IDT Introducing Temperature Sensor for SSDs

Integrated Device Technology, Inc., the analog and digital company delivering mixed-signal semiconductor solutions, announced a family of precision temperature sensors targeted at ultra-low-power SSD applications.

This new family of devices minimizes power consumption and optimizes bill-of-materials (BOM) costs while maintaining compatibility with existing standards for high-volume memory modules.

The IDT TS3000GB0A0 is a low-power, high-accuracy temperature sensor for enterprise server and storage applications. It supports a 1.8 V power supply for reduced power consumption and compatibility with the existing supply voltage for SSD memory modules, eliminating the need for additional voltage regulators.

The device continues the IDT tradition of temperature accuracy by exceeding the requirements set forth by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) JC42.4 specification for Grade B temperature sensors over the temperature range of -20 °C to +125 °C.

An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) enables programmable resolution up to 12 bits (0.0625°C) with conversion time of less than 100 nanoseconds irrespective of the resolution, improving the overall precision of thermal control loops across temperature.

"Enterprise SSDs can provide significant performance enhancements with lower power consumption in smaller footprints," said John Unsworth of Gartner Research. "Demand for enterprise-grade SSDs has gained tremendous traction over the past few years. We predict unit shipments to grow by over 41% in the next five years while sales will more than quadruple for SSD providers during that timeframe." (Gartner, Inc., Forecast: Semiconductor Consumption by Electronic Equipment Type, Worldwide, 1Q12 Update, Nolan Reilly, et al, March 8, 2012)

"The SSD market is poised to grow explosively over the next decade and is an area of strategic focus for IDT," said Mario Montana, VP and GM of the Enterprise Computing Division at IDT. "Our memory and SSD customers recognize IDT as a leader in high-performance and low-power system solutions. Our latest temperature sensor delivers these qualities and complements our extensive portfolio of enterprise server and storage solutions that includes PCI Express flash controllers and switches, timing, power management, and other memory interface products."

The IDT TS3000GB0A0 supports both SMBus and I2C interfaces for compatibility with the latest generation of flash memory and controllers. It is JEDEC compatible, offering customers a standards-based solution in a market where most competitive thermal sensors do not follow any standardization effort. The device integrates advanced, on-die power management to minimize power consumption during critical modes, such as when mobile or fault-tolerant enterprise systems are operating on battery power. It also features input glitch filtering and power-up voltage hysteresis to enhance fault tolerance, an important attribute for server and storage equipment.

Pricing and Availability
The IDT TS3000GB0A0 is sampling to qualified customers and is available in RoHS-compliant 8-pin TDFN packages. It is priced at $1.12 each for volumes of 10,000 units.