Seagate Invests Unknown Amount Into eASIC

eASIC Corporation, provider of new ASIC devices, announced a strategic investment by Seagate Technology LLC.

In addition to the equity investment, eASIC and Seagate also are exploring opportunities to jointly develop custom silicon solutions for Seagate’s portfolio of SSD that would combine Seagate’s expertise in SSD with eASIC’s expertise in fast time-to-market, low-cost and low-power custom silicon solutions.

As flash memory continues to evolve at a rapid pace from 2 bits per cell, 1xnm (MLC) to 3 bits per cell 1xnm (TLC) and the industry continues to adopt a variety of host interfaces such as PCIe, NVMe and SoP (SCSI over PCIe), Seagate and eASIC seek to deliver high-performance, low-cost and low-power SSD solutions for the consumer, enterprise and cloud computing.

"eASIC has demonstrated innovative custom silicon technology with our industry-leading solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs)", said Rocky Pimentel, chief sales and marketing officer, Seagate."eASIC’s ability to quickly develop custom differentiated solutions while meeting stringent cost, power and performance requirements will enable us to rapidly deliver storage solutions and improve our product position in both SSD and SSHDs."

"We are extremely excited to be working with one of the world leaders in storage technology," said Ronnie Vasishta, president and CEO, eASIC. "Seagate has an exceptional history in bringing world class technology and innovation to the storage market. Using our eASIC Nextreme-3 28nm single via configuration technology will help Seagate to bring storage innovation at a pace not yet seen in this industry."

eASIC is a fabless semiconductor company offering new ASIC devices aimed at dramaically reducing the overall cost and time-to-production of customized semiconductor devices. Low-cost, high-performance and fast-turn ASIC and SoC designs are enabled through patented technology utilizing Via-layer customizable routing. This fabric allows eASIC to offer a new generation of ASICs with lower up-front costs than traditional ASICs.

Privately held, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. Investors include Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB), Crescendo Ventures, Advanced Equities Incorporated and Evergreen Partners.