Cirrus Logic Announces Industry's First Single-Chip Flash Drive Controller, PC Card for OEMs.FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 29, 1995--Cirrus Logic Inc. (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on : CRUS crus (krus) pl. cru´ra [L.] 1. leg (1). 2. a leglike part. crus ce´rebri ) today introduced the CL-FC1120 PC Card ATA Flash See flash memory. Controller, the first member of a new family of single-chip controllers that will allow the rapid, cost-effective development of solid-state flash memory cards emulating magnetic hard disk drives. At the same time, the company announced that it will offer the CL-FDxxx PC Card ATA Flash Drive, a complete turnkey solution that is fully compatible with the PC Card (formerly PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, San Jose, CA, www.pcmcia.org) An international standards body and trade association that was founded in 1989 to establish a standard for connecting peripherals to portable computers. PCMCIA created the PC Card. See PC Card. ) and PC Card ATA (1) (AT Attachment) The specification for IDE drives. See IDE. (2) See analog telephone adapter. ATA - Advanced Technology Attachment standards and can be customized for OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and applications. Primarily intended for the mobile computing Using a computing device while in transit. Mobile computing implies wireless transmission, but wireless transmission does not necessarily imply mobile computing. Fixed wireless applications use satellites, radio systems and lasers to transmit between permanent objects such as buildings , communications and embedded control system markets, and for new consumer/industrial applications, the new chip is fully compliant with the PC Card ATA specification. It combines an embedded 8051 microcontroller with all the control logic, memory management, mapping, and interface functions required for a flash drive card to form the industry's first true single-chip flash memory controller. This significantly reduces the number of components, power consumption, and associated costs needed to implement a card. For example, a 4M-byte Type 1 PC Card ATA flash drive can be created using only one CL-FC1120, two Samsung(R) 16M-bit flash memory chips, and two passive components. This is by far the industry's lowest part count and most cost-effective form factor. The CL-FDxxx Flash Drive is a complete Type 1 or Type 2 PC Card ATA-compatible card that is primarily intended for OEMs requiring a removable, low-power, rugged storage medium for mobile computing, communications, and control system applications. It consists of the CL-FC1120 controller and, depending upon capacity needs, up to 20 megabytes of storage using ten Samsung 16M-bit flash memory components. In addition, the flash drive is available as a reference design, which is a production-ready solution backed by schematic diagrams, bills of materials, firmware, and technical application support. This is ideal for applications, such as data acquisition and industrial control, that do not necessarily require a PC Card format but want to take advantage of flash drive capabilities. "As a single-chip solution in combination with our firmware and the Samsung flash memory, the CL-FC1120 reduces design costs and space requirements while improving drive reliability and performance," said Michael Liccardo, Cirrus Logic's Vice President of Business Development. "It enables more simplified and reliable designs by reducing chip count and improves performance by offloading the host CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. . By using hardware assistance and reduced firmware overhead, it can increase data rate performance by up to three times over other, more firmware-intensive, implementations." The CL-FC1120 is intended for use with the Samsung KM29N1600 16M-bit NAND flash See flash memory. memory device, and can support configurations ranging from two to ten memory components. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Liccardo, "The Samsung flash memory has a low-pin-count interface that simplifies card design, and its feature set has been optimized for mass storage applications. Our new controller takes advantage of that, as well as exploiting such architectural features as small block size, fast program and erase times, and a one-million-cycle endurance specification." Dr. Dae Jae Chin, Samsung Vice President and General Manager, Memory Business, said, "Samsung has both the technology and production capacity to meet market demand. We are fully committed (Law) committed to prison for trial, in distinction from being detained for examination. See also: Fully to the mass storage market. Our NAND flash memory technology, with its inherently small memory cell and chip size, will be able to deliver unmatched cost per megabyte." CL-FC1120 PC Card ATA Flash Controller The CL-FC1120 allows a host system to store files in and retrieve files from solid-state memory using the standard DOS and Windows operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. commands that are used with IDE hard and floppy disk drives. Integrated into this single chip are an advanced flash memory addressing and mapping algorithm, advanced error correction code Noun 1. error correction code - (telecommunication) a coding system that incorporates extra parity bits in order to detect errors ECC telecommunication - (often plural) the branch of electrical engineering concerned with the technology of electronic (ECC (1) (Error-Correcting Code) A type of memory that corrects errors on the fly. See ECC memory. (2) (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) A public key cryptography method that provides fast decryption and digital signature processing. ), a complete host interface for both the PC Card ATA and the ATA/IDE standards, a buffer memory and buffer memory manager, flash memory control logic, and Cirrus Logic's Space Manager technology. Also incorporated is an 8051 microcontroller and its associated memories. The Space Manager controls flash memory read, write and erase functions by addressing the unique characteristics of flash, including block erase, sector read/write, wear leveling, and sector remapping. It maximizes read/write data rate performance, thereby eliminating firmware delays during sector read and write operations. CL-FDxxx PC Card ATA Flash Drive The CL-FDxxx flash drive provides from 4M bytes to 20M bytes of nonvolatile flash memory storage without the need for battery backup. It is fully compatible with the PC Card and PC Card ATA standards, including all PC Card Services and Socket Services, and is backward-compatible with PCMCIA Release 2.1 and the ATA/IDE standard. Packaging, Pricing, and Availability The CL-FC1120 PC Card ATA Flash Controller is packaged in a 100-pin very thin quad flat pack (VQFP VQFP Very Thin Quad Flat Package VQFP Very small Quad Flat Package VQFP very-fine-pitch quad flat pack ). Samples are currently available, priced at $35 in quantities of 1,000. Volume production is planned for the third quarter of 1995. The CL-FDxxx PC Card ATA Flash Drive is available as a complete Type 1 or Type 2 PC Card solution that can be customized for OEM applications or as a reference design for special integration requirements. It will be available in the summer of 1995, with a 4M-byte version priced at $140 in quantities of 1,000. Headquartered in Fremont, Calif., Cirrus Logic is a leading manufacturer of advanced integrated circuits for the desktop and portable computing, telecommunications, and consumer electronics markets. The Company applies its system-level expertise in analog and digital design to innovate highly integrated, software-rich solutions. Cirrus Logic has developed a broad portfolio of products and technologies for applications spanning multimedia, graphics, communications, mass storage, and data acquisition. CONTACT: Cirrus Logic Joe Fowler, 510/226-2239 (Editor) Mike Liccardo, 510/226-2147 (Reader) |
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