LSI 40nm SoC Controller for HDDs

LSI Corporation announced the TrueStore SC9500, a 40-nanometer application specific standard product (ASSP) system-on-a-chip (SoC) for the notebook and desktop hard disk drive (HDD) market segments. Now sampling to HDD manufacturers, the SC9500 is the first LSI standard product SoC including integrated LSI hard disk controller, low-density parity check (LDPC) read channel and serial PHY integrated circuits.

The TrueStore SC9500 IC is delivered with reference firmware, and is designed to enable flexible ASSP SoC development for HDD manufacturers. The product allows HDD OEMs to incorporate customer requirements into a standard product without the need to invest in a hard disk controller or low-level firmware. The SC9500 also is designed to enable faster and simplified product upgrades generation over generation with lower overall development costs.

"HDD manufacturers are extremely sensitive to time-to-market pressures, and the development of standard product SoCs helps to address this demand," said Mark Geenen, president of Trend Focus. "LSI’s introduction of an ASSP SoC rounds out their portfolio and provides an alternative solution to their HDD OEM customers."

The SC9500 integrates the TrueStore RC9500 read channel which utilizes next-generation LDPC iterative decoding technology to deliver significant improvements in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), enabling greater than a 10 percent increase in the data storage capacity of HDDs. As a result, HDD manufacturers can minimize the need to implement other costly design changes required to reach the next hard drive capacity point.

The SC9500 also offers energy savings enabled by 40nm process technology and innovative design techniques that help lower power consumption and reduce temperatures. This can extend battery life and improve drive reliability, both of which are critical in the notebook market segment.

"The SC9500 is designed as a matched chipset with LSI TrueStore preamplifiers. Together, these solutions are part of a total storage system design that provides customers with maximum performance," 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."

The LSI TrueStore family of ICs for hard disk, tape and solid-state drive components 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 notebooks and a variety of consumer electronic devices.