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Intel's gang of 5 grows to mob of 17

Twelve newbie 'contributors' join the solid state party

Twelve contributing members have joined in with the Intel gang of five to standardise PCIe solid state drive (SSD) standards.

The original quintet - Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, IBM and Intel - are now called Promotor Members, with the incomers called Contributor Members. The dozen newbies are Amphenol, Emulex, Fusion-io, IDT, Marvel Semiconductor, Micron Technology, Molex, PLX, QLogic, STEC, SandForce and Smart Modular Technology.

It looks as if Intel and its four friends have nailed it, although there are no more server vendors - meaning HP isn't included, and NetApp isn't in either. The new SSD Form Factor Working Group members jointly said that we need standards to get "easy-to-use, compatible, scalable PCIe SSD solutions with lower integration costs."

EMC provided a quote for the widened group's press release which gave little away on EMC's PCIe SSD plans. Bill DePatie, its hardware engineering VP, said: "EMC is pleased to … participate in defining the PCIe interconnect standard for SSDs. In addition to other high-speed protocols, PCIe will be a key interconnect for SSD technology moving forward. EMC is committed to driving standards in this space."

Yes, well, thank you very much.

Jens-Peter Seick, the Datacenter Systems Product Division SVP at Fujitsu Technology Solutions, implied Fujitsu would bring out PCIe-connected SSDs in its Primergy servers. He said: "We believe that the PCIe Standard Form Factor specification will accelerate the market adoption of PCIe SSDs, offering an electromechanical solution with disk-like handling and true hot-plug capability."

If you want to join in too, send an email to the promoters at info@ssdformfactor.org. ®

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