Start-Up Profile: Exascend, Formerly Memoright

Company:
Exascend, Inc.

Locations:
Sunnyvale, CA; Taipei, Taiwan; and Shangai and Wuhan, China for manufacturing

Born in:
2006 as Memoright, and rebranded to Exascend after MBO

Financial funding:
Major investor is Walden International, and also IPV Capital with few other VCs. Series B at $15 million in 2019

Main executives:
They have on average 15+ years of experience with Marvell and Sandforce controller firmware development.

Frank Chen, CEO since 2016, a 20+ year industry veteran with technical expertise spanning across multiple disciplines, from firmware and software development, to ASIC, DRAM and NAND flash design. He has over 20 US and worldwide patents on SSD related technology. From 2003 to March 2011, he served in Micron, led multiple gens SSD and mobile flash development including the development of world’s first 6Gb SATA SSD, winning 2010 Insight Annual Storage Product Award. In 2011, he joined SandForce as APAC GM, went on to become Broadcom, Seagate senior director of R&D.

Technology:
High performance, capacity, reliability, application optimized SATA and PCIe SSD solutions based on Marvell controller. In-house developed custom hardware and firmware stack supporting SLC, MLC and TLC. Obtained and filed 45+ US and worldwide SSD related patents.

Products:

• Can be built ground up from hardware (100% customization).
• Industrial and enterprise grade 6GB SSD in 2.5″, M.2 2280, M.2 2260, M.2 2242, mSATA, and CFast form factor based on Marvell controller, up to 4TB.

SATA modules

CFast

• Industrial and enterprise grade PCIe Gen3x4, Gen4x4, and Gen3x2 SSDs in U.2, M.2 2280, and CFexpress form factor based on Marvell 12nm process controller, up to 8TB.

PCIe modules

CFexpress

• New form factor E1.S enterprise PCIe SSD to be launched in 3Q20

Features including:

• Adaptive Thermal Control (ATC) to ensure consistent performance across rugged temperature range.
• Accelerated boot improve drive boot and system response time after SPOR event.
• SuperCruise technology to guarantee no fluctuation in performance (sustained performance) from the beginning until the end of life of the SSD.
• Flexible non-standard capacity support, such as 3TB, 5TB, 6TB for capacity and cost.
• Adjustable TBW/DWPD for long life support (DWPD=1,1.5,3, or specified value).
• Application optimized performance tuning.
• Custom form factor, interface, and connector solution service
• Support integration of life monitoring software.
• Factory data recovery service.Full range of specialized application-optimized enterprise and industrial grade SSDs supporting commercial (0°-70°) and industrial temperature (-40°-85°) offered to B2B partners, including 6Gb SATA in 2.5″, M.2 2280/2262/2242, mSATA, and CFast form factors up to 4TB.
• PCIe Gen3x4, Gen4x4, Gen4x2, Gen3x2 in U.2, M.2, and CFexpress form factor up to 8TB. E1.S form factor to be launched in 3Q20.
• Streaming series supporting 0.6 DWPD.
• Boot and Pro series supporting 1 DWPD.
• Max series supporting 5 DWPD.

Availability:
Consumer series 6Gb SATA and PCIe Gen3x4 at Amazon (US) and Compuzone (Korea), soon at Amazon (Germany).

Roadmap:

Competitors:
There are 197 SSD makers in the world.

Read also:
Start-Up MemoRight From China, Yet Another Flash SSD Maker
Apparently with an excellent technology [with our comments]
December 4, 2007 | Press Release