PLX, the PCI Express specialist, is using its January acquisition of Oxford Semiconductor to develop highly sophisticated HDD controllers.
"We're developing controllers for HDD in Abingdon (the Oxford Semiconductor HQ). They're very sophisticated controllers with multiple ARM cores doing things like encryption and RAID control. They're very complex", Ralph Schmitt, CEO of PLX, told Electronics Weekly, "we could use more people."
Does that mean he's recruiting? "As we go into 2010 we'll probably be looking at that", replied Schmitt, "we'll probably be adding more on the software side than on the hardware side. As we move forward, the standard bridge type products move to more sophisticated products, and most of the software written for that is done by the Oxford team."
"There was a 30% return rate on NAS (network-attached storage) boxes", said Schmitt, "we're closer to customers' needs now. They want much more sophisticated products. It's a growth market which is starting to take off."
"Today you have a router in the home," explains Schmitt, "tomorrow you'll integrate a disc and hard drive into that router and it becomes the central hub of all the access points in the house. The controllers we're building support that capability."
"Here in the UK they're doing the initial development work for platforms. Then we move the work to Taiwan for cost reduction," said Schmitt. For this second part of the job, Schmitt is looking for acquisitions.
"We would innovate and get a market started, and the Taiwanese would commoditise it", said Schmitt. So what he's looking for is Asian acquisitions which can do the cost-stripping on a product and engineer its commoditisation in-house at PLX, before the Asian commoditise-ers get to do it to the product after it has been marketed by PLX.
"There are about 30-40 companies in Asia doing this", said Schmitt. So why he wants an Asian acquisition, is so he can get the Asian engineers to do for him what they would do to him.
PLX has just taped out the first of its third generation PCI Express 8Gbit/sec products on TSMC's 40nm process.
"We're waiting to get our first chips back from TSMC", said Schmitt, "Nvidia has a lot of GPUs which use PCI Express. They've been in volume production with TSMC on 40nm and have been getting pretty good yields."