Chipmaker Intel has formed a league of 12 outfits which want to standardise SSD Pcie interfaces.

The names that have signed up include IBM, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu Amphenol, Emulex, Fusion-io, IDT, Marvel Semiconductor, Micron Technology, Molex, PLX, QLogic, STEC, SandForce and Smart Modular Technology. The cunning plan of the SSD Form Factor Working Group group is to promote PCIe as the standard connector to SSD.

Since PCIe is a serial interface format, every device connected to the motherboard using PCIe has its own dedicated connection. These connections are also called lanes and are controlled by a switch. Due to this architecture connected  devices do not have to use the same bandwidth passing through a single bus unlike a parallel architecture, which makes data transfer faster. The group hopes to give the technology a kick in the pants through standardization.

The PCIe SSD approach works rather well with Google style architecture where applications infrastructure uses a large number of servers which are equal in processing power, while the traditional FC-SCAN SSD suits a hierarchical architecture. Intel thinks that the PCIe SSD market has low entry barriers.