230MBs (Read) SSD Controller by Indilinx

Indilinx, a fabless semiconductor company, has completed the development of IDX22 (Product Name: Barefoot), its high-performing solid state drive (SSD) controller with 90nm process technology. Barefoot shows the fastest read speed 230MB/s of all the products currently available in the market and supports the capacity up to 512GB with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash.

Although there have been incumbents in the SSD industry, they didn’t make much appeal to the market since lacking performance over the cost has not been satisfying enough to convince customers to spend more money for SSD over legacy HDD.

However, Barefoot from Indilinx gives a clear solution to the market by realizing phenomenal performance at a competitive price. It supports native SATA 2.0 (3Gbps) interface and provides maximum read and write speed of 230MB/s, 170MB/s with SLC NAND flash, and 200MB/s, 160MB/s with MLC NAND, respectively. It is obviously made possible by Indilinx’s unique architecture and technology, including independently operating 4 channels and external DRAM buffer. In addition, it enhances stability and reliability by using two types of hardware error-correcting code (ECC) of Reed-Solomon (RS) and Bose-Chadhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH).

Another advantage of Barefoot comes with flexibility and scalability. Barefoot supports various types of flash memory from
major flash vendors, with expandable density up to 512GB, including Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix and Intel/Micron so that customers can have an option to choose a type of flash memory on their own needs and price. This feature is expected to trigger expansion of SSD market.

"Such business model has a tremendous meaning to drive manufacturers and PC makers. Free from lock-up of exclusively dedicated SSD controller to a certain flash memory, they can have a buying power over flash vendors by segregating purchase of controller and flash memory. Also, our controller secures consistent performance regardless of a type of flash memory," said David Won, V.P. of Marketing. He also added, "Indilinx is now cooperating with global major systems and drive manufacturers for performance evaluation and business development. Mass production is scheduled in Q4 of this year."