Arasan offers complete line of memory card controller IP cores and software stacks

SAN JOSE, USA: Arasan Chip Systems Inc., a leading provider of Total IP Solutions to enable the rapid adoption of emerging technologies, announced today the availability of a complete portfolio of Memory Card Controller IP cores and corresponding software stacks.

These card controller IP support the highest performance card formats: Secure Digital (SD/SDIO 3.0), Multimedia Card (e.MMC 4.4), Memory Stick (MSPro, MSPro-Duo), CompactFlash (CF+) and Picture Card (xD) card formats.

The rapid growth of portable media players, megapixel DSC, smartphones, netbooks and gaming consoles has led to the proliferation of removable non-volatile memory cards - both to store and distribute content. Aided by the rapid advances in NAND memory technology, these compact cards are now common accessories to consumer electronics.

Makers of host devices need to decide which formats to support in order to ease consumer adoption of their hardware. Consumers on the other hand, would like these devices to be memory card agnostic.

System designers of chipsets and application processor thus need to optimize their controller architecture based on the usage model and form-factor of the final end-device.

For example, applications requiring higher levels of security and boot capability might rely on a combination of SD and e.MMC controllers, while those requiring frequent insertion and removal might also add support for the larger CompactFlash cards. Arasan enables designers to make such optimizations by offering a complete range of Memory Card controllers IP cores in different combinations.

"System designers seek an optimal balance between the number of card formats to support versus the implementation costs," said Prakash Kamath, Vice-President of Engineering at Arasan. "Now, with the availability of Arasan's Memory Card Controller family of IP, they can select the right combination of card controller IP suitable for their system design and usage model."

Arasan's Memory Card Controller IP cores support the latest versions of SD, SDIO, e.MMC, MSPro, MSPro-Duo, CF+ and xD in multiple configurations. Arasan provides a Total IP Solution for each of these cores - comprising of Digital IP, verification IP, Software stacks and Hardware Development kits backed by World-class customer support.

Commenting on the card controller software stacks that are part of the Total Solutions, Atul Garg, Director of Software Engineering at Arasan said, "A well architected memory controller software stack is crucial to realizing the performance and capacity benefits of these memory cards. We have developed these software stacks based on our in-depth understanding of the nuances of these memory interfaces and have optimized the stacks to ease porting to alternate OS and processor platforms."