Seagate And Phison Partner To Dominate The Data Center With Next-Gen SSDs
Making fast SSDs for consumers is a good way to build street cred with enthusiasts, but the real money lies in the enterprise sector. This is not lost on Seagate and Phison. Having already worked together on the FireCuda 530 series, which is one of the fastest SSDs on the market, Seagate and Phison announced a long term partnership to make a major splash in the data center.
Don't worry though if you're a gamer, this doesn't mean you just became an afterthought.
"Seagate is extremely excited to work with Phison on developing advanced SSD technology. Our selective focus allows us to serve the broad performance-driven enterprise SSD market while continuing our leadership in the specialized premium gaming SSD segment," said Jeff Fochtman, senior vice president of business and marketing at Seagate.
That's good news because it would be a shame if the FireCuda 530 was the end of the line in the consumer space. The FireCuda 530 combines 176-layer 3D triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory from Micron with Phison's PS5018-E18 controller to push sequential read and speeds up to 7,300MB/s and 6,900MB/s, respectively.
As the PCIe 5.0 specification becomes more prevalent (Intel embraced it with Alder Lake and AMD will do the same with Zen 4), even faster SSDs will materialize. The added speed won't be wasted on gaming, either, if and when developers fully embrace Microsoft's DirectStorage API.
Regardless, Seagate and Phison have their sights set on tackling the data center together with next-gen SSD solutions.
"Phison is proud to partner with Seagate to expand our enterprise SSD product line," said Sebastien Jean, CTO of Phison Electronics. "Our leading in-house ASIC technology, coupled with engineering excellence, complements Seagate's deep industry knowledge. In a show of commitment to this partnership, in 2020 we opened a development center in Broomfield, Colorado. Together, we will deliver winning solutions for a wide range of applications including artificial intelligence, cloud storage, and 5G edge computing."
No specific products have been announced yet, though the promise is this expanded partnership will lead to high density SSDs with best in class performance, enabling enterprise customers to reduce their total cost ownership (TCO). Specific products will be unveiled this summer.
