Marvell Enters SSD Controller Market

Marvell announced its entry into the solid state controller market with the introduction of the ultra-slim Marvell 88NV8120 PCI Express (PCIe)-based NAND flash controller, the first Marvell product in a planned range of solid state storage controllers.

The Marvell 88NV8120 controller is designed for use in both PCs and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). In notebook and desktop PCs with disk drives, the Marvell 88NV8120 enhances performance by enabling a solid state storage subsystem to store and load the operating system and applications software more quickly. This combination of HDD and solid state memory maximizes performance and capacity while keeping costs low. The Marvell 88NV8120 is also an excellent solution for diskless sub-notebooks and MIDs, which have lower capacity requirements, as the primary, high performance storage system.

Drawing on Marvell’s market-leading high speed embedded processors and disk drive controllers, the Marvell 88NV8120 represents Marvell’s first product in a planned range of solid state storage controllers to address a significant emerging market opportunity. According to Gartner Research Director, Joseph Unsworth, the Solid-State Drive market (including low-cost PC solutions) will witness substantial unit shipment growth over the next 5 years as the market grows from 1.2M units to over 82M units in 2012, representing a 133 percent 5-year growth rate.

Marvell’s solid state controllers will provide notebook and desktop PC users with enhanced, rapid access to software and files that are used frequently, while larger files, such as video, can be stored on the disk drive. The Marvell 88NV8120 accelerates system performance by intelligently balancing the distribution of data between the flash subsystem and a high capacity hard drive. This seamless data distribution improves overall system performance.

"Marvell is leveraging more than 10 years experience in the disk drive controller market as we enter the solid state storage segment," said Sehat Sutardja, Marvell Chairman and Chief Executive. "Marvell is uniquely positioned to bring the performance advantages of solid state storage to a broad range of applications. With the introduction of this product we are unveiling our strategy to address the entire solid state storage market with exceptional controller devices."

The Marvell 88NV8120 is compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems, and offers comprehensive platform support for PC motherboards. The new flash controller supports ultra-slim drives that fit seamlessly into a PCI ExpressCard, PCIeMini slot on a laptop or PCIe slot on a desktop, while appearing as just another drive that can be managed by existing Microsoft Windows or Linux applications.

The Marvell 88NV8120 flash controller is sampling to customers.