South Korea’s small businesses issued a challenge to Solid State Drive (SSD) market that is dominated by Samsung Electronics, SKhynix, Intel, and other global enterprises.
It designed and produced its own nand flash memory package, which demands the biggest production cost in SSD, and widened its price competitiveness from large companies’ products. It plans to fulfill technology differentiation in industrial data storing device by developing SSD embedded with electromagnetic wave shield
Sun System (Representative Lee Sun Sang) revealed on the 12th that it developed a subminiature SSD of M.2 size with 256 GB capacity.
Having a size of 80x22mm, it is smaller than mSATA, which is widely used in notebook and PC, but it has an advantage that it can be produced with different length depending on a use. Company explained that it lowered its price compared to performance by 20% by producing its own designed board and nand flash memory package.
SSD is comprised of controller, many nand flash memories, and power supplies, and nant flash memory covers 80% of SSD’s production cost. Although Sun System developed most of SSD’s components own its own, it applied Novachips and SMI’s SSD controller on its SSD.
M.2 SSD was embedded with bulk nand flash memory design ability and multi-layer PCB design technique towards high-density installation. No other businesses in Korea were successful in developing its own SSD other than Samsung Electronics and SKhynix. Most small businesses in Korea get their SSD by importing from small Taiwan businesses such as ADATA and Innodisk.
Sun System was able to develop its own 32GB bulk memory package, which is hard for small businesses to develop on their own, and applied on SSD board. It developed M.2 SSD through SSD technologies that it secured by developing its own 32GB bulk memory package.
“As IT is changing from PC to mobile, SSD is getting more focus than HDD as it has better transportability and faster data processing. We are going to first apply SSD onto notebook PC, tablet PC, and other mobile instruments, and then we are going to focus on industrial market such as blackbox and server.” Chun Jong Ok, who works as the manager at Sun System Laboratory said about SSD.
The company recently also developed 2.5inch SSD for servers and it’s getting tested for its performance at domestic supercomputer specialized companies and communication agencies. It is also developing an embedded SSD that has electromagnetic wave shield installed.
“We are discussing about forming a joint enterprise for SSD products with small and medium-sized busineses such as KEC Corporation and Novachips. We are going to go after SSD market domestically and globally by forming an united front.” Chun Jong Ok, a manager at the laboratory said about its future plan of forming a joint enterprise.
Staff Reporter Sung,Hyunhee | sunghh@etnews.com