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Mitsubishi Electric and IBM Jointly Develop Integrated LSI Optimized for
HDD Control
Tokyo March 4, 1997 -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (president: Takashi
Kitaoka) and IBM Corporation (chairman: Louis V. Gerstner) have
jointly developed an integrated LSI that incorporates a microcomputer,
a hard disk controller (HDC), and flash memory in a single chip
to be installed on IBM Corp.'s hard disk drives (HDDs).
The LSI is to be manufactured by both IBM Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric and
will be installed on HDDs manufactured by IBM Corp., beginning in September
1997.
The Merits of Integration
- Twice the Performance
By optimizing microcomputer CPUs for HDD control and incorporating them in a
single chip, the speed of data transmission between the CPU, HDC, and flash
memory increases, resulting in twice the performance.
- Power Consumption Reduced by 30%
Power consumption is reduced by 30% by decreasing the total number of pins
and making processes more detailed.
- Mounting Area Cut in Half
By integrating an 80-pin microcomputer and a 128-pin HDC into a 144-pin
package, the mounting area is reduced by one half.
- Cost Reduction
By integrating the components into a single chip, the costs of the chip and
the package are reduced significantly.
Furthermore, once the LSI enters volume production, costs will be reduced
even further by converting the flash memory into mask ROM.
Product Features
- A CPU Core Optimized for HDD Control
The instruction set has been optimized for disk application and the code has
been reduced by 30% from past codes.
Also, in addition to strengthening the hardware, the speed of data
transmission between the flash memory and the HDC has been increased,
doubling the data processing capabilities.
- Debugging Environment Adapted to an Integrated LSI
A debugging circuit with break, trace, and download functions is
incorporated in the integrated LSI, creating an environment for program
development and debugging that uses the internal flash memory. As a result,
there is no need to output the microcomputer bus externally, making it
possible to limit the number of pins to 144. This contributed greatly to
decreased power consumption, mounting area, and costs.
Furthermore, program development and debugging can be performed with the
integrated LSI installed on the circuit board, exactly the same environment
as in actual use, allowing for high-quality debugging.
Background to Development
In the past, IBM Corp. HDDs included Mitsubishi Electric's microcomputers
with internal flash memory and IBM Corp.'s HDCs.
In accordance with the increasing capacity and performance of HDDs,
microcomputer and HDC performance has been improved, but to respond to
further increases in capacity and performance in the future and to implement
significant reductions in cost, IBM Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric jointly
developed an integrated LSI that incorporates a microcomputer and HDC.
The integrated LSI will initially be installed on HDDs shipped in September
1997, and IBM Corp. plans to expand it to all IBM HDDs developed in Japan.
Product Specifications
- Performance Details
Microcomputer:
Mitsubishi original 16-bit CPU core
Interrupt controller; A/D converter; serial I/O; multifunction timer
Debugging circuit
RAM of 2K bytes
Flash memory: 48K bytes
HDC:
IDE controller with ULTRA DMA (35Mb/e)
16-bit EDO DRAM controller
NO-ID (TM) disk controller circuit
High-performance error correction circuit
- Operating speed: 40MHz
- Package: 144-pin QFP
Future Developments
To support low costs, IBM Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric will
develop even higher performance integrated LSI products and incorporate
them into their products.
Also, the companies are considering further integration including
internal DRAM.
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