Date: 26/04/2011

MEMS Oscillator devices for flash memory based storage drives

SiTime Corporation has introduced complete portfolio of MEMS oscillators targeted at Solid State Drives (SSDs). SiTime says its all-silicon MEMS oscillators can withstand shocks of 50,000 G, vibrations of 70 G, and are 10 times more reliable than legacy quartz oscillators and makes MEMS oscillators suitable for harsh environments. SiTime's parts for this application includes SiT9102 and SiT9107 Differential Oscillators and SiT8103 single-ended oscillator.

"Solid State Drives are experiencing exponential growth and are expected to ship more than 50 Million units in 2013. SSDs offer many benefits over traditional hard disk drives - they offer higher performance; they are more robust and reliable; and they are smaller and lighter," said Piyush Sevalia, SiTime's vice president of marketing. "SiTime's low-power, programmable MEMS oscillators already provide the timing reference for many computing devices such as notebooks and data storage. Our MEMS oscillators are a natural fit for SSDs and offer significant benefits over legacy quartz oscillators such as 10 times better robustness and reliability, smaller and thinner size as well as lower power consumption. Additionally, we offer the industry's shortest lead times at 3-5 weeks and the best configurability. Because of these benefits, leading SSD OEMs have already adopted SiTime's MEMS oscillators in their products."

SiTime's MEMS oscillators provide clocks to interface protocol used in SSDs such as SATA, SAS, Infiniband, and PCIe. Additional features include:
100% drop in replacement for existing quartz solutions with no design or layout changes
Configurable for any frequency between 1 and 800 MHz with 5 decimal places of accuracy
Spread spectrum for EMI reduction for SATA, SAS and PCIe protocols is available on the SiT9002 and SiT9003
LVCMOS, LVDS, LVPECL, HCSL and CML signalling, configurable
Operation at 1.8V, 2.5V, 2.8V or 3.3V, configurable
All industry standard packages

Commonly used frequencies for the above protocols are
31.25 MHz, 50 MHz, 62.5 MHz, 75 MHz, 150 MHz and 300 MHz for SATA and SAS protocols
100 MHz and 200 MHz for PCIe and Infiniband

SiTime's SiT9102, SiT9107, SiT9002, SiT9003 and SiT8103 are shipping in production now.

For more info visit www.sitime.com