Chinese Sage Microelectronics Out of Stealth Mode

A new storage solutions company focusing on SSD technology has revealed itself by announcing a new SSD controller IC that enables SSDs with densities up to 5TB.

The company, Sage Microelectronics Corp., is shipping in volume 2.5TB SSD units on a single PCB with a standard 2.5″ form-factor.

Its new technology enables a single SSD controller IC to address up to 5TB of flash memory (on an array of 10x4x128GB eMMC BGA modules), achieving high density and small form factor. 

The Sage S681 device, currently in mass production, employs a SATA II interface to drive 10 channels of SD, MMC or eMMC flash memory cards, with each channel supporting up to 512GB of flash memory.

“Until now, cost-competitive SSD densities were limited to 1TB by the maximum capacity of flash memory chips, and by the fan-out limitations imposed on flash controllers by the high number of interface traces required for each memory device,” explained Dr. Jerome Luo, founder and president, Sage. “Sage decided to leverage the highly competitive pricing of flash memory cards-such as eMMCs-to develop an SSD controller that can effectively address up to 5TB of data.”

eMMC Enables Higher Density, Eases Design and Inventory Management
By offloading the management and high pinout interface of individual flash memory chips to the flash controller IC embedded in each flash memory card, the Sage S681 can manage ten memory cards, increasing SSD capacity ten-fold.

Replacing flash memory chips with flash memory cards does not increase per-byte cost for the SSD controller architecture, because the market has driven flash controller IC pricing to become commoditized. This results in flash memory cards being price competitive with the underlying cost of the component flash memory chips themselves. The use of JEDEC-compliant memory cards instead of discrete flash ICs also enables SSD manufacturers to mix-and-match inventory, further reducing testing cost, inventory management complexity and firmware version control.

Sage developed a propriety multi-core architecture for its SSD controller IC. Unlike single core SSD controllers from other vendors, the Sage S681 is built on a multi-core processor that devotes a single concise RISC CPU core to SATA bus management, plus additional cores to handle two memory card channel interfaces each. This enables clear firmware partitioning between the SATA interface and memory card interface, simplifying software upgrades, testing and verification.

The Sage S68X family of SSD controllers includes three devices: the S681 supports 10 memory channels, the S682 5 memory channels, and the S685 4 memory channels. 

All three devices are currently in mass production, and all are priced under $5.00, depending on volume.

The S681 is available in a BGA 207 package. The S682 is available in a LQFP 128 package. The S685 is available in a QFN 88 package.

Experienced Team of Storage Innovators Behind New Venture
Sage Microelectronics was formed by technologists with corporate experience in flash memory and controller design. The company is led by president Jianjun (Jerome) Luo, PhD., who also serves as director of the Micro Electronics Research Institute (MERI) at Hangzhou Dianzi University, China.

The company’s founding team includes senior executives that co-founded storage technology developer Baleen Systems, and held senior executive and technology positions at Synopsis, IBM, Maxtor, Oak Technologies and other Silicon Valley companies. With more than 60 patents granted, core team has decades of experience in storage technology development.

The company is financially backed by China-based venture capital and corporate investment from the Cybernaut Investment Fund, Enjoyor Ltd. and Shenzhen Jinchang Asset Management Co.

Founded in 2011, privately held Sage Micro is based in Hangzhou City near Shanghai China. With subsidiary offices in Beijing, Shenzhen, Taipei and Silicon Valley, it designs and markets ICs, modules, systems and solutions for digital storage.

The company’s products are used in consumer, computing, enterprise and industrial applications.

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