The acquisition is the latest of the Korean chip makers’ spending binges to merge or ally itself with leading worldwide chip makers to complement what the company believes lack in its technology portfolio.
Founded in 2004, LAMD is well known as one of global leaders in the development of SOC chip solutions for data storage market, including micro-controllers. It mixed signal processing and iterative data recovery technologies enable HDD and SSD OEMs to increase storage capacity and reduce manufacturing costs
Controllers are one of key building blocks to build eMMC, multi-chip package, or MCP solutions and SSDs, as they analyze and prioritize data value and then decide which data to store first and where, working in sync with a CPU.
The role of the NAND controller in premium products such as e-MMC (embedded Multi Media Card) and SSDs (Solid State Drives) has become increasingly important, as customers are extremely demanding for higher density and faster interface speed.
“We expect our NAND Flash competitiveness will be further strengthened by the acquisition of LAMD which has extensive expertise in controller technology and excellent engineering resources. SK Hynix will leverage this acquisition and continuously develop value-added NAND solutions and respond to our customers’ needs,” said Mr. Oh Chul Kwon, President and CEO of SK Hynix.
“We are excited to become a part of the SK Hynix family. This will enable us to bring our advanced controller solutions to a wide range of data storage products to meet the rapidly increasing demands of the worldwide business and consumer markets,” said Dr. Hemant Thapar, Founder and CEO of LAMD.
Sh Hynix has been recently stepping up its efforts to merge , or align itself with world-renowned chip makers to diversify and enrich its technology portfolio. On June 10, the chip maker signed an alliance with IBM to develop a next generation of PCRAMs, or phase change random access memory.
SK Hynix also acquired Ideaflash S.r.l of Italy, a NAND flash technology developer, on June 12