SiTime Introduces MEMS Oscillators for SSDs

SiTime Corporation, an analog semiconductor company, introduced its portfolio of MEMS oscillators targeted at Solid State Drives (SSDs).

SiTime’s 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. These key features increase the robustness and reliability of SSDs, thus increasing their useful life and suitability for usage in harsh environments. Customers are typically using SiTime’s SiT9102 and SiT9107 Differential Oscillators as well as the SiT8103 High Performance Single-Ended Oscillator in their SSD applications.

"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 every major 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.