Memory and Storage

Sagging prices for flash and DRAM memory are making the entire industry a little jittery, and new memory and storage products continue to show their faces. The battle between flash memory and hard-disk drives continues, with small HDDs having a tough time competing against low-cost flash devices filling the 2- and 4-Gbyte area, while 1-Tbyte drives arrive in volume.

The THGAM0G series of embedded NAND flash memory from Toshiba America Electronic Components (Irvine, CA) complies with the MultiMediaCard Association interface standard and provide 1 to 16 Gbytes in a single package. The FBGA169-packaged 16-Gbyte device combines eight 2-Gbyte chips, fabricated using a 56-nm process, and a MMC Version 4.2 controller that handles block management, error correction, and driver software.

The THGAM0G7D8DBAI6 combines eight 2-Gbyte NAND chips fabricated with 56-nm process technology.

Intended for use in airbag safety systems, FRAM 5-V memories from Ramtron International (Colorado Springs, CO) have a write endurance of more than one trillion cycles to allow a smart airbag to write a continuous record of occupant data. Running between 5 and 20 MHz, the devices enable the host processor to stream data with little risk of losing information.

Suited for data protection in POS terminals and other applications containing sensitive data, the DS3641 secure battery-backup controller from Maxim Integrated Products (Sunnyvale, CA) integrates an RTC, an automatic battery switch, and a four-wire interface. Key features include 1,024-byte nonimprinting key memory with high-speed erase, 64-byte general-purpose RAM, watchdog timer, and a programmable temperature sensor.

The Caviar SE16 750-Gbyte Serial ATA 3.5-in. hard-disk drive from Western Digital (Lake Forest, CA) provides extended features for reliability and lower power consumption. One feature parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is not operating, reducing head and surface wear and enhancing reliability.

The FB DIMM fully buffered memory socket from Molex (Lisle, IL) handles increased memory at higher speeds. The 240-circuit socket features a 1.00-mm pitch. The socket is available in through-hole, vertical, press-fit, and 28.5° styles and features built-in end keys, a central alignment key, and a dual ejector latch.

The SST39WF1601 and SST39WF1602 16-Mbit Multi-Purpose Flash Plus 1.8-V flash memories from Silicon Storage Technology (Sunnyvale, CA) feature 40-ms chip-erase operations and boot-block write protection via a write-protect pin. The chips also have two 128-bit one-time-programmable security ID registers, a hardware reset pin and are available in 48-ball 6 x 8-mm TFBGA and 5 x 6-mm WFBGA packages.I164SSTE0407

The SST39WF1601 and SST39WF1602 16-Mbit flash memories come in 48-ball 6 x 8-mm TFBGA and 5 x 6-mm WFBGA packages.

The Deskstar 7K1000 hard-disk drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (San Jose, CA) delivers 1 Tbyte of storage and features a 3.0-Gbit/s SATA interface and a 32-Mbyte data buffer. The 3.5-in. 7,200-rpm drive has a 1,070-Mbit/s max data transfer rate, 8.5-ms average seek time, 5 platters and 10 heads, a 300-g for 1-ms pulse nonoperating shock rating, and 9-W idle power.

The Deskstar 7K1000 1 Tbyte drive delivers high performance and reliability.

NOVeA programmable embedded nonvolatile memory IP from Virage Logic (Fremont, CA) is a key element in applications requiring sophisticated security and digital rights management (DRM) capabilities such as flash memory cards, DVD player/recorders, set-top boxes, and RFID tags. The IP requires 50% less area than previous versions and can be manufactured on standard 0.18-, 0.15-, and 0.13-µm CMOS logic processes with densities from 32 to 16,384 bits.

The Mercury On-The-Go 160 portable hard-disk storage device from Other World Computing (Woodstock, IL) has a fast 7,200-rpm 2.5-in. drive with 160-Gbyte capacity. The compact 3.5 x 5.5 x 1-in. device is suitable for audio/video applications, has two FireWire 800/400 and one USB 2.0 ports, and may be powered via bus or an ac adapter.

The SATA 5000 2.5 solid state drive from SanDisk (Milpitas, CA) has a SATA interface, 32 Gbytes of flash memory, and is a drop-in replacement for a hard-disk drive. The device features a 2-million-hour MTBF, approximately six times that of notebook hard-disk drives, offers a sustained read rate of 67 Mbytes/s with a 0.11-ms average access time, and has a 0.9-W active power requirement.

The SATA 5000 2.5 32-Gbyte solid-state drive has a SATA interface.

The FM1105 and 1106 nonvolatile state savers from Ramtron International (Colorado Springs, CO) are devices that save the state of signals and restores them automatically upon power-up. The dual-logic-state devices use FRAM NV memory with its fast write time and virtually unlimited write endurance. They can be used to save the status of switches, relay, or LED drivers; for error flags; or for power-down detection, nonvolatile counters, and tamper indicators.

Jim Harrison.