“Until now, cost-competitive SSD densities were limited to 1 TB by the maximum capacity of flash memory chips, and by the fan-out limitations imposed on flash controllers by the high number of interface traces required for each memory device,” says Dr Jerome Luo, founder and president of Sage. “Sage decided to leverage the highly competitive pricing of flash memory cards—such as eMMCs—to develop an SSD controller that can effectively address up to 5TB of data.”
By using eMMCs as building blocks—instead of individual flash memory die–the capacity of SSDs can be significantly increased without a corresponding increase in the cost per-bit
Sage says it is currently shipping in volume 2.5TB SSD units on a single PCB with a standard 2.5-inch form-factor.
Sage’s technology enables a single SSD controller IC to address up to 5TB of flash memory (on an array of 10 X 4 X 128GB eMMC BGA modules).
The Sage S681 device, currently in mass production, employs a SATA II interface to drive 10 channels of SD, MMC or eMMC flash memory cards, with each channel supporting up to 512GB of flash memory.
By offloading the management and high pinout interface of individual flash memory chips to the flash controller IC embedded in each flash memory card, the new Sage S681 can effectively manage ten memory cards, increasing SSD capacity ten-fold.
Replacing flash memory chips with flash memory cards does not increase per-byte cost for the Sage SSD controller architecture, because the market has driven flash controller IC pricing to become highly commoditised.
This results in flash memory cards being price competitive with the underlying cost of the component flash memory chips themselves. The use of JEDEC-compliant memory cards instead of discrete flash ICs also enables SSD manufacturers to mix-and-match inventory, further reducing testing cost, inventory management complexity and firmware version control.
Sage developed a proprietary multi-core architecture for its SSD controller IC. Unlike single core SSD controllers from other vendors, the Sage S681 is built on a multi-core processor that devotes a single concise RISC CPU core to SATA bus management, plus additional cores to handle two memory card channel interfaces each. This enables clear firmware partitioning between the SATA interface and memory card interface, simplifying software upgrades, testing and verification.
The Sage S68X family of SSD controllers includes three devices: the S681 supports 10 memory channels, the S682 supports 5 memory channels, and the S685 support 4 memory channels. All three devices are currently in mass production, and all are priced under USD 5.00, depending on volume.
The S681 is available in a BGA 207 package.
The S682 is available in a LQFP 128 package.
The S685 is available in a QFN 88 package.
Sage Micro also offers a portfolio of low-density SATA II SSD flash controller solutions.
The company’s founding team includes execs who co-founded storage technology developer Baleen Systems, and held senior executive and technology positions at Synopsis, IBM, Maxtor, Oak Technologies and other Silicon Valley companies that have over 60 patents granted between them.
Financial backing is by China-based venture capital and corporate investment from the Cybernaut Investment Fund, Enjoyor and Shenzhen Jinchang Asset Management Co.
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