Solid State China
It is being said that China’s promotion of the memory semiconductor industry is beginning with its focus on solid state drives, or SSDs, one of the fastest items in the semiconductor market. China’s semiconductor giants such as Huawei and the Tsinghua Uni Group, and Taiwanese companies such as Mediatek are giving boost to the development of technology for controllers, which can be called the brains of SSDs.
On Nov. 3, Huawei said in an interview with a Korean IT daily that they are producing an SSD product group, including PCI express cards and controllers, through its own technology. In other words, the company will no longer package SSDs using other companies’ controllers based on NAND flash memory supplied by memory semiconductor companies. Instead they will be able to complete all SSD production processes except for one for the production of NAND flash memory in-house.
SSDs are storage devices expected to replace nearly all hard disk drives within the next five years. NAND flash memory and controllers are core parts of SSDs. SSD controllers read, write and store data by taking a control of NAND flash memory mounted on SSDs.
Controllers’ roles matters more in high-volume and high-performance SSDs. High-performance controllers enable low-level NAND memory to work as good and as long as higher models. It is controllers that empower Samsung Electronics to produce high-performance SSD products based on triple level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory, which are commonly used in low-priced memory cards.
It seems that Micron, America’s biggest memory company, has significantly contributed to Huawei’s development of controllers. Some industrial analysis says that Micron is supporting Huawei’s development of controller technology under the condition of supplying a large quantity of NAND flash memory to Huawei. Huawei, a leading global supplier of network equipment, is expected to have a big impact on the SSD market if the company begins to produce SSDs on a full scale.
In addition to Huawei, the Tsinghua Uni Group, which indirectly took over SanDisk for US$19 billion, is also rising as a strong competitor in the SSD market. Market survey company DRAM Exchange analyzed in a recent report that the Tsinghua Uni Group will do everything in its power to make a foray into the SSD market after Western Digital’s acquisition of SanDisk. The Tsinghua Uni Group is the largest shareholder of Western Digital. One possible business item is hybrid SSDs, since Western Digital calls the shots in the HDD sector, while SanDisk has advanced SSD technology.
On the other hand, some predict that MediaTek, a Taiwanese telecommunication chip leader, will begin to take over PMC-Sierra, a semiconductor solution provider, in order to secure advanced SSD controller technology. “Prices of NAND flash memory have dropped for years, lowering SSD production cost and stimulating the expansion of the market,” said a representative in the semiconductor industry. “As long as a glut of NAND flash memory goes on, controller technology will hold the key to controlling the SSD market in the future.”