Agere Systems Delivers Industry's Lowest Power 90-Nanometer Read Channel for High-Volume PC- and Consumer Electronics-Based Disk Drives
22 February 2006
TrueStore(TM) channel provides best-in-class signal processing
performance with up to 50 percent power savings over competing
solutions
-- Industry-leading perpendicular recording support enables drive
capacities exceeding 240 gigabytes (GB) per platter
-- Using TrueStore, invest in design once, apply to multiple
high-volume markets
ALLENTOWN, Pa., Feb. 20 -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR) today announced the industry's lowest power storage read channel for PCs and consumer electronics. This latest Agere offering provides up to a 50 percent power reduction over competing solutions enabling hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers to use a single, high-performance design to develop drives for the largest volume storage applications.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040618/AGERELOGO )
This 90-nanometer (nm) read channel targets 2.5- and 3.5-inch HDD applications in desktop and notebook PCs, consumer electronics, and enterprise applications such as blade servers. Agere storage chips can be found in a variety of end products. These include 40-160 GB HDDs in desktop and notebook PCs, 20-40 GB drives in game consoles, 40-160 GB drives in digital video recorders and 4-8 GB personal storage devices.
HDD drives provide the critical storage element in each of these applications for market leaders such as Dell and HP in personal computers; Microsoft Xbox(R) video game systems; TiVo, Scientific Atlanta and EchoStar in DVR/cable/satellite set top boxes; and Seagate and Cornice in personal storage products. Having a range of HDD capacities enables different price points and user experiences. Low power consumption is critical to achieving the aggressive power budgets of each of these product categories.
"We are focused on enabling our customers to deliver compelling disk drive products while minimizing their required development investments," said Ruediger Stroh, Executive Vice president of Agere's Storage Division. "Agere's new read channel gives drive manufacturers a single silicon design to develop drives that address over 80 percent of the total storage market, supporting any computing or consumer electronics application."
HDD manufacturers have relied on Agere to consistently deliver solutions for more than a decade while accommodating rapidly changing market, technology and form factor needs. The industry is yet again facing many challenges as the demands of PC, consumer and enterprise applications accelerate and these markets converge.
In computing, laptops are increasingly used as desktop PC replacements in the home and office, requiring drives that deliver improved battery life while maintaining the storage performance and capacities expected of traditional desktops. In consumer electronics, drives are being pushed to accommodate longer product life cycles in the home while still providing the storage reliability users demand for their digital content. In enterprise, inexpensive serial-based drives are being employed for corporate web and email servers, as well as for home networking applications.
To meet these numerous and diverse challenges, HDD manufacturers want solutions that offer the best combinations of power and performance across multiple storage segments. Developed in cutting-edge 90-nm CMOS process technology, Agere's new TrueStore RC7200 delivers market-leading perpendicular recording support to expand the amount of storage capacity in a drive to 240 GB/platter. With the RC7200, consumers get the benefit of longer battery life in their mobile devices and more space to store their digital photos, movies, music and other multimedia. In addition, this channel supports enterprise applications such as server blades or near-line disk-to-disk backup for home or office.
Low-Power, High-Performance Channel Designs
A read channel encodes and decodes data, and is the essential electronics for ensuring the accuracy of all the data read from or written to a disk drive. Read channels are the centerpiece of custom storage systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), which combine multiple drive functions - including hard disk controller, serial interface and memory - in a single chip.
The RC7200 offers several key benefits:
-- Improved performance and perpendicular recording support: The RC7200
offers outstanding signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) performance for
increasing areal densities to next-generation capacity nodes of
240 GB/platter and more. As drive designs continue to transition to
perpendicular recording techniques to improve storage capacities,
Agere's channel offers up to a 0.5-dB SNR advantage over competing
silicon, translating to nearly 10 percent more capacity or higher
yields at equivalent capacities. A broad dynamic range of clock speeds
(100 MHz to 2.0 GHz data rates) enables scaling SoC power and
performance to support multiple HDD market segments.
-- Power reduction: The RC7200 lowers chip-level power consumption while
improving overall system power management by leveraging 90-nm CMOS
process technologies, voltage scaling, multiple power modes and other
circuit design techniques. In addition, the channel can accommodate
power-optimized 2.5 volt analog/1.0 volt digital drive configurations
while also supporting 3.3/1.2 volt legacy designs, giving disk drive
designers increased flexibility with a single electronics platform.
Agere is currently shipping fully functional RC7200 silicon samples to drive customers, enabling them to rapidly develop read-write subsystems and firmware for next-generation programs. Pricing for SoC designs incorporating this channel technology ranges from US$8-10 in sample quantities.
About Agere Systems
Agere Systems is a global leader in semiconductors for storage, wireless data, and public and enterprise networks. The company's chips and software power a broad range of computing and communications applications, from cell phones, PCs, PDAs, hard disk drives and gaming devices to the world's most sophisticated wireless and wireline networks. Agere's customers include top manufacturers of consumer electronics, communications and computing equipment. Agere's products connect people to information and entertainment at home, at work and on the road -- enabling the connected lifestyle.
For more information, customers may visit Agere's Web site at http://www.agere.com or contact one of Agere's regional sales offices. Customers in the U.S. may also call the Agere Systems Customer Response Center at 1-800-372-2447. Customers in Canada may call 1-800-553-2448. Customers outside those countries may call 1-610-712-4323. Fax inquiries may be directed to 1-610-712-4106, or e-mail queries to docmaster@agere.com. Written inquiries should be sent to Agere Systems, Room 10A-301C, 1110 American Parkway NE, Lehigh Valley Central Campus, Allentown, PA, 18109, USA.
Agere, Agere Systems, and the Agere Systems logo are registered trademarks, and TrueStore is a trademark of Agere Systems Inc.
Xbox is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies
This release contains forward-looking statements based on information currently available to Agere. Agere's actual results could differ materially from the results stated or implied by those forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, our reliance on major customers and suppliers, our ability to keep pace with technological change, our dependence on new product development, price and product competition, availability of manufacturing capacity, customer demand for our products and services, and general industry and market conditions. For a further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2005. Agere disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Source: prnewswire
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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