Goke Micro: Let Chinese-designed solid-state storage products empower all industries

As the technological waves of 5G, AIoT, big data, and cloud computing sweep the world, solid-state storage has played an increasingly important role in the ICT industry. For all walks of life in China that are undergoing digital transformation, powerful and customized solid-state storage technology is needed as support. To this end, Gokewei, a leading domestic solid-state storage company, has formally proposed the concept of "Solid-state Storage·China Design·Empowering All Industries", aiming to help the domestic digital transformation process achieve greater breakthroughs. China Design is the core of this concept, which includes factors such as independent technology, domestic chips, and industrial ecology, and is also a sublimation of domestic solid-state storage technology. On the basis of the continuous advancement of domestic solid-state storage technology, combined with an in-depth understanding of the different needs of various domestic industries, "China Design" solid-state storage products can truly achieve the goal of empowering all industries.

Labeling solid-state storage as designed in China

On May 14, 2020, Gokewei and Yangtze Memory officially signed a long-term supply agreement at Gokewei's headquarters in Changsha. At the signing ceremony, Gokewei released a solid-state drive equipped with Yangtze Memory's 64-layer 3D NAND particles, and for the first time proposed the concept of "Solid State Drive·China Design", leading the market development trend.

From the initial upgrade of "Solid State Drive·Chinese Design" to today's "Solid State Storage·Chinese Design·Empowering All Industries", the unchanging core is "Chinese Design".

How to interpret "Chinese design"? Kang Yi, president of Gokewei's storage business group, believes that it has four meanings: "First, all Gokewei's solid-state drives use controller chips developed by themselves, building their own design capabilities from the most basic chip level; second, Gokewei has developed its own firmware and owns a full set of intellectual property rights; third, Gokewei's solid-state storage products use Yangtze Memory particles and give priority to domestically produced devices. Some products have achieved a high localization rate; fourth, Gokewei insists on promoting the localization of solid-state storage ecology, and has done a lot of collaboration with domestic CPUs and domestic operating systems, including mutual certification and development of products."

Since its establishment, Goke Micro has been committed to the development of solid-state drive products, and has launched four series of solid-state drives, namely Emei, Longteng, Changxiang, and Pixiu, based on its own chips. Recently, the company has expanded its embedded storage products such as the Guomi Tianji encrypted USB flash drive, eMMC, and UFS, forming a complete storage product line, and upgrading the product positioning of "solid-state drive" to "solid-state storage."

This upgrade stems from a deep insight into technology and market trends. Kang Yi told Jiwei.com that two important trends are happening in the market. One is that the original cloud-edge architecture is rapidly evolving into a cloud-edge-end architecture, and the other is that the localization of ICT has entered the 3.0 era from 2.0, and the localization of the end side has been placed in a primary position.

"We launched embedded products in order to cover new terminal products and enter the markets of thin and light notebooks, tablets, etc." said Kang Yi.

However, the embedded market is crowded with competitors and the competition is fierce. Is Goke Micro ready? Kang Yi said confidently: "After years of accumulation, Goke Micro has the ability to enter this market." He listed Goke Micro's advantages in detail: stable product supply capacity, strong packaging and testing capabilities, and a complete after-sales service network, all of which are enough for Goke Micro to smoothly consolidate its foundation in the new market.

"The entire embedded storage market is worth $15 billion, and as the computing power of the system continues to increase, higher requirements are placed on the speed and capacity of the product, so this will be a market with no ceiling in the short term." Kang Yi emphasized, "Therefore, when entering this new field, we will continue to focus on customer needs and achieve differentiated innovation."

Find the right position and seize the opportunities of the 14th Five-Year Plan

In fact, Gokewei has never stopped innovating not only in new embedded storage, but also in its best field, solid-state drives.

"We invest more than 20% of our revenue in research and development every year. We have invested 1.2 billion yuan since 2013, and 70% of our employees are R&D personnel, so we have strong technological innovation capabilities," Kang Yi said proudly.

"In the past year, we have developed a large number of customized SSD products for different customers," Kang Yi recalled. "One customer said that after using Gokewei's SSD, he discovered that it could have so many differentiated functions."

In response to different customer needs, Goke Micro has added many customized functions to SSDs, such as encryption, data recovery, and operating temperature, which are suitable for different scenarios. In addition, it has also expanded its products to industrial and enterprise markets, striving to achieve full coverage of all fields. Kang Yi said: "Solid-state storage itself has many functions that can be customized because it is a complete closed-loop computing system, but many customized needs have not been tapped. Now we transform our technical capabilities into products to meet the differentiated needs of customers."

Differentiation is also the magic weapon for all domestic storage companies to win, because most of the market share of the domestic storage market is still occupied by international brands. If domestic companies want to rise, they must take a different path.

It is easier said than done. Kang Yi believes that in this process, domestic enterprises must first find their own positioning and find a path for sustainable development. On this premise, they should learn the advantages of international brands in technology and market strategies, fully understand them, and then apply them to the market. "However, when making any technological innovation, don't lose your rhythm."

Fortunately, the domestic solid-state storage industry is now in a golden period of development. With the continuous advancement of the country's 14th Five-Year Plan, more and more opportunities are facing the industry.

Kang Yi has noticed two huge opportunities brought by the 14th Five-Year Plan: First, the chip supply chain security issue has been raised to a strategic level, allowing chip companies to obtain more policy guidance and support; second, with the development of new infrastructure, the demand for data storage continues to increase, bringing broad space to the storage industry. "We hope to use the 14th Five-Year Plan as a guide to implement Gokewei's information security and other technologies in the field of solid-state drives in applications to actually support the development of the 14th Five-Year Plan."

In order to seize this opportunity, Gokewei has formulated the following three-level strategic plans:

On the technical level, we must keep up with the pace of industrial development, including the use of new interfaces and new materials, and continuously improve ourselves in terms of product speed, performance, reliability, power consumption, etc.

At the product level, we must continuously expand our product lines, achieve full-field coverage, and strive to create comprehensive solid-state storage solutions for our customers.

At the market level, we must persist in empowering all industries, transforming differentiated technological investments into product differentiation to better match customer needs.

The business philosophy of Goke Micro Storage is the twelve-character policy of "customer-centric, market-driven, and delivery-driven". "We will dynamically adjust our strategy based on market and customer needs, but our overall goal and belief of empowering all industries will not waver." Kang Yi finally said.