What's to Become of SandForce and How Will It Affect OCZ?

Posted 11/02/2011 at 8:41am | by Paul Lilly

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Surely SandForce must have had it's fair share of suitors that may have included Intel, Corsair, SanDisk, Western Digital, and others. But it wasn't any of these of solid state drive (SSD) players who rolled the dice on SandForce, and instead it was a company called LSI who scooped up the popular SSD chipset maker. Now the question is, what does the future hold for SandForce and its clients, and in particular OCZ?

According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, this acquisition is a good thing for all involved. Whereas a company like Intel might have been inclined to stop selling chipsets to competitors had it snatched SandForce up, LSI has no such plans. In a "brief talk" some of OCZ's managers supposedly had with Fudzilla, OCZ reassured that LSI is willing to play ball and will continue to release drives with SandForce controllers.

Gary Smerdon, VP and GM of the Accelerated Solutions Division at LSI, essentially told HotHardware the same thing in a recent phone interview following news of the acquisition.

"LSI is going to continue to support the customer base fully and there is no intent to restrict sales of SandForce technology to other storage manufactures," Smerdon told Hothardware. "SandForce will continue to operate as a standalone business that is a division of LSI. LSI may even be able to accelerate sales."

And while it wasn't mentioned in LSI's press release, the firm told HH it will "continue to drive high-end desktop and workstation markets," and also has a "clear roadmap for Ultrabooks, notebooks, and other mobile form factors."

Image Credit: SandForce