Samsung supplies SSDs to Apple

By Kim Yoo-chul

Samsung Electronics has been supplying its latest solid-state drives (SSD) to Apple for its latest MacBook Air since April, according to industry sources Monday.

The news came as a surprise as the U.S. technology giant has vowed to cut its reliance on its Korean rival amid their seemingly endless patent legal battles.

“In logic chips, Apple has shifted toward Taiwan’s TSMC by sharing confidential data for the development of advanced processors. But in memory chips, Apple can’t exclude Samsung in its supply-chain management structure, completely. Apple is purchasing more of Samsung’s SSDs,” said an industry source involved with the matter.

SSD is the next-generation storage device that’s been replacing conventional hard disk drives amid an explosive growth for data-intensive and speed-focused devices including ultra-thin notebooks and tablets.

The news came on the heels of Samsung Electronics announcing that it had been mass-producing its latest SSDs since the second quarter of this year.

The Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express-based XP941 SSD is regarded as the main storage solution for next-generation notebooks because it is much faster and can boost capacity and memory storage.

“Samsung is happy to see slim ultra notebooks introduced by our global clients that use Samsung-developed PCI-Express SSDs. We will try hard to introduce next-generation SSDs that enhance capacity and functionality to help offer an innovative computing experience,” said Jeon Young-hyun, executive vice president at the company’s strategic marketing division.

It is likely that Apple still wants Samsung to supply its ARM-based SSD controller, NAND chips and DRAMs that act as a cache, all of which are connected through a proprietary connector.

Apple’s decision to make the jump to PCI Express SSDs with the Macbook Air should pave the way for the firm to use the same interface in Macbook Pro models when it refreshes them with Intel’s Haswell processors.

“PCI-Express connected SSDs are set to become mainstream technology within 18 months. Samsung is expanding the portion of NAND flash chips ― the main material for SSDs ― by applying a 10-nanometer level processing technology,” according to a statement.

The market for SSDs will rise to $17.2 billion by 2015 from an estimated $10 billion throughout 2013, Samsung said in a statement citing data provided by iSuppli, a leading market research firm.