cell (MLC) chips.

Ryan Petersen, OCZ Technology Group's CEO, said: “OCZ is committed to delivering SSD solutions to our enterprise clients and also has a strong following for our consumer solid state products... Together with SandForce we are focused on making enterprise-class MLC-based SSDs, which offer excellent reliability and performance coupled with superior total cost of ownership for all our customers.”

With this design win, alongside the existing SMART and Unigen wins, SandForce has become the hottest flash controller supplier. Its three OEMs - for that surely is what they are - will be competing with Intel, Micron, SanDisk, STEC, Pliant and every other consumer device, netbook, notebook, desktop, server and storage array flash product vendor.

If, as suspected, SandForce uses its latest $21m C-round funding to expand its sales and marketing presence outside the USA, then it can hope to announce that it has a much larger roster of design wins this time next year, and is starting to earn royalty revenue from use of its ASICs

We can expect OCZ product announcements in the weeks leading up to the 2010 International CES show. ®

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