Link_A_Media Devices Unveils Customizable Controller Platform

Looking to develop and ship samples of a new, custom SSD controller product, Link_A_Media Devices (LAMD) has announced the availability of its 6G SATA and PCIe, FlashLINK2 SSD controller technology platform. The company develops semiconductor SoC solutions for the data storage market.

Supporting a broad spectrum of SSD applications ranging from 2 Channels for Hybrid Hard Disk Drive and Consumer products to 16 Channels for the enterprise segment, the FlashLINK2 is a highly scalable platform. To deliver Read/Write transfer speeds and throughput (IOPS), as specified below, it combines a highly robust data recovery sub-systems, based on LAMD’s second generation proprietary Adaptive DSP Error Recovery technology, with a data transport sub-system and user-customizable host interface block.

“We are very pleased to announce the availability of our proven FlashLINK2 SSD controller platform, which features our endurance enhancing technologies to enable the widespread adoption of next generation MLC Flash in data storage devices,” said Dr. Hemant Thapar, CEO, Link_A_Media Devices. “Our versatile platform is designed to enable our customers to suitably add their own hardware or firmware blocks to create custom controller products and deliver differentiated NAND-based system-level storage solutions.”

To meet the lifetime requirements of enterprise-class usage while maintaining high performance throughout the drive’s life, the Adaptive DSP Error Recovery is specifically designed to increase the endurance of current and future generation MLC NAND devices. Through the use of proprietary adaptive signal estimation methods and powerful on-the-fly error correction technology, it achieves these key system objectives, the company stated in a press release.

In October 2010, the company introduced what the company claims to be the industry's first 4KB-Block LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) based system-on-chip (SoC) that processes 4KB of data at a time. The company has already sampled this device to an HDD manufacturer. Due to reduced overhead requirement for storing data associated with error correction and synchronization, an HDD with data partitioned into larger 4KB sectors enables more data to be stored on each magnetic disk.