Link_A_Media Devices samples industry’s first 4KB-block LDPC HDD SoC

SANTA CLARA, USA: Link_A_Media Devices (LAMD), a leader in the development of semiconductor SoC solutions for the data storage market, announced that it has sampled to a leading HDD manufacturer the industry’s first 4KB-Block LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) based SoC that processes 4KB of data at a time.

Over the last year HDD manufacturers have been transitioning more of their products to 4KB large sectors, up from the smaller 512B sectors that were shipped in the past. Using LAMD’s 4KB-Block LDPC technology, HDD manufacturers can store 500GB or more of data on a 2.5” HDD platter.

An HDD with data partitioned into larger 4KB sectors enables more data to be stored on each magnetic disk, due to reduced overhead requirement for storing data associated with error correction and synchronization.

Other HDD controllers divide up the 4KB of data into smaller blocks of data, typically 512B or 1024B, that then process one block at a time. This is less efficient and restricts the amount of user data that can be stored on each platter. Beyond enabling higher capacity, LAMD’s 4KB-Block LDPC technology offers significantly superior media defect handling capability, thereby improving yields for its customers during drive manufacturing.

LAMD has spent over 3 years developing its 4KB-Block LDPC technology. Through the use of a novel architecture, die size and power dissipation were kept to a minimum, resulting in a very efficient implementation which is well-suited for mobile HDDs, as well as the other segments.

“A 4KB LDPC based controller is an important milestone for the HDD market. It is well recognized that implementing a native 4KB LDPC code that meets the HDD industry’s need for performance, cost, and power consumption is a significant technical challenge,” said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, the premier market research firm following markets driven by DSP technology.

“Link_A_Media, as the newest SoC supplier to the storage industry in more than 16 years, appears to have solved these challenges for the 2.5” mobile drives, which is the largest segment of the HDD market.”

“LDPC coding is now regarded as must-have technology for next generation capacity points for HDD products. We are very pleased to be leading this technology transition in the HDD market with our 4KB-Block LDPC SoC solution,” said Dr. Hemant Thapar, CEO, Link_A_Media Devices. “Our solution is designed to deliver the highest performance with the lowest power consumption to enable 500GB or higher capacity on single disk in the 2.5” HDD form factor.”

Link_A_Media Devices’ SoCs are manufactured by Renesas Electronics, a leading manufacturer and supplier of semiconductor products for the most demanding applications including automotive, PCs and mobile devices.