Silicon Motion Technology, the Taiwan-based supplier of NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, is offering its first, and possibly the market's first, single-channel, USB3.0 flash drive controller which supports Windows To Go, an enterprise feature of Windows 8.
This means a Windows To Go workspace can be booted from a USB flash drive on any PC running Windows 7 or Windows 8.
SM3261 supports data transfer rates of up to 100Mbyte/s read and 50Mbyte/s write.
"We are pleased to have secured several design wins for SM3261 with flash drive OEMs, including most of the tier-one OEMs," said Wallace Kou, president and CEO of Silicon Motion.
"Flash drives using our SM3261 will be available in the first quarter of 2013," said Kou.
Samsung, Toshiba, SanDisk supported
The controller is designed to support various NAND flash formats including 2x/2y/1x nm MLC, TLC and high speed Toggle and ONFI DDR NAND manufactured by Samsung, Toshiba, SanDisk, SK Hynix, Micron or Intel.
For flash drive applications, SM3261supports high capacity by managing up to 4 NAND flash dies with write protection, PC boot-up, password protection, and secure partition.
The SM3261 controller is available in a 48-pin QFN green package and fits the mainstream size of USB2.0 flash drive module board, 14mm x 33mm, for 2-TSOP or COB solutions.
