Features - Storage Innovations:

AGERE ANNOUNCES BREAKTHROUGH SUITE OF HDD PRODUCTS

Addressing the growing need for storage in consumer electronics, Agere Systems announced new hard disk drive (HDD) integrated circuit (IC) technology that enables the high-capacity storage capabilities needed for streaming video, digital photos, MP3s, video games and other forms of multimedia and entertainment in mobile phones and other consumer devices. Agere has developed read-channel and hard disk controller standard products with customized performance for each storage market, including enterprise, desktop, mobile and consumer electronics.

These additions to Agere's TrueStore family of storage ICs represent the electronics critical to maximizing the performance, power, reliability and value for storage solutions as diverse as enterprise storage area networks (SANs) and ultra-small, one-inch miniature disk drives. Agere's new line of read-channels is the industry's first to offer tailored performance across every storage market segment, with exceptional signal integrity, speed and power savings. In addition, Agere is developing a hard disk controller that, when combined with other technologies in Agere's portfolio, provides complete electronics solutions to HDD manufacturers as well as the flexibility to repartition components used in portable consumer devices to enable new low- power storage applications.

Agere is currently ranked No. 1 in hard disk drive ICs by industry analyst firm IDC. Agere has design wins with every manufacturer of one-inch drives in the market today.

"With new low-power channels and disk controllers, Agere is expanding its current storage leadership to attack new opportunities in portable consumer electronics," said Ron Black, executive vice president of Agere's Client Systems group. "For example, as mobile phone manufacturers begin to address the need for high-capacity storage integration, Agere is now positioned as the only electronics provider with the design expertise and complete product portfolios for both mobile terminals and hard drive storage."

Many companies -- including mobile phone, HDD and consumer electronics manufacturers -- are looking to incorporate hard disk drive storage in innovative consumer-based products. Use of hard disk drives in consumer devices is growing due in large part to the low cost-per-gigabyte they offer compared with semiconductor memory such as flash. With fast read/write operating speeds, HDDs also offer better performance and power efficiency for managing large multimedia files than competing flash-based storage solutions.

Segment-specific read-channels

Agere is transitioning storage electronics beyond "one-size-fits-all" designs to give drive manufacturers distinct solutions tuned to each storage market: A read-channel IC is the essential component for ensuring the accuracy of all the data read from or written to a disk drive. Read-channels also are the centerpiece of storage systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), which combine multiple drive functions in a single piece of silicon to conserve space, power and cost in a hard drive. Agere's new read-channel products are designed to address specific storage markets:

• Drives for desktop PCs and fixed consumer electronics. For 3.5-inch drives that require high data capacity for PCs, personal video recorders, gaming consoles and set-top boxes, Agere's TrueStore RC6700 read-channel offers outstanding signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance supporting increased areal densities up to 160 gigabytes per platter. In addition, this new chip offers clock speeds in excess of 2.0 GHz and servo performance that is 50 percent faster than Agere's previous-generation desktop-level channel.
• Drives for notebook PCs. For 2.5- and 1.8-inch drives supporting battery-driven products including notebook and tablet PCs, PDAs and digital camcorders, power savings and capacity are critical. Agere's TrueStore RC6700LP low-power read-channel delivers capacity points up to 80GB per platter for current and future mobile PC drives, while consuming 20 percent less power than the RC6700 and 40 percent less power than Agere's previous-generation low-power channel.
• Drives for portable consumer electronics. Ultra small form factor drives require the lowest possible power, size and cost to enable high-capacity storage in mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and media players. Agere's TrueStore RC1100ULP ultra-low-power channel helps significantly extend battery life in 1.0-inch and sub- 1.0-inch HDDs through a combination of circuit design techniques and the use of low-leakage process technology that limits power consumption and associated thermal issues. This technique enables a "deep sleep" mode, allowing for up to 70 percent less power consumption than the RC6700LP channel.
• Drives for enterprise storage. Agere's RC7100HS services the high- capacity, high-speed SCSI and Fibre Channel enterprise storage markets (10K/15K RPM drives) for configurations such as RAID arrays, SANs and server blades. Developed using cutting-edge 90-nanometer process technology, this channel delivers clock speeds in excess of 2.5 GHz. The RC7100HS's speed and SNR performance, combined with its judicious use of power, enables the benefits of SoC electronics to be applied to the HDDs in the enterprise space.

All four of these new read-channels benefit from a common architecture that employs a digital finite impulse response (FIR) filter, which delivers Agere's trademark signal processing along the data path in an HDD while dramatically reducing power consumption. These channels support next-generation perpendicular recording techniques for both full and partial DC targets. The channels are available in 84-pin MLCC packages (54-pin package for RC1100ULP).