News

posted on 12 August 2008 14:25

Indilinx, a Korean start-up, reckons it has the fastest flash memory-based solid state drive (SSD) in the world with a read speed of 230MB/sec.

The IDX22, codenamed Barefoot, is an SSD controller supporting up to 512GB capacity using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash chips. It has a SATA II interface, that's 3Gbits/sec, and has read and write speeds of 230MB/sec and 170MB/sec respectively using single-level cell (SLC) flash.

These slow to still impressive 200MB/sec (read) and 160MB/sec (write) with MLC NAND. The IDX22 has two independely operating groups of four channels and a DRAM cache. It uses two types of hardware error correction code (ECC): Reed-Solomon; and Bose-Chadhuri-Hocquenghem. The controller chip uses a 90nm process.

Indilinx, a fab-less semiconductor company, is headquartered in Korea and has a business office in Milpitas, California. The company says the IDX22 has 'phenomenal price/performance' although it doesn't reveal actual prices in its release. Nor does it provide a write cycle endurance rating.

NAND flash chips from Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix and Intel/Micron are supported so that OEM customers can build their own SSD using the IndiLinx controller with flash chips from a preferred supplier.

David Won, Indilinx' V.P. of Marketing, said: “Such (a) business model has a tremendous meaning to drive manufacturers and PC makers. Free from lock-up of exclusively dedicated SSD controller to a certain flash memory, they can have a buying power over flash vendors by segregating purchase of controller and flash memory. Also, our controller secures consistent performance regardless of a type of flash memory. Indilinx is now co-operating with global major systems and drive manufacturers for performance evaluation and business development, and will introduce its demo product at Flash Memory Summit, August 12-14, 2008 in Santa Clara, California. Mass production is scheduled in Q4 of this year.”

Certainly these speeds are better than SSDs from Mtron, OCZ, SanDisk, STEC and Super Talent. If the write cycle endurance is on a par with the speeds, meaning greater than 1.5 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF), then the product will look very attractive.

Indilinx has a Jet Stream project to produce a 500MB/sec controller with a SATA 3 (6Gbit/s) interface and newer NAND flash interfaces such as ONFI and DDR. Its Amigos project is a low power draw SSD controller for notebook computers. Hillview is a server platform project using Indilinx SSDs and achieving 1,400MB/sec read I/O. Niagara is a software streaming project aimed at achieving 10Gbit/sec speeds.

The company is hopeful that developments such as its IDX22 controller can accelerate the invasion of the SATA hard drive market by faster SSDs for use in high-end PCs and servers. It does not single out the storage array market. 

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}