OCZ Z6300 NVMe Flash SSD, U
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OCZ was a brand of
Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...
that was used for some of its
solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non- ...
s (SSDs) before they were rebranded with Toshiba. OCZ Storage Solutions was a manufacturer of SSDs based in
San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...
, USA and was the new company formed after the sale of ''OCZ Technology Group''s SSD assets to
Toshiba Corporation is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...
. Since entering the memory market as ''OCZ Technology'' in 2002, the company has targeted its products primarily at the computer hardware enthusiast market, producing performance
DDR SDRAM Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR SDRAM) is a double data rate (DDR) synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM, also retroactively called DDR ...
,
video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...
s, USB drives,
power supply unit A power supply unit (PSU) converts mains AC to low-voltage regulated DC power for the internal components of a desktop computer. Modern personal computers universally use switched-mode power supplies. Some power supplies have a manual switch f ...
s, and various cooling products. OCZ Storage Solutions was dissolved on April 1, 2016 and absorbed into Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc, which later then became
Kioxia Kioxia Holdings Corporation () is a Japanese multinational computer memory manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate in June 2018 and gained its current name in October 2019; it is curren ...
.


History

OCZ was originally called "The Overclockerz Store" when it was founded by Ryan Petersen in 2000 selling overclocked
Athlon AMD Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86, x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by AMD, Advanced Micro Devices. The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor a ...
processors. San Jose, California-based OCZ Technology Group, Inc. was founded in 2002 by Ryan Petersen and Bhulinder Sethi. OCZ maintained satellite offices in The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Israel along with manufacturing and
logistics Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...
facilities in Taiwan. In June 2006, OCZ went public on the
London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...
Alternative Investment Market AIM (formerly the Alternative Investment Market) is a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange that was launched on 19 June 1995 as a replacement to the previous Unlisted Securities Market, Unlisted Securities Market (USM) that had been in opera ...
(LSE AIM), with the ticker symbol "OCZ". On May 25, 2007, OCZ acquired PC Power & Cooling, whose products include power supplies. PC Power & Cooling is in
Carlsbad, California Carlsbad is a beach city in the North County area of San Diego County, California, United States. The city is north of downtown San Diego and south of downtown Los Angeles. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of ...
. It operated as a separate satellite office for OCZ and maintained its own product lines, although OCZ later launched OCZ-branded power supply models as well. In early March 2009, OCZ announced their intent to delist from the LSE to pursue a listing on an American stock exchange. On April 24, 2010, OCZ announced a listing on
NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
with the ticker symbol "OCZ". In September 2010 OCZ announced the RevoDrive, which is a bootable PCI-E drive for the enthusiast market. It also recently announced an SSD interface called High Speed Data Link (HSDL), which is a PCIe/SAS hybrid interface, along with corresponding products to implement it. As of 2012, OCZ's SSDs offered up to a 1 TB capacity. In November 2010, OCZ acquired
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
from Solid Data Inc., for
Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...
, SAS, and controller assets for solid state drives. The cost was approximately $950,000, paid with restricted common stock and cash. OCZ discontinued all RAM production, citing poor market performance and the weakening global
DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...
market, by the end of their 2010
fiscal year A fiscal year (also known as a financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. La ...
on February 28, 2011. In March 2011, OCZ acquired Indilinx Company, Limited, a privately-held
fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...
provider of
flash controller A flash memory controller (or flash controller) manages data stored on flash memory (usually NAND flash) and communicates with a computer or electronic device. Flash memory controllers can be designed for operating in low duty-cycle environments ...
silicon Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid (sometimes considered a non-metal) and semiconductor. It is a membe ...
and software for SSDs, for approximately $32 million of OCZ common stock. On October 5, 2011, OCZ announced an intent to acquire PLX Technology's Abingdon R&D department (formerly Oxford Semiconductor), which specializes in storage SoC development. In 2012 OCZ acquired Sanrad Inc., a privately-held provider of
flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...
caching and
virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...
software and hardware from the RAD Group; Sanrad became the OCZ Israel office. Reports in 2012 indicated that a possible acquisition of OCZ by
Seagate Technology Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American Computer data storage, data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with ...
fell through. On September 17, 2012, founder and CEO Ryan Petersen was fired by his
board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...
, and chief marketing officer Alex Mei was appointed as interim CEO. Media outlets speculated that Ryan was ousted by the board of directors. In the early 2010s, SSD devices with the OCZ brand that use
SATA III SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...
,
PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...
,
Serial attached SCSI In computing, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a point-to-point serial Communications protocol, protocol that moves data to and from Computer storage, computer-storage devices such as hard disk drives, solid-state drives and tape drives. SAS replac ...
and
USB 3.0 Universal Serial Bus 3.0 (USB 3.0), marketed as SuperSpeed USB, is the third major version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for interfacing computers and electronic devices. It was released in November 2008. The USB 3.0 specification ...
interfaces, for both client and enterprise applications were produced and marketed. OCZ-branded power supply units were also manufactured. On October 10, 2012, OCZ appointed board member Ralph Schmitt as the company's president and CEO. Schmitt joined OCZ from PLX, where he served as president and CEO since 2008.


