Full speed ahead with integration of BiTMICRO’s next generation of SSD controllers

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: BiTMICRO Networks, a pioneer in intelligent flash solid state drive (SSD) storage solutions, has gone full cycle in the development of its two new generation application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs, optimized to meet the growing market need for high-performance, secured and cost-effective SSD solutions.

BiTMICRO’s new platform architecture, considered as the only solid state drive storage platform design featuring two customized ASIC controllers, serves as the foundation for its new breed of SSD storage solutions expected to be released soon. A combination of SSD controller and flash channel expander controller, these high-performing third-generation ASICs enable BiTMICRO to offer a variety of solid state storage product lines by utilizing one common platform architecture. This strategy demonstrates BiTMICRO’s commitment to invent, design and deliver cutting-edge SSD storage solutions thereby resulting to faster time-to-market and reduced development cost.

The third-generation platform architecture consists of a multi-core SSD controller integrated with multiple high-speed serial on-chip buses and embedded processors, achieving high-speed data transfer between host and storage device. It supports Toggle and ONFI SLC and MLC flash memory devices. In addition, this controller is the only ASIC platform designed with built-in standard I/O cores such as SAS, SATA and PCIe, eliminating the need for a bridge or third party I/O controllers.

The intelligent flash channel expander controller, on the other hand, manages the flash devices and supports multi-block I/O operations over a large array of flash devices, improving parallelism of I/O transfers between the host and flash devices. The highly scalable architecture allows the number of flash channel expanders to be increased depending on the performance and capacity requirements of a particular application.

BiTMICRO maintains its strategy to design and develop controllers directly to ASIC skipping the FPGA model. ASICs provide designers the flexibility and efficiency in programmability. It also offers higher performance, lower power, mixed-signal integration, and lower unit cost in volume compared to FPGA. In order to fit all the necessary features to address customer requirements across industries in the enterprise and military/industrial segments, BiTMICRO believes that the direct-to-customized ASIC strategy offers the best solution for the solid state storage market today.