The MagLINK SoC product family is a leading edge solution for modern Hard Disk Drive designs where highest Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) performance and Adaptive Optimization are keys to success. The MagLINK family ushers in the industry’s most advanced iterative coding and data recovery schemes featuring the powerful and innovative softECC and single-level LDPC technologies.  Our most recent SoC, the RoadRunner LM 9800, integrates Link_A_Media Devices’ softECC and LDPC data recovery technologies with the SATA Hard Disk Controller (HDC), servo channel, and many drive integration-friendly features to facilitate ease-of-use. The RoadRunner controller is designed to be modular and scalable wherein customer-owned HDC IP blocks may be suitably instantiated to develop a custom SoC. 

The softECC technology combines conventional Reed-Solomon (RS) codes with iterative decoding methods and soft-output softML detector to dramatically reduce the Sector Failure Rate (SFR) achieved for a given head/media/zone combination. It preserves all of the desirable features of the RS codes, including prescribed burst correction and mis-correction. softECC enables higher areal density or improved manufacturing yields, or both, with negligible increase in power consumption.  It is thus ideally suited for mobile peripheral device applications.

L-LDPC: Link_A_Media Devices’ Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) Coding provides performance gains by replacing conventional concatenated coding structures used in today’s HDDs with a single LDPC code.  Such architecture provides performance gain that is unprecedented since the introduction of PRML technology almost two decades ago. Link_A_Media Devices’ proprietary LDPC platform is developed to address the unique requirements of the data storage application to maximize the areal density for any given head/media combination.  The single-level LDPC solution is unmatched in performance, and is ideally suited for next generation capacity points, in excess of 320 GB/platter in a 2.5” form factor.

Link_A_Media Devices’ MagLink Solutions are designed to provide higher storage density and higher manufacturing yields and lower power consumption and faster optimization.

The MagLINK SoC solutions are supported with reference firmware for quick debug and drive level integration.