Defense Semiconductor IP

A company that assembles finished drives and a company that designs the silicon inside them are not the same thing. PaxDisk designs and owns the SSD controller, the interface and the error-correction IP, and builds its defense products on top of them.

Localization timeline

Controller → interface → error correction

Localising storage silicon happens in a fixed order. PaxDisk has cleared all three stages.

  1. 2012

    World's first 2TB SSD — in-house SSD controller

    PaxDisk announced the world's first 2TB SSD, built on its own SSD controller. The same year it signed an SSD patent agreement with SK hynix.

  2. 2013

    Domestic SATA 6Gbps Link / Transport IP

    PaxDisk developed a domestic SATA 6Gbps Link/Transport semiconductor IP — the point at which the physical interface layer of the storage device came under Korean technology.

  3. 2026

    156-bit BCH ECC (t=156)

    PaxDisk completed a world-class BCH ECC engine usable on process nodes down to 2nm. After the controller and the interface, error correction too is now covered by domestic IP.

IP catalogue

IP portfolio

Headline specifications only. Full datasheets, manuals and integration guides are released once an NDA is in place.

Controller

SSD Controller

1.44MB to 16TB from a single controller

The controller lineage that drove the world's first 2TB SSD in 2012. Because we own the design down to the interface layer, we can answer obsolescence and tailor a build to your requirement.

Headline specs · block diagram · full description →

Interface IP

SATA 6Gbps Link / Transport

Domestic SATA Gen3 interface IP

The SATA Gen3 Link/Transport core developed in Korea in 2013. It is why we can stand behind the performance and compatibility of the finished drive with our own engineering.

Headline specs · block diagram · full description →

ECC

156-bit BCH ECC

Parametric BCH codec, t = 8 … 156

ECC is the last line of defence in SSD reliability. This encoder/decoder pair takes correction strength and sector size as build-time parameters and drops into a controller as synthesisable RTL.

Headline specs · block diagram · full description →

ECC

QC-LDPC Error Correction

Soft-decision error correction for 3D NAND TLC / QLC

High-density NAND storing more bits per cell needs soft-decision correction. An inner QC-LDPC code is concatenated with an outer BCH code and CRC32 to drive the residual failure rate down.

Headline specs · block diagram · full description →

Security IP

PBKDF2-HMAC Key Derivation

Password to key — an RFC 8018 hardware engine

A self-encrypting drive starts with turning a password into a key safely. This engine performs the key stretching — repeated HMAC rounds that raise the cost of a brute-force attack — entirely in hardware, with no software in the path.

Headline specs · block diagram · full description →

Security IP

AES-128/256 Encryption

Combined encrypt/decrypt engine with DMA streaming

The AES engine that encrypts the data behind the key-derivation stage. A single core covers key expansion, encryption and decryption, and supports both register-driven single-block operation and continuous DMA streaming. It is designed to sit in an SSD controller datapath.

Headline specs · block diagram · full description →

Engagement model

IP is sold through partnership, not from a catalogue

From a straight licence through to joint development — start wherever you need to.

PaxDisk semiconductor IP engagement model Three engagement paths lead out of the in-house IP assets (SSD controller, SATA 6Gbps, BCH ECC, LDPC): IP licence, custom development, and co-development or national programmes. IP ASSETS In-house assets · SSD controller· SATA 6Gbps Link/Transport· 156-bit BCH ECC· LDPC error correction 01 IP licence Verified IP as it stands — RTL, verification, integration guide 02 Custom development IP modified or extended to your requirement 03 Co-development · national programmes Joint silicon and firmware development
  1. 01 IP licence — Licence the verified IP as it stands. Synthesisable RTL, the verification environment and an integration guide come with it.
  2. 02 Custom development — The IP is modified or extended to your requirement. Because we design from the interface layer up, unusual requirements can be accommodated.
  3. 03 Co-development & national programmes — Joint silicon and firmware development against platform requirements, including participation in national R&D programmes. Scope and terms are agreed case by case.

01

IP licence

Licence the verified IP as it stands. Synthesisable RTL, the verification environment and an integration guide come with it.

02

Custom development

The IP is modified or extended to your requirement. