STMicro’s 90nm SoC capability for hard disk drives

The T90 Read Channel IP, developed by STMicroelectronics, supports data rates ranging from 300Mbit/s up to 1.7Gbit/s, and along with the SATA performance, confirms the positioning of this design as an optimized solution for the 2.5- and 3.5- inch disk drives used in high-end mobile, desktop computers and servers.

Read channels encode and decode the data flowing between the head preamplifiers and the SATA interface and memory, demanding advanced mixed-signal technologies. This 90nm design is based on the company’s Tintoretto readwrite channel architecture, which enables high data rates with low power dissipation in all HDD operating modes.

T90 supports 10-bit high-rate codes and reverse order coding, media noise optimized data detection, advanced defect scan, longitudinal and perpendicular recording and Self Servo Write.

The embedded hard disk controller (HDC), which manages the data flow and controls head positioning during track and seek operations, is based on ARM-based technology and features a 32-bit highperformance CPU core running at 450MHz. STMicroelectronics, www.st.com