Reading, United Kingdom –Solid State Disks Ltd (SSDL), the advanced storage systems design, development and integration specialist, has won a 2025 Manufacturing Supplier Innovation Award US, in the Most Innovative Use of Reverse Engineering category. The award has been presented in recognition of SSDL’s SCSIFlash technology, which improves the reliability and extends the life of legacy computer-based systems and enables users to progress their digital transformation journeys.
SSDL’s application cited the use of SCSIFlash in the semiconductor industry by way of example, as the company’s drives have been used to replace legacy drives in manufacturing equipment made by Canon, DEC and Lam Research, for instance. End users (fabs) include Applied Materials, ASM, Seagate, Texas Instruments and Western Digital.
“Congratulations to Solid State Disks on winning Most Innovative Use of Reverse Engineering in this year’s Manufacturing Supplier Innovation Awards US,” said Libbie Hammond, Editor of Manufacturing Today Magazine. “These awards shine a spotlight on companies that are pushing the boundaries of innovation and making a tangible difference in the manufacturing industry. Solid State Disks has certainly earned their place among this year’s exceptional winners.”
Semiconductor fabs make very high-tech and high-value products. Ironically, the computer-based processing tools – such as lithography, deposition and stepper systems – are often decades old. These tools follow precise programmes to process wafers and record data for quality control purposes, and in many cases the tools’ data storage devices will be early generation SCSI hard disk drives. And some fabs even still use SCSI floppy disk drives. With their moving parts, these old SCSI drives, which are long obsolete, and are increasingly at risk of failure and halting production.
To solve this problem – a problem faced by any organisation reliant on legacy computer-based system – SSDL developed its range of SCSIFlash drives. They are solid-state-based, form-fit-function replacements for virtually any legacy electromechanical drive that uses a SCSI interface (i.e. SASI, SCSI-1 and SCSI-2), or indeed PATA/IDE or ESDI.
SSDL’s CEO, Richard Hilken (pictured on the left alongside SSDL’s CTO Brian McSloy, in the above photo), comments: “We’re delighted and proud to have won this award. SCSIFlash is the product of our considerable reverse engineering skills and team effort within Solid State Disks.”
