Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR) announced that Samsung has selected Agere’s low-power preamplifier ICs for use in its new high-capacity 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) targeting the mobile, desktop and enterprise market segments.

Samsung utilizes Agere’s TrueStore PA7700 preamplifier IC which delivers the industry’s lowest power consumption, best bit error rate (BER) performance and fastest operating speeds.
In the notebook, mobile and enterprise computing segments, Agere is the exclusive supplier of preamplifiers for Samsung’s SpinPoint M60 Series of 2.5-inch drives.  These drives, now shipping in volume, rely on the PA7700’s exceptional power efficiency to deliver up to 120 GB of storage capacity for both enterprise blade servers and small footprint applications that demand long battery lifetime as a key product differentiator.

In the desktop and the enterprise segments, Agere is shipping preamplifiers to Samsung for the company’s T133 and P120 Series of 3.5-inch disk drives.  TrueStore preamplifiers enable a blistering read/write performance of 1.7 Gbits/sec enabling new applications and boosting mission critical applications.  In addition, Agere offers the lowest defective parts per million (DPPM) of any preamplifier supplier, ensuring the high reliability required for enterprise applications.

The Samsung and Agere relationship continues to grow both in storage and in mobile handset solutions, as Agere is the primary supplier of wireless data chipsets and software for Samsung’s GPRS/EDGE mobile phones.

“Agere is making extraordinary inroads with our preamplifier product line across every storage market segment and with the industry’s largest hard disk drive manufacturers,” said Ruediger Stroh, EVP and GM of Agere’s Storage division.  “With our TrueStore products, Samsung benefits from the industry’s most popular set of storage semiconductors as well as exceptional technical support which reduce design cycles and enhance drive yields.  Agere’s ties to Samsung keep getting stronger, and we look forward to continued collaboration with them on new storage designs.”

High performance and low power consumption

An HDD’s preamplifier is closely linked to the performance of the drive’s heads and media.  As a drive “reads” analog data from the disk drive platter, the preamplifier amplifies these extremely small signals before they are sent to a read-channel IC for sophisticated processing and digitization.  A preamplifier is also integral to the write process by driving current through the inductive write head, which records information on the platter.

Agere’s PA7700 offers the fastest data throughput available in a low-power solution, which translates to improved bit error rate performance.  The PA7700 writer architecture was designed to support any 2.5-inch drive speed, including 4200, 5400 and 7200 RPM.  This architecture’s adaptive capabilities automatically decrease the power proportional to frequency, so extra energy is not used at lower speeds.  This is accomplished without degrading the write signal integrity of the lower speed signals, resulting in increased signal-to-noise ratio performance at those data rates.

In addition to low power dissipation, Agere’s PA7700 offers innovative features for optimized HDD development.  The chip’s bit-programmable head support allows disk drive engineers to integrate the PA7700 with either giant magneto-resistive (GMR) or tunneling MR (TuMR) head technology.  With Agere’s solution, HDD companies have the flexibility of using a single preamplifier across multiple drive designs and achieve superior performance regardless of what head technology is selected.

Agere is now shipping its TrueStore preamplifiers to multiple customers in volume.