As the SSD industry continues to grow, manufactures try to maintain their consumer presence with more value oriented consumer products. Such is the case with Intel's latest step into the TLC segment by introducing their newest 540s SATA 3 SSD a few weeks back. The Intel 540s Series is their first SSD to feature 16nm TLC NAND and first 5 series drive to deliver up to 1TB of capacity.

Much more interesting though is the fact that Intel has sought out 3rd party manufacturers for both controller and NAND flash memory, relying on more value conscious parts than their own. The TLC NAND is sourced from SK Hynix while the controller is from Silicon Motion. The controller moved to Silicon Motion is a given as SandForce was bought out by Seagate but why Intel would not be relying on their own fabs for memory is more than a bit curious.