Infineon Technologies AG, a leading semiconductor developer, and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, a leading producer of hard disk drives (HDDs), on Friday unveiled their new read/write channel system-on-chip solutions for HDDs that can be combined with Infineon"s 6Gb/s Serdes Interface and achieve transfer rates that far exceed those of today"s Serial ATA-300 standard. "Infineon has demonstrated leadership in silicon development in its ability to deliver higher levels of performance. We are pleased with the results of the read-channel implementation," said Steven Smith, senior director and general manager of Rochester, Minnesota, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
The new HDD read/write channel SOC provides speed and high-performance signal processing required for next-generation perpendicular recording for hard disk drives in enterprise applications. Complementary to the high-performance read channel, Infineon has also demonstrated silicon of its 6Gb/s multi-standard PHY (Physical Layer interface), capable to operate bit error free in "closed eye" environments required by the upcoming SAS 6G standard. The multi-standard PHY supports 6Gb/s SATA and SAS as well as Fibre-channel 4.25Gb/s standards and all their legacy modes. A 3Gb/s SATA derivative of the same baseline architecture is specifically tailored to support power sensitive mobile applications.