LSI Corporation today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SandForce, Inc., the leading provider of flash storage processors for enterprise and client flash solutions and solid state drives (SSDs). Under the agreement, LSI will pay approximately $322 million in cash, net of cash assumed, and assume approximately $48 million of unvested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees.

SandForce’s award-winning products include flash storage processors at the heart of PCIe flash adapters and SSDs. Flash storage processors provide the intelligence required to deliver the performance and low-latency benefits of flash storage in enterprise and client applications. With market-proven, differentiated DuraClass™ technology, SandForce flash storage processors improve the reliability, endurance and power efficiency of flash-based storage solutions.

The acquisition greatly enhances LSI's competitive position in the fast-growing server and storage PCIe flash adapter market, where the WarpDrive™ family of products from LSI already uses SandForce flash storage processors. The complementary combination of LSI’s custom capability and SandForce’s standard product offering propels LSI into an industry-leading position in the rapidly growing, high-volume flash storage processor market space for ultrabook, notebook and enterprise SSD and flash solutions.

Add a comment

RunCore, a leading supplier of high-performance solid-state drives today announced its new ultra-speed USB 3.0 MoonDrive that will soon be available. USB 3.0 has been a hot phrase in the market because of its portability and ultra-high-speed transmission rate as well as stability, which have won preferences of users.

RunCore’s MoonDrive adopts an enclosure of special plastic material, stunning black for the front also symbolizes its high stability, and the neat design of the enclosure perfectly presents its sense of technology.

Inside of the enclosure, MoonDrive adopts SLC as the storage media, the performance might probably be the best comparing to the similar products in the market -- read and write performance are respectively up to 164MB/s and 150MB/s, which also supports USB 2.0 and 1.1 protocol.

Add a comment

CDRLabs kicks off the week with a review of Plextor's new 256GB M2P series SSD, the PX-256M2P. Powered by Plextor's True Speed technology, this limited-edition SSD leverages high quality components like Marvell's server-grade 88SS9174 controller chip and Toshiba's 32nm Toggle NAND flash to deliver up to 500MB/s read and 440MB/s write transfer rates. The PX-256M2P also features exclusive firmware with Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling, and Bad Block Management to maintain original performance levels, even after intensive use and long periods of operation.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), today launched the Indilinx Everest-based Octane SATA 3.0 and SATA 2.0 SSD series, striking the ideal balance between capacity, physical size, and speed. In addition to being the world's first SSD to achieve up to a 1TB capacity in a compact 2.5 inch format, OCZ's Octane SSD series combines high-speed data transfer rates with record-breaking access times to provide a superior user experience and improved application performance.

"OCZ has reached an important milestone in the development of its own controller technology," said James E. Bagley, Senior Analyst with Storage Strategies NOW. "The high sustained performance, even with compressed files, the rapid boot feature and high access speeds using SATA 3.0 protocol puts their controller technology in the major league."

"Until now SSDs have been tailored for specific applications, forcing users into a product which maximizes performance for a narrow band of applications, but is significantly lacking in others," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "The Octane Series solves this problem by providing the highest level of performance across varied workloads including mixed file sizes and mixed compressible and uncompressible data, all while nearly doubling NAND flash endurance."

Add a comment