Research
LSI researchers push the boundaries of technology to solve real-world business challenges. Our research engineers work on a wide range of projects to help customers manage growth, reduce risk, improve efficiency, and empower change. They are developing new, more powerful, more intelligent storage and networking technologies – applying them in innovative ways to help companies increase competitive advantage and business value.
Below is a sampling of our current research areas.
Cloud computing
“Clouds” enable businesses to deliver IT services on demand, like electricity. They are of particular business interest today because of the growing tendency to outsource IT. Clouds come in a variety of deployments, including public, private, hybrid, community, and more. All of these models address different needs and require unique architectures and solutions.
LSI is working on improving each of the cloud models in multiple dimensions. Our current research activities include everything from
high-availability DAS and RAID-less
DAS acceleration (to reduce storage latency) to cloud gateways that transparently interface internal storage infrastructures with external cloud storage services for archival, compliance, and overflow.
Magnetic recording
The move to cloud computing and the enormous need for additional storage is creating new demand for hard disk drive (HDD) storage– that is, HDD devices with new levels of capacity. To accommodate the need for ever-increasing storage capacity, LSI is developing
read channel technologies that will enable HDD makers to increase capacity and improve manufacturing yields. Our read-channel designers have delivered dramatic improvements in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gains, enabling accurate, reliable recovery of user data from noisy analog signals.
LSI maintains a fast pace for introducing new process and channel technologies. We were the first to market with 40nm LDPC read channel technology, which had best-in-class SNR performance, and our 2nd generation 40nm LDPC read channel technology is ready for production. LSI also is designing our 3rd generation LDPC read channel technology on 28nm.
SerDes
SerDes (or serializer/deserializer) technology presents one of the most important parts of storage and networking systems. These critical ICs convert parallel data to serial data and vice-versa. Some SerDes devices are capable of operating at speeds in excess of 10 Gb/s and can significantly increase application set and bandwidth in storage and networking infrastructures.
The SerDes market continues to grow. Future data center needs require 100G and even higher Ethernet connectivity to meet the increasing set of applications and bandwidth. And
SoCs will need to drive hundreds of Gb/s links within and outside the system. The transition from 10G to 100G Ethernet will definitely expand the SerDes market as well.
Deep packet inspection
As networks continue to grow in their reach and relevance, the ability to thoroughly understand what traffic is traversing the network becomes increasingly important. Deep packet inspection (DPI) is the core technology used to analyze every byte of information that passes through the pipe. In enterprise networks it has a wider array of uses, such as supporting anti-virus applications and ensuring that company information is not exposed to the external world.
LSI leads the industry in DPI technology, having deployed DPI in several generations of
Content & Security Processors. We see DPI growing enormously as customers become more mobile, platforms such as smart phones become more ubiquitous, and people become more dependent on the connectivity and user experience that has just started to unfold in the last three to five years. Our research includes future bandwidth demands, and today our ability to support 5Gbps on a single flow is unmatched in the industry today.