Seagate Invests in DensBits

Seagate and DensBits Strategic AgreementSeagate today announced an investment and technology agreement with DensBits, an Israeli SSD controller company mentioned by The SSD Guy in another post.

According to the press release Seagate will use DensBits’ technology for “consumer and enterprise applications including 3 bits/cell (“TLC”) 1Xnm Flash-based consumer-grade SSD, and 2 bits/cell (“MLC”) 1Xnm Flash-based enterprise-grade SSD.”

A pattern is starting to emerge.  We understand that Seagate’s current Pulsar SSDs use chips from Link_A_Media (the subject of another recent post) which has only recently disclosed its existence.  It seems that the leading HDD company is unafraid to seek start-ups with brilliant new technology to give itself an advanced technology position in the SSD market.

Work with early-stage start-ups may well be an important part of Seagate’s established corporate culture.  SanDisk, in its early years, co-authored a number of SSD patents with Seagate over 20 years ago.

This should be a good partnership.  Seagate has the financial resources to significantly boost a start-up’s performance, and DensBits has a technology that should help Seagate take advantage of some pretty unruly chips.  TLC at sub-20nm processes will have very difficult error rates and endurance, and this is the area in which DensBits says it shines.

Objective Analysis tracks the SSD market.  Reports on both the Client and Enterprise SSD markets can be purchased for immediate download on the Objective Analysis website.

One thought on “Seagate Invests in DensBits”

Comments are closed.