Paper Title: Time to Market New Flash Device to Production SSD

Paper Abstract: SSD controllers are often optimized to interwork with specific Flash devices inside every SSD product. However ongoing innovations in Flash Technology, including multi-layer QLC, are resulting in new NAND Flash chips coming to market with different performance characteristics. Existing SSD controller silicon that worked well with last year's Flash, may not deliver the expected performance with new Flash innovations, extending the SSD product development cycle, and delaying SSD suppliers from introducing new Flash capabilities to market quickly. This session will present an SSD controller architecture and design methodology for minimizing time to market when introducing a new Flash technology. The methodology starts with an evaluation of key characteristics of a new Flash device, to determine nuances in performance and information retention characteristics. With this information, configuration and pipeline timing optimizations for the new Flash device can be implemented as firmware updates inside programmable SSD controllers, resulting in a flexible SSD product architecture that can rapidly deliver Flash performance improvements, both now and in the future.

Paper Author: John Plasterer, Chief Architect, NETINT Technologies

Author Bio: John Plasterer is the key technical contact for hardware and ASIC engineering at NETINT Technologies. He has over 18 years experience in high-speed digital design, mixed signal design and signal integrity. Prior to joining NETINT, John worked as a Senior Manager at PMC-Sierra in the Mixed Signal Department developing SoCs for Storage, Optical and Wireless markets. John has presented and shared his viewpoints at numerous industry conferences, including FMS 2018. John received a B. Eng from the University of Victoria and an MBA from Simon Fraser University and holds six patents in the area of mixed-signal and signal integrity design.