ST introduces improved Bi-Core controller

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ST introduces improved Bi-Core controller [Copy link]

ST recently launched the improved Bi-Core controller chip ST72681. It is aimed at the rapidly developing USB flash drive market, providing flash drive manufacturers with great flexibility and low-cost solutions, creating high performance for interoperability of NAND flash memory of different brands. The ST72681 USB 2.0 flash drive controller adopts an advanced architecture based on the ST7 8-bit microcontroller, with flash interface, MLC NAND flash drive Reed-Solomon error correction processing, etc.

The ST72681 was awarded the title of the industry's lowest power product by USB-IF (USB Forum) - it consumes only 290mA in suspend mode and only needs 50mA of operating current. This feature of ST72681 makes it fully compatible with products with USB 2.0 interface.

Flash drives have become the preferred tool for transferring data, music files, pictures and texts between non-interoperable computers on the network, and have also become a convenient storage medium for personal privacy and other sensitive information. This type of product is compact, easy to use and easy to carry, and its capacity ranges from MB to GB. In 2004, nearly 50 million of these products were sold, and market analysis shows that in 2006, the number will be two to three times that of last year.

The ST72681 flash drive controller is an absolutely low-cost solution that provides an interface for data communication between USB and flash memory, complete with manufacturer ID, product ID, serial number, etc., with LED configuration, format drive and public/private area division capabilities.

The ST72681 USB 2.0 flash drive controller uses an advanced architecture based on the ST7 8-bit microcontroller, with flash memory interface, MLC NAND flash drive Reed-Solomon error correction processing, etc.; it has high read (>12MB/s) and write (>10MB/s) performance; in the coming months, the successor version of the ST72681 will be able to reach read and write speeds of >20MB/s and >16MB/s.

The embedded Reed-Solomon 4-byte-on-512-byte block codec engine significantly improves the hardware error correction performance, especially for MLC NAND flash drives.

The ST72681 USB 2.0 flash drive controller is available now; it is packaged in TQFP48 form. The reference price for 10k quantities is $1.60.