Image Source: ST
One of the worldwide leaders in disk drive and system-on-chip solutions, STMicroelectronics, has announced that they will release a motor-control chip for hard-disk drives (HDD). This chip is intended specially for “enterprise- level HDD applications.”
The new controller can do without external regulators for varying voltages that are usually required by the drive. In other words, it is highly efficient and suitable for demanding high level HDD applications. The controller called the L7220 has the latest version of Smooth Drive(R) pseudo-sinusoidal digital-drive technique which is exclusively developed by ST. This minimizes acoustic noise from the spindle motor among other things. The L7220 will be fully out by mid 2008 but evaluation samples are now available at $15,000
Source: CNN