LSI Delivers 40nm Read Channel to HDD Manufacturers

LSI Corporation announced the TrueStore RC9500, the industry’s first 40-nanometer (nm) read channel.

Now sampling to hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers, the RC9500 is designed to support notebook through enterprise HDD form factors and capacity points. The RC9500’s next-generation low-density parity check (LDPC) iterative decoding technology enables a greater than 10 percent increase in the data storage capacity of HDDs, reduces read channel power consumption and delivers industry-leading performance with data rates exceeding 4.0Gb/s.

"HDD read channel technology is critically important in a disk drive," said John Rydning, IDC’s HDD research director. "Improved read channels made by companies like LSI enable higher capacity disk drives that consume less power. The new LSI read channel, based on 40nm semiconductor process technology and using LDPC iterative decoding technology, will enable HDD OEMs to reach next-generation HDD capacity points."

The RC9500’s next-generation LDPC iterative decoding technology delivers significant improvements in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), increasing the areal density of stored data. As a result, HDD manufacturers can eliminate the need to implement other costly design changes required to reach the next capacity point. The RC9500 also includes features which are designed to reduce firmware complexity, increase drive yields and lower development costs for HDD makers.

The RC9500 offers energy savings enabled by 40nm process technology and innovative design techniques that provide ultra-low current consumption in sleep mode, which is critical to extending battery life in the notebook market segment. In addition, the lower active power consumption can reduce temperatures, improving drive reliability for desktop and digital video recorder applications, and can translate to significant energy cost savings in data center environments.

"The TrueStore RC9500 is built on a revolutionary new architecture and is part of a total recording system design that includes the LSI preamplifier, customer interconnects, heads and media as part of the complete data path solution," said Phil Brace, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Peripherals Division, LSI. "No other company can offer the breadth of high-performance storage IC products and systems that LSI delivers."

Designed for hard disk and tape drive applications, the LSI TrueStore family of ICs include highly integrated high-performance storage SoCs, read channels, preamplifiers, serial PHYs and hard disk drive controller IP. By offering a broad portfolio of integrated SoC solutions, LSI enables its customers to address all segments of the HDD market – from mission-critical enterprise applications and high-capacity desktop PCs to low-power laptops and a variety of consumer electronic devices.