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Seagate and DensBits team up on solid-state drives for the home, call truce in the HDD versus SSD war

It's an understatement to say that Seagate started off on the wrong foot in its attitude towards solid-state drives: the company only slowly came around to embracing flash memory, and then mostly for the enterprise crowd and hybrid drive lovers. A newly-struck partnership between Seagate and controller maker DensBits is signalling a more serious attempt to offer SSDs to everyday users. Along with catering to the business folk, Seagate wants its new teammate's help on building "low-cost, high-performance" consumer SSDs. Most of the drives for the plebeians will use slower but denser 3-bits-per-cell memory made on a process under 20 nanometers, while the suits will get faster 2-bits-per-cell flash for their servers. The deal doesn't have any timetable attached, although Seagate's decision to pour equity cash into DensBits suggests it's not just a one-time fling.


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Seagate and DensBits Announce Strategic Agreement for Development of Solid State Drives for Consumer and Enterprise Markets

Seagate Makes Equity Investment in DensBits

CUPERTINO, Calif. & HAIFA, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) the worldwide leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, and DensBits Technologies Ltd ("DensBits") the inventor of the world's first Memory ModemTM have announced today a strategic agreement for the development of low-cost, high-performance Solid State Drives ("SSD") for the consumer and enterprise markets. In conjunction with the agreement, Seagate has made an undisclosed equity investment in DensBits.

Seagate and DensBits are joining forces, to develop future products that are intended to provide customers with significant cost savings, extremely high reliability, and unparalleled performance. Under the agreement, DensBits' Memory ModemTM controller technology will be integrated with Seagate's various storage technologies to power a wide range of 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.

"For the last 30 years, Seagate has delivered technology and product innovation to become the global leader in storage solutions, from high-end enterprise drives to solid-state hybrid drives," said Rocky Pimentel, Seagate chief sales and marketing officer. "Seagate is excited to be working with the talented DensBits team and believes we have a significant opportunity with our new strategic relationship to extend our leadership into the SSD market."

"We are very excited at the opportunity of collaborating with Seagate," said Ilan Hen, DensBits' Chairman and CEO. "This is yet another testament to our technology leadership, and we strongly believe that the coupling between DensBits' unique Memory ModemTM controller technology and Seagate's exceptional storage capabilities across the board could truly disrupt the industry."