Starblaze

Starblaze Technology, established in late 2015, designs and develops enterprise-grade solid-state drive (SSD) controllers and one-stop storage solutions. The company is headquartered in Beijing and maintains R&D centers in Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hsinchu to support its customer base.

The company's product line is centered around its high-performance, low-power NVMe SSD controllers, such as the STAR1000 and its successor, the STAR1000P. These controllers are designed for high-end client and entry-level enterprise applications, featuring PCIe Gen3x4, NVMe 1.3, and support for up to 32 terabytes (TB) of storage. The STAR1000P controller, for instance, can achieve sequential read speeds of 3.6GB/second and sequential write speeds of 3.2GB/second. Starblaze's controllers are developed to be compatible with various Chinese platforms and server operating systems, aiming to advance domestic enterprise applications. The business model appears to be based on selling these controller chips and providing turnkey solutions, which include the ASIC, software development kits (SDK), and firmware, to clients in the data center and enterprise storage markets.

Starblaze began as the ASIC business unit of Memblaze before becoming an independent entity in 2015. It secured its Series A funding in July 2016 and an A+ round in August 2018. In the latter half of 2021, the company completed its Series B financing, raising a total of 500 million yuan ($78.47 million) to fund further research and development into next-generation SSD controllers, including those with PCIe Gen4 and Gen5 capabilities. Key investors include Shenzhen Capital Group, Qualcomm Ventures, Enlighten Holdings, and Zhengqi Financial Holdings.

Keywords: SSD controller, enterprise storage, NVMe, solid-state drive, ASIC design, data center solutions, PCIe, flash memory controller, storage technology, STAR1000P, STAR2000, big data applications, mass data storage, edge to cloud, semiconductor, memory chips, data processing, system-on-chip (SoC), NAND flash