Seagate Partners with Samsung on SSD Controllers

Seagate Technology is partnering with Samsung Electronics to jointly develop and cross-license related controller technologies for solid-state drive (“SSD”) storage devices. The companies hope that by joining forces, they can provide the performance, reliability and endurance demanded by today's distributed enterprise storage applications.

The joint development effort builds on the existing SSD capabilities of each company. Seagate is best known for enterprise storage technology, while Samsung offers flash memory technology specific to 30 nanometer-class MLC NAND.  The jointly developed controller will be use in Seagate’s enterprise-class SSDs.

In addition, Samsung is positioning itself as a provider of "green" memory technology that enable more energy-efficient server applications, which is expected to increase the use of NAND-based SSD storage in enterprise applications.

Seagate and Samsung both stand to gain from this partnership. Although SSD technology leverages non-volatile flash memory rather than spinning magnetic media to store data, Seagate sees SSD and hard disk storage co-existing over the long term. Seagate says it is initially focusing on enterprise-class SSDs because enterprise environments can benefit most from the performance and power benefits that solid-state technology provides.

Meanwhile, Samsung gets an opportunity to expose its sophisticated flash memory technology to a whole range of enterprise (i.e., large operations with deep pockets) customers it may not otherwise reach.