OCZ Acquires UK R&D Team From PLX …
For SoCs aimed at SSDs
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on October 6, 2011 at 2:59 pmOCZ Technology Group, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the UK design team and certain assets from PLX Technology, Inc., strengthening the company’s global research and development team.
PLX’s UK Design Team has built a reputation for designing SoC solutions and the acquired engineering team’s expertise provides OCZ with additional resources for controller design. Through the acquisition of the engineering team and the license of IP, OCZ will be able to accelerate solid state drive development, reducing its time to market for next generation SSD products, while also reducing development costs.
"We are pleased to augment our engineering organization with the UK Design Team as they have been providing best of breed system-on-chip designs, software, and firmware since 1992," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "We believe the additional engineers along with the access to increased IP resources will enable us to significantly reduce the costs associated with storage protocol licensing, while simultaneously speeding our time to market."
Pursuant to the agreement, OCZ will among other items acquire from PLX access to substantial IP and the UK Design Team, which consists primarily of approximately 40 engineers located in Abingdon, United Kingdom. PLX will retain their existing line of products which they will continue to support and supply to their customer base, and any patents related to the technology, for which OCZ will receive a perpetual license.
The acquisition is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of various closing conditions.
Comments
OCZ is definitively one of worldwide storage company to follow.
Its acquisition of Indilinx this year for $32 million was a great one to
get its own controllers, and now PLX UK R&D team for its own SoCs.
Few firms have such a large competency in SSDs. A key part is missing:
the flash chips that OCZ has to buy outside. But setting up a chip fab
costs billions of dollars.
The list of its OCZ's OEMs is impressive: Astute Networks, Dell, Flextronics,
HP, JVL, LG, Panzura, Penguin Computing, Quanta, SGI, SuperMicro,
Tegile, Wistron, and ZT Systems.
OCZ's CEO commented: "We've undertaken highly focused cost effective
approaches to technology investment. And to that end, today we announced
the acquisition of the UK-based design team from PLX Technology, along
with access to substantial IT. We believe that this acquisition provides
significant cost savings, specifically in regards to IP licensing which
we would have otherwise incurred in the next 12 months. (...) After
closing the PLX asset purchase and hiring their team, we'll have about
200 people in R&D, that's roughly one third of our workforce. (...)
More importantly, their important storage SoC and software teams can
have an immediate impact on a roadmap by speeding our time to market
with next generation PCIe- and SATA- based SSD controller solutions."
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