LSI Reduces Power Consumption by 25 Percent on Preamplifier IC for Power-Sensitive Laptop HDDs

PA2500 Now Available for Fast-Growing 2.5-Inch Hard Disk Drive Market

 

MILPITAS, Calif., October 29, 2007 – LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced the availability of the PA2500, the company’s newest high-performance, low-power preamplifier integrated circuit (IC) specifically designed for use in  2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD) for the growing laptop computer market.

"Power consumption and battery life are key specs for computer laptops," said Shane Rau, Semiconductor Program Director at IDC. "As a major analog semiconductor inside a hard drive, the preamplifier is a key factor in determining the drive’s power consumption and so the drive vendor’s ability to win a laptop OEM’s business."

John Rydning, Hard Disk Drive Research Manager at IDC, said, "Continued innovation in power and customization are key to winning designs in the 2.5-inch HDD market, which is expected to reach to over 270 million units by 2011."   

Providing the optimal power-performance balance, the LSI PA2500 utilizes innovative design techniques and an industry-leading process technology resulting in a 25 percent power consumption reduction over the previous generation. This reduction also decreases heat dissipation, resulting in greater drive reliability. With operating speeds of up to 1.5 gigabits-per-second (Gbps), the PA2500 preamplifier offers exceptional performance for mobile HDDs.

"With our process expertise and strategic manufacturing relationship, we are able to provide HDD designers the customization they need to address target applications, such as computer laptops. We also provide the flexibility of using a single preamplifier across multiple drive designs and design configurability to maximize head performance," Ruediger Stroh, executive vice president and general manager, LSI Storage Peripherals Group. "We’re committed to delivering industry-leading IC HDD solutions that reduce power consumption, development costs and time to market."

A HDD’s preamplifier is closely tied to the performance of the drive’s heads and media. As a drive "reads" analog data from the disk drive platter, the preamplifier amplifies these extremely small signals before they are sent to a read-channel IC for sophisticated processing and digitization. A preamplifier is also integral to the write process by driving current through the inductive write head, which records information on the platter. 

The PA2500 preamplifier IC is available now to qualified customers.

About LSI

LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) is a leading provider of innovative silicon, systems and software technologies that enable products which seamlessly bring people, information and digital content together. The company offers a broad portfolio of capabilities and services including custom and standard product ICs, adapters, systems and software that are trusted by the world’s best known brands to power leading solutions in the Storage and Networking markets. More information is available at www.lsi.com.

Editor's Notes:

  1. All LSI news releases (financial, acquisitions, manufacturing, products, technology, etc.) are issued exclusively by PR Newswire and are immediately thereafter posted on the company’s external website, http://www.lsi.com.
  2. LSI and the LSI logo design are trademarks or registered trademarks of LSI Corporation.
  3. All other brand or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.