Seagate Makes Strategic Investment In eASIC To Further Joint Development Of Seagate SSDs

eASIC. a leading developer of new ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) devices, has announced that Seagate Technology has made an equity investment in their operations.  It is anticipated that this will enhance opportunities for the two companies to jointly develop customized solid-state drives (SSDs) to add to Seagate’s portfolio.

The ongoing rapid evolution of Flash memory from 2-bits-per-cell (MLC) (1Xnm architecture) to 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) (1Xnm architecture) has further exposed the limitations of current SATA/SAS 6 GB/s interfaces.  Moving to other interfaces, such as PCIe, NVMe and SoP (SCSI over PCIe), creates the opportunity to develop and produce higher-performance, lower-power, and lower-cost SSDs for all markets; including enterprise, cloud computing and consumer-level usage.

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Rocky Pimentel, chief sales and marketing officer at Seagate, states that “eASIC has demonstrated innovative custom silicon technology with our industry-leading solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs).  eASIC’s ability to quickly develop custom differentiated solutions while meeting stringent cost, power and performance requirements will enable us to rapidly deliver storage solutions and improve our product position in both SSD and SSHDs.”

According to Ronnie Vasishta, President and CEO of eASIC, “We are extremely excited to be working with one of the world leaders in storage technology.  Seagate has an exceptional history in bringing world class technology and innovation to the storage market.  Using our eASIC Nextreme-3 28nm single via configuration technology will help Seagate to bring storage innovation at a pace not yet seen in this industry.”

The eASIC press release on this strategic partnership can be viewed in its entirety here.