Page 1 of 3
A coalition of server and storage vendors on Thursday said they are working together to drive a broader adoption of solid state drives by developing standards for a PCIe implementation of the SSD technology.
Leading the SSD Form Factor Working Group are Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, IBM, and Intel. Other members of the Working Group include a variety of SSD and storage component makers.
Notably absent from the group, however, are Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest manufacturer of servers and mobile PCs, the two major products in which SSDs can be found. Also not a part of the group is Apple, which is trying to take the lead in portable computer flash-based technology with its new MacBook Air, and NetApp, the fastest-growing top-tier storage vendor.
Jim Pappas, director of technology initiatives at Intel, said in response to questions about the lack of representation in the Working Group from those major vendors -- who happen to be competitors with Dell and EMC -- that the Working Group is actually an open organization to which anyone is able to join.
Pappas said that he is not aware of anyone in the Working Group specifically inviting companies like HP and NetApp to join. Instead, he said, the plan was to start with a group of vendors small enough to get started while keeping the door open to anyone to join. "We're just getting started," he said. "We expect a lot more companies to join."
Next: Why PCIe-based SSD Technology?
