LSI Corporation has announced the TrueStore RC9700, a second-generation 40-nanometer (nm) read channel featuring low-density parity check (LDPC) iterative decoding technology. Now sampling to hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers, the RC9700 is designed to support notebook, desktop and enterprise HDD market segments by featuring multiple cores optimized for high-speed or low-power applications. Utilizing the RC9700’s next-generation LDPC iterative decoding technology, HDD OEMs can achieve significant density increases while reducing power consumption and supporting data rates exceeding 4.0Gb/s.

"HDD manufacturers rely on companies such as LSI to deliver high-performance storage ICs that respond to a rapidly changing market" said Mark Geenen, President, TRENDFOCUS. "The industry transition to 40nm and LDPC architecture has begun, and LSI remains ahead of this transition curve with the introduction of its new TrueStore RC9700 read channel"

The RC9700 builds upon the success of the revolutionary LDPC architecture of its predecessor, the RC9500, to create a seamless roadmap of significant density increases for HDD manufacturers. The improvement in the RC9700 signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in both 512-byte and 4K-byte sector sizes enables next-generation areal densities of 750GB per disk in the mobile segment and 1.5TB per disk in the desktop and enterprise segments.

The innovative design techniques used in the RC9700 deliver a power reduction of over 10 percent in active mode compared to the previous-generation product. The RC9700 also delivers a sleep mode power reduction, which is critical to extending battery life in the notebook market segment. In addition to extended battery life, the lower power dissipation translates to reduced energy costs and greater drive reliability.

"When LSI launched the industry’s first 40nm read channel with LDPC iterative decoding last year, we set out with the vision of providing HDD customers with a low-risk, time-to-market advantage in meeting the next HDD areal density point" said Phil Brace, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Peripherals Division, LSI. "As these density points continue to increase, LSI has once again responded with a second-generation 40nm plug-in solution that delivers higher capacity, lower power and high performance. Together with LSI TrueStore preamplifiers and serial PHYs, our LDPC read channels create a complete data path solution that has resulted in continued design win momentum with the industry’s top HDD manufacturers"

The RC9700 is the latest addition to the LSI TrueStore family of ICs for hard disk, tape and solid-state drive components, including highly integrated high-performance storage SoCs, read channels, preamplifiers, serial PHYs and hard disk drive controller IP. By offering a broad portfolio of integrated SoC solutions, LSI enables its customers to address all segments of the storage market, from mission-critical enterprise applications and high-capacity desktop PCs to low-power laptops and tape archive solutions.