Building on its leadership in providing silicon for small-form-factor storage devices, Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR) today announced that its TrueStore® consumer electronics (CE) chip set is being used by storage solutions manufacturer Cornice in its 8- and 10-gigabyte Dragon Series micro hard drives. The combination of Agere’s optimized chip set and Cornice’s innovative, compact disk drives offer consumer electronics manufacturers the high storage capacity, small size, durability and battery life needed for managing multimedia in media players, personal storage devices, mobile phones, and other handheld devices.
Video applications for portable consumer products, from mobile TV streaming in cell phones to downloadable podcasts in media players, are now widely available globally. This explosion of content is fueling demand for more gigabytes of storage than is economically feasible using flash memory.
Agere’s TrueStore CE chip set – including read channel, preamplifier and motor controller – offers the essential silicon and firmware needed to build miniature disk drive products with superior performance and battery savings. Cornice’s Dragon Series drives, which begin shipping in early 2006, are low-power, ultra-thin 1.0-inch designs offering 8 and 10 gigabytes of storage capacity.
“As demand for new video applications continues to increase the storage requirements in portable electronics, Cornice’s Dragon Series delivers the highest capacity points currently available in a 1.0-inch form factor, with thinner designs suitable for mobile phones and other portable consumer handheld products,” said Camillo Martino, president and chief executive officer of Cornice Inc. “Agere’s storage portfolio and system-level understanding of small-form-factor designs have enabled Cornice to raise the bar in performance, power savings and cost-per-gigabyte.”
Agere is the industry leader in read channel ICs and storage systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) for the fixed and portable consumer electronics markets. More than 19 million 1.0-inch storage devices on the market today contain Agere electronics.
“Agere’s TrueStore CE chip set represents a complete silicon and firmware package for miniature drive designs, offering the benefits of exceptional data accuracy and battery savings,” said Ruediger Stroh, executive vice president and general manager of Agere’s Storage division. “Our continued collaboration with Cornice will enable these new storage drives to maximize the advanced multimedia functionality of next-generation handheld devices.”
Agere is currently shipping its chip set to Cornice in volume quantities.