Taiwan manufacturers in the NAND flash industry are probing the possibility of forming a solid state drive (SSD) alliance to work towards setting worldwide standards for a device promising to replace the hard disk drive (HDD) as the market mainstream, according to industry sources.

As the SSD industry is just beginning to take shape, the Taiwan makers want to make a headstart in setting the standards by grouping upstream, midstream and downstream players together into an alliance that offer specification verification, the sources said.

The sources said major NAND flash makers have launched SSD products, but they are still at the stage of testing market acceptability because of the devices' relatively high prices.

The major issue at present with SSDs is that neither controller IC designers nor their clients have any standards to follow, often making the design process very inefficient, the sources commented.

The sources disclosed that so far at least four groups outside Taiwan have also been probing the possibility of working towards standardizing SSD specifications.

Taiwan makers may not be bent on playing a worldwide leading role in setting the standards, but they hope that at least certain standards can be worked out as soon as possible for the design process to follow and that Taiwan may avoid being marginalized by international players in the process of making the standards, the sources remarked.

Although at present SSD makers are all major NAND flash makers, Taiwan will stand a chance of forming such an SSD alliance because of its overwhelming role in the notebook making industry, its capability of designing NAND flash controllers, and the ambition of its memory module makers towards developing the SSD market.

But the sources noted that it will difficult to convince Samsung Electronics, Intel or SanDisk to join a Taiwan-championed SSD alliance, as these big players usually want to play the leading role in setting standards.

By: DocMemory
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