The Taiwanese company Gigastone announced it will start to develop NAND flash controllers. These controller can be used in several NAND flash type products such as USB flash drives, but can also end up in SSDs where it will compete with LSI's SandForce controllers and controllers from e.g. Marvell and Phison.
Gigastone has purchased patents from the Taiwanese chip developer Integrated Technology Express. This company was allegedly looking for buyers for their NAND controller business.
Gigastone is currently not a well known brand but its products are sold in large retails chains like Wal-Mart. Their most popular product is the Smart Box, a portable Wi-Fi device that can be used to charge mobile phones and act as a wireless data server to stream music, video and pictures. To store the data it's possible to add a SD card in the device. The company also sells USB sticks, (micro) SD cards and a USB microscope gadget.
The company has not disclosed further information on the SSD controller such as availability and specifications.
