JMicron to Combine New Controller with 32nm NAND Flash for Affordable SSDs

Despite the higher performance levels achieved by current Solid State Drives (SSD), users are still reserved when it comes to adopting them as the primary storage solution for their computer systems. This is largely due to their higher prices compared to traditional hard disk drives. However, an upcoming solution that JMicron is planning to unveil might soon change that and allow SSD pricing to be cut in half. The company plans to demonstrate an early, engineering sample of its upcoming solution at the Computex 2009 show in Taiwan, starting next week.

According to a recent news-article on Daily Tech, JMicron is trying to speed up the adoption of SSDs by releasing a new NAND Flash controller in the near future. Dubbed JM612, the upcoming chip will be specifically designed for SSDs and will take advantage of an ARM9 core inside a 289-ball TFBGA package. Available details indicate that this new controller will provide support for the use of 256MB of DDR or DDR2 DRAM as an external cache.

JMicron has specifically built the new chip so that it can remediate the stuttering issues that surface during random write operations. The chip will be used with a new generation of NAND flash chips that are designed using smaller process geometries and are slated for an upcoming market debut. Combining the new controller from JMicron with the upcoming 32nm chips is expected to reduce the pricing of SSDs by half in time for the Christmas shopping season.

The JMicron JM612 chip will support Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and will integrate an ARM9 processor with 32KB of ROM and 128KB of RAM. The company is expected to demonstrate engineering samples of its latest controller during the Computex 2009 show in Taiwan. The mass production of these chips is slated for July. JMicron is also working on a Flash controller that will work with the upcoming 6Gbps interface, which is expected to enter production in the middle of 2010.