Unigen has been recognized by CIOReview Magazine as the recipient of “Top 20 Storage Solution Companies - 2020,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the CIOReview research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Mark Morrissey, VP of Engineering and Products.

Unigen
Endless Support for Components Old and New

Mark Morrissey, VP of Engineering and Products

Unigen, a global corporation in the design and manufacture of original and custom flash storage and DRAM module solutions, dub themselves as “the incubator for new technologies,” but that is not the unique feature that defines the company. In the domain of next-generation storage device products, Unigen runs miles ahead of the curve by helping its clientele to constantly explore new horizons as well as offering continued support for low-density, legacy equipment like SLC - a must in mission-critical applications including military applications. “We are bipolar that way,” quips Mark Morrissey, VP of Engineering and Products, Unigen. “We incubate new technologies while also having a super long haul of support for our customer base.” With the storage industry as a whole evolving toward new technologies and bringing forth design challenges and system compatibility issues of their own, Unigen is actively enabling the startups that it serves, with cutting edge, next-generation storage technologies while fulfilling their EMS manufacturing needs.

While gearing up its customer base for the adoption of a new generation of technologies, the company has recognized the ecosystem around drives to be as important as the drives themselves. “While anyone can make good drives, we have partnerships that allow us to make the best on the enterprise side,” says Morrissey. In the data center ecosystem of hyperscalers, Unigen addresses the performance and configuration needs of its customers, unlike any other. Storage and memory is at the core of what the company does, but what makes Unigen unique is its next-level approach to addressing what the customers look for.

What is rarer still is Unigen’s proficiency in testing, from design, qualification, RDT capabilities, including in-house functional and burn-in test programs.

With a unique group of storage drives, Unigen offers all-round support on the enterprise level from PCIe Gen4/5 to SATA and every other form factor. The company also addresses the embedded storage market with endless support for legacy components, from routers to switches or elements of it. “We are chefs,” says Morrissey, “We take various ingredients and put them together in the form of reliable solutions for customers based on their requirements.”

Unigen’s product lines, including complimentary storage products such as NVMe Accelerators, PCIe Gen4 switches, and backplanes, show how the company is agnostic to both controllers and vendors.

We incubate new technologies while also having a super long haul of support for our customer base

As an incredibly engineering-centric company with ISO certification, Unigen strives to continually give the same form-fit-and-function to all clients. The company continues legacy support for clients with the least impact from technological shifts while simultaneously being in full awareness of the industry scenario. For instance, when a controller company approached Unigen saying that one of the generations of their controllers was to be no longer available, Unigen began redesigning a like-in-kind that needed minimal change to firmware while at the same time being incredibly transparent about those changes. In another instance, Unigen went with an outside-of-the-box approach with a large California-based OEM that was in search of a PCIe solution. It was an interesting project for Unigen, being able to take the client’s offering and interpose that to what the end technology tends to be. As they fit the pieces of the puzzle together, Unigen was able to achieve a very low cost, reliable, and extremely high-speed PCIe solution.

For more than a decade, Unigen has demonstrated excellent testing reliability and extremely tight standards in its solutions. “We know what the expectations are, and we have figured out great formulas to bring those to fruition,” says Morrissey as he also mentions that the company will continue to expand its enterprise product offering. With the market heading gradually toward computational storage, Unigen is already well-positioned for it while setting up well for the next-generation products that are yet to arrive in the market.

Unigen

Unigen Introduces The Sunflower U.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD

Monday, June 05, 2023

Low Latency Quality of Service for Content Delivery Networks

NEWARK, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, -- Unigen Sunflower SSDs offer low power and low latency Quality of Service (QoS) with an advanced PCIe Gen4.0 NVMe™ 1.4 enterprise controller that unlocks sequential read/write speeds of up to 7341/4695 MB/s on a space efficient U.2 SSD. Supporting up to 1 Drive Write Per Day (DWPD) endurance for all capacities, these SSDs are built to last and meet the most stringent power, performance, and thermal requirements for enterprise environments.

Excellent QoS and Performance : The Sunflower U.2 SSDs feature performance QD1 latency of [read/ write] 5.837/ 7.44 µs that will ensure reliable content delivery to end users from multiple sources across many data centers. The Sunflower series of drives deliver consistent performance during high usage times such as when a new movie is released, or a video game goes viral.

Power and Space Efficiency: At a maximum of 14 Watts, these U.2 SSD drives can use smaller 7mm enclosures for maximizing the number of drives per system due to their modern design. In server systems where space is at a premium and performance per Watt is critical, Sunflower is up to the task.

Security and Data Protection: The Sunflower SSDs feature end-to-end data protection on all flash memories. They also support the latest security features with TCG Opal 2.0. This provides the type of confidence that allows these drives to be used in all environments.

Endurance: The Sunflower SSDs use the most advanced controllers and NAND Flash that can withstand the test of time and usage. All SSDs from Unigen undergo a rigorous verification and testing process to ensure high reliability. The Sunflower SSDs feature up to 1 DWPD for the standard U.2 using eTLC NAND with the ability to be configured for higher DWPD upon request.

Capacity 1.92TB, 3.84TB, 7.68TB : The Sunflower family of SSDs provide up to an efficient 7.68TB of capacity to hold all your data whether you are using the SSD for applications, computation, or data storage. 1.92TB and 3.84TB capacities are also available to meet various workload requirements.

Unigen, founded in 1991, is an established global leader in the design and manufacture of original and custom SSD, DRAM, NVDIMM modules and Enterprise IO solutions. Headquartered in Newark, California, the company operates state of the art manufacturing facilities (ISO-9001/14001/13485 and IATF 16949) in the Silicon Valley Bay Area of California and near Hanoi Vietnam, along with 5 additional engineering and support facilities located around the globe. Unigen markets its products to both enterprise and client OEMs worldwide focused on embedded, industrial, networking, server, telecommunications, imaging, automotive and medical device industries. Unigen also offers best in class electronics manufacturing services (EMS), including new product introduction and volume production, supply chain management, assembly & test, TaaS (Test-as-a-Service) and post-sales support. Learn more about Unigen’s products and services at unigen.com.

Unigen: Endless Support for Components Old and New

Monday, August 12, 2024

Unigen Corporation is pleased to announce the appointment of John Burke as its President and Chief Operating Officer, following five months of service as Chief of Manufacturing Operations. In his new role, John will oversee day-to-day operations and drive the implementation of Unigen’s strategic vision. This newly created position is designed to facilitate Unigen’s growth and streamline its operations.

In his new capacity, John will be focusing on scaling Unigen’s infrastructure to ensure the company keeps pace with the high growth demands of its customers. Stationed primarily in Unigen’s Newark, California headquarters, John will be working across all Unigen global facilities to upgrade and expand the company’s manufacturing and engineering capabilities and processes. A major part of this focus will also be on recruiting and retaining top engineering talent in all locations, enabling Unigen to continue to meet and exceed the award-winning service that its customers have come to expect.

John’s experience prior to joining Unigen includes holding key positions in various sectors of electronics manufacturing, such as SMT, box-building, and contract manufacturing. He has served as General Manager, Managing Director, and Chief Operations Officer at three contract manufacturers, overseeing operations and driving success in low-volume NPI through high-volume manufacturing.

“Over the past five plus months, I have had the opportunity to work closely with John,” said Paul W. Heng, Unigen Founder and CEO. “During this time, he has consistently demonstrated his exceptional leadership, mentorship, and technical skills. His commitment and dedication have been evident at every level. We are very excited for him to step into his new role as President and Chief Operating Officer.”

AIC Partners with Unigen to Launch Ultra-Efficient AI Inference Server

Thursday, August 22, 2024

A Power-Efficient, Air-Cooled AI Server With Over 400 TOPS Of Performance

CITY OF INDUSTRY - AIC, a global leader in design and manufacturing of industrial-strength servers, in partnership with Unigen Corporation has launched the EB202-CP-UG, an ultra-efficient Artificial Intelligence (AI) inference server boasting over 400 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance. This innovative server is designed around the robust EB202-CP, a 2U Genoa-based storage server featuring a removable storage cage. By integrating eight Unigen Biscotti E1.S AI modules in place of standard E1.S SSDs, AIC is offering a specialized configuration for AI, the EB202-CP-UG—an air-cooled AI inference server characterized by an exceptional performance-per-watt ratio that ensures long-term cost savings.

AIC Partners with Unigen to Launch Ultra-Efficient AI Inference Server

"We are excited to partner with AIC to introduce innovative AI solutions," said Paul W. Heng, Founder and CEO of Unigen. "Their commitment to excellence in every product, especially their storage servers, made it clear that our AI technology would integrate seamlessly."

Michael Liang, President and CEO of AIC, stated, "By collaborating with Unigen to carve out a technological niche in AI, we have successfully demonstrated an efficient, powerful, air-cooled server that aligns perfectly with our customers' stringent requirements."

The EB202-CP-UG is built on the Capella Motherboard platform, which accommodates the AMD EPYC (Genoa) CPU. It features a unique daughter-card/baseboard specifically designed for EDSFF signals from E1.S modules, combined with 128GB of high-speed DDR5 memory and dual power-efficient modular power supplies. Driven by eight Unigen Biscotti E1.S AI modules, each equipped with twin Hailo-8 AI Inference Accelerators, the server achieves an impressive 21,500 frames per second (FPS) in Resnet_V1_50. Leveraging the new AVX technology in the AMD server CPU, the EB202-CP-UG is capable of decoding one hundred 720P video streams at 25 frames per second each, while conducting AI analytics on each frame with significant processing headroom.

When paired with a Linux Ubuntu OS and VMS/AI software from Network Optix, this AI inference server offers unparalleled safety, security, and peace of mind for the most discerning IT and security professionals.

The EB202-CP-UG AI Inference Server is available for purchase now. Check out a demo of the EB202-CP-UG at the Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) at AIC's booth (#915) from August 6th to 8th. Please contact AIC, and we'll connect you with your local AIC System Integrator to begin your AI journey.

Top 20 Storage Solution Companies - 2020

Company
Unigen

Management
Mark Morrissey, VP of Engineering and Products

Description
Unigen, a global corporation in the design and manufacture of original and custom flash storage and DRAM module solutions, dub themselves as the incubator for new technologies. Unigen is actively enabling the startups that it serves, with cutting edge, next-generation storage technologies while fulfilling their EMS manufacturing needs. In the data center ecosystem of hyperscalers, Unigen addresses the performance and configuration needs of its customers, unlike any other. Storage and memory is at the core of what the company does, alongside proficiency in testing, from design, qualification, RDT capabilities, including in-house functional and burn-in test programs. The company also addresses the embedded storage market with endless support for legacy components, from routers to switches or elements of it

Unigen Endless Support for Components Old and New