Seagate expanding into PCIe flash

Seagate is diving into PCIe-connected solid state drives via a partnership with LSI.

Currently Seagate makes a Pulsar SSD with a 3Gbit/s SATA interface. It fits in a 2.5-inch hard disk drive slot in a disk drive enclosure. A PCIe-connected SSD fits into a server as a plug-in flash card and that's where LSI comes in.

It is expected to deliver board-level products that integrate its SAS and PCIe technology with Seagate's SSD technology, with the product sold for use in data centre and cloud computing environments. Jeff Richardson, LSI EVP and the general manager of its Semiconductor Solutions Group, said: "Entering the emerging PCIe-based SSS market segment is a natural extension of our core competencies."

That will not please Fusion-io which is making the running with this SSD form factor so far. STEC is also entering the PCIe SSD space, as is Micron. It's going to be pretty crowded.

Availability and price weren't mentioned but we can guess the first Seagate/LSI products will be sampling later this year. ®