Taiwanese industry sources told DigiTimes that Marvell Technology has made an investment in Taiwanese SSD maker Memoright to form a strategic alliance. The goal is to combine Marvell SSD controller ICs and Memoright's firmware technology to provide complete SSD solutions to its clients, similar to how LSI markets its controllers.
Marvell and US-based LSI are the two largest SSD controller IC vendors with a combined global market share of at least 70%, the sources indicated. While LSI provides SSD controller ICs equipped with complete firmware, Marvell provides SSD controller ICs which need clients to write their own firmware, the sources noted. Since many SSD suppliers are not capable of writing firmware, Marvell has encountered bottlenecks in marketing its SSD controller ICs, the sources pointed out.
In addition to SSDs, Marvell will have Memoright write firmware for its eMMC controller ICs for smartphones and tablets, the sources indicated.