Accounting practices

Several
shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...
lawsuits revolved around questionable accounting practices during 2012. In May 2013 the NASDAQ gave OCZ until September 16, 2013 to file its delayed earnings. The company was several quarters late in filing and restated earnings back to 2008. On September 12, 2013, the company disclosed it would not meet the deadline, which was then extended to October 7. 2013 saw OCZ's revenue fall steeply from $88.6 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2012 to $33.5 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2013, while financial losses increased. OCZ took a $30 million loan at a steep 15%
interest rate An interest rate is the amount of interest due per period, as a proportion of the amount lent, deposited, or borrowed (called the principal sum). The total interest on an amount lent or borrowed depends on the principal sum, the interest rate, ...
from Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Because OCZ put in their own firm as collateral for the loan, Hercules Technology Growth Capital would gain ownership of OCZ if OCZ failed to repay the loan. After failing to meet the term of the loan, it was extended to June 2014, with the share price dropping 40% on November 4, 2013. On November 25, 2013, Hercules took control of OCZ's bank accounts because it was not in compliance with the conditions of the loan. The
Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...
charged former CEO Ryan Petersen and former CFO Arthur Knap for accounting failures. In a complaint filed in the Northern District of California, the SEC alleged that OCZ's former CEO Ryan Petersen engaged in a scheme to materially inflate OCZ's revenues and gross margins from 2010 to 2012. It separately charged OCZ's former chief financial officer Arthur Knapp for certain accounting, disclosure, and internal accounting controls failures at OCZ. Knapp agreed to settle the SEC's charges without admitting the allegations against him. As of 2015, the SEC's litigation continued against Petersen, and finally came to a close in 2017.


Toshiba acquisition

On November 27, 2013, OCZ Technology stock was halted. OCZ then stated they expected to file a petition for bankruptcy and that
Toshiba Corporation is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...
had expressed interest in purchasing its assets in a bankruptcy proceeding. On December 2, 2013, OCZ announced Toshiba had agreed to purchase nearly all of OCZ's assets for $35 million. The deal was completed on January 21, 2014 when the assets of OCZ Technology Group became a new independently operated subsidiary of Toshiba named OCZ Storage Solutions. OCZ Technology Group then changed its name to ZCO Liquidating Corporation; on August 18, 2014, ZCO Liquidating Corporation and its subsidiaries were liquidated. In February 2014, the PC Power & Cooling subsidiary was sold to FirePower Technology. OCZ Storage Solutions was dissolved on April 1, 2016 and absorbed into Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., with OCZ becoming a brand of Toshiba. Toshiba later reorganized its memory products division under a new company and brand,
Kioxia Kioxia Holdings Corporation () is a Japanese multinational computer memory manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate in June 2018 and gained its current name in October 2019; it is curren ...
.


Reliability history

OCZ-branded SSDs were notable for high failure rates. Two lines from the old OCZ Technology Group, the Petrol and the SATA II versions of the Octane, had return rates of over 40% at one anonymous French technology online retailer. The SATA II version of the 128 GB Octane had a return rate of 52.07%. No other company had any SSDs with a return rate of over 5% from this retailer in the data set that was published on March 5, 2013. In a
dataset A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record o ...
published on April 30, 2014, OCZ again had the highest return rates from the same anonymous retailer. The next dataset, published on November 6, 2014, shows only one OCZ drive, the OCZ Agility 3 480 GB, which had a much lower return rate of 1.34%. KitGuru tested five samples of the OCZ ARC100 240GB SSD, which was released after Toshiba acquired OCZ's assets, over four months in 2014 and 2015. The drives were deliberately tested to destruction; the lowest lifetime throughput was 350TB and the highest 700TB. The drive's warranty covers 20GB of data transfer a day for three years, a total of 22TB.


References


External links

* {{Corporate scandals 2014 establishments in California Accounting scandals Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2013 Computer memory companies Computer power supply unit manufacturers Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2014 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2016 Manufacturing companies established in 2002 Scandals in California Technology companies disestablished in 2014 Technology companies disestablished in 2016 Technology companies established in 2002 Electronics companies established in 2014 Toshiba brands