Overseas solid-state hard disk industry is frequently acquired

Recently, Western Digital Corporation, a US hard disk manufacturer, announced that it has agreed to acquire Stec Inc., a troubled SSD manufacturer, for approximately US$340 million, becoming one of the leading companies in the rapidly growing SSD industry.

SanDisk, a maker of flash memory for mobile devices, recently announced that it will acquire SSD manufacturer Smart Storage Systems for US$307 million to acquire related technologies that will improve its chip performance. SanDisk has previously acquired FlashSoft and Pliant Technology Inc. And other companies to strengthen their competitiveness in the field of flash memory for mobile devices.

In addition, Samsung Electronics has recently announced that it will mass-produce the first ultra-high-speed solid-state drive "PCI Express SSD", which is 2.5 times faster than the SSDs currently on the market. , Capacity up to 512GB, about the size of a chewing gum.

Solid-state drive advantages Obviously, SSDs and traditional hard drives will be different compared to what analyst Zhao Huan said that because SSDs are mainly made of solid-state electronic memory chip arrays, the most prominent feature is fast and stable, especially playing games and running. Big software. In addition, SSDs are much safer than traditional hard drives and consume much less power than traditional hard drives. This is particularly evident on Laptops.

"Compared with conventional hard disks, SSDs have the advantages of fast read and write speed, low power consumption, no noise, anti-vibration, low heat, small size, and a wide operating temperature range, which can replace traditional hard disks to some extent to complete the work. However, Solid-state hard drives still have disadvantages such as low cost-to-price ratio and limited life expectancy, and these shortcomings are difficult to solve fundamentally, and the possibility of solid-state hard drives replacing traditional hard drives does not exist for the time being.” Wang Ningyuan, IT Industry Advisor, China Investment Consulting Group Indicated.

According to reports, SSDs are now widely used in military, automotive, industrial control, video surveillance, network monitoring, network terminals, power, medical, aviation, navigation equipment and other fields.

"Although SSD products have been blooming in the past two years, large and small storage companies have introduced new products with unique features, but in general the price of SSDs is still high, and in the short term, it will not be popularized or even occupied the mainstream market. Zhao Huan said.

Cloud storage is difficult to become short-term mainstream In the field of digital storage, in addition to hard disk, the recent upsurge of cloud storage has also emerged. From the point of view of development, whether cloud storage will replace the hard disk in terms of storage "The biggest characteristic of cloud storage in the short and long term is that it can reduce costs for small businesses, better backup local data and can handle daily Data, cloud storage has become a trend in the future of storage development. Desktop and notebook manufacturers can store all the data they need, from the operating system to the picture." Zhao Huan said.

According to the First Financial Daily, Wang Ningyuan stated that cloud storage is an important part of the future storage system, and it will serve information storage with traditional hard disks and solid-state hard disks. However, cloud storage requires high core technology, and it does not have the conditions for widespread promotion and utilization in the short term. At the same time, cloud storage still has major defects in the process of use. If traditional hard disks have improved in performance, the situation of cloud storage “dominating the world” is unlikely.

The solid-state drive concept originated from the other side of the ocean. Then, how about the solid-state drive manufacturers in the domestic market? “There are relatively few domestic manufacturers specializing in solid-state hard drives, and the number of companies with strong strength, first-rate research and development and high market share is even more limited. The advantages of SSDs are not obvious, and there is still a small gap compared with internationally renowned companies such as OCZ, said Wang Ningyuan.

"The concept of SSDs has spread from US stocks to A shares, and the listed companies involving the SSD concept, such as Netac, Great Wall Development, and Huanxu Electronics (15.84, -0.65, -3.94%), have received market attention. The future upside will depend on The implementation of policies and the fundamentals of listed companies, the division between individual stocks will be inevitable, individual stocks should be cautious in investment, to avoid buying poorly performing stocks." Zhao Huan said.

Netac Technology previously publicly disclosed that the company has launched a number of flash memory products supporting the latest process in the field of solid-state drives, and has maintained certain advantages through product updates. It has successfully passed the test of procurement of a large telecommunications company in China. Netac Technology also said it will improve the SSD product line, including high-end enterprise-class storage.

According to public information, Netac Technology once released a solid state drive named S300 in May 2010. Asahi Electronics said that currently, the Asahi Electronic Solid State Drive products are mainly supplied to Intel [microblog], but the proportion of the company's total revenue is not large. Previously, Great Wall Development stated that it is not involved in SSDs and related businesses. However, the company’s key customers, Seagate and Kingston, have solid-state drive product layouts. Great Wall Development may cooperate with Seagate or Kingston to negotiate solid-state drive business.