OCZ Technology Group, a leading maker of solid-state drive and the owner of Indilinx, a designer of SSD controllers, has introduced a new-generation of SSD controller platform. The new Indilinx Everest fully supports Serial ATA-600 capabilities, up to 1TB of storage per controller as well as triple-level cell (or three bits per cell, 3bpc) NAND flash memory for next-generation of solid-state drives.

It is not a secret that modern 2bpc NAND flash memory produced using the latest 20nm-class process technologies wears out quicker than 2bpc flash made at 30nm-class nodes as it has lower amount of write cycles. To tackle the problem, developers of SSDs have to use special controllers and firmware that take that peculiarity into account and can ensure that solid-state drives can work without data losses for years. The 3bpc NAND flash memory logically has even lower amount of write cycles, which is why even better controllers and robust firmware are needed to provide the same level of quality and performance as expected from a storage device.

The Indilinx Everest platform with Indilinx Ndurance technology is among the first SSD controller to support both 2bpc and 3bpc multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND flash memory produced using 10nm-, 20nm- or other classes of process technologies.

The dual-core ARM-based Everest platform features the only controller to support 200 mega transfers per second (MT/s) synchronous-mode flash, up over the 166MT/s supported by other NAND Flash controllers. Everest supports 1TB capacities in a single controller SSD design with current generation flash components. Its innovative eight channel design for ONFI 2.0/Toggle 1.0 flash with up to 16-way interleaving for maximum performance, supports full data path and power fail protection to deliver data integrity and reliability for enterprise applications.

Everest's design delivers high sequential speeds up to 500MB/s and is optimized for small file writes at the 8K file size with next generation page mapping technology, which increases transactional performance optimized for 4K to 16K compressed files , by matching file sizes to the 8K page size typical in newer generation NAND flash.

Indilinx's new boot time reduction algorithms can be configured to decrease system boot time by up to 50% over existing SSD controller architectures for customers that require faster boot times and an instant-on experience in their applications.

The new controller also supports advanced BCH ECC engine -over 70 bits per defined sector, 400MHz DDR3 DRAM cache interface with support for up to 512MB and other innovations.

"The new Indilinx Everest platform is a complete customizable solution that delivers superior storage performance, features, and capabilities designed to exceed the needs of the most demanding SSD applications. Combining a Serial ATA-600 host interface, a dual-core CPU, and support for the latest, most advanced NAND flash memory technology available, Everest offers SSD manufacturers unparallel flexibility in optimizing their designs for both performance and cost," said Bumsoo Kim, president of Indilinx.

Tags: OCZ, Indilinx, SSD, NAND, Flash, 3bpc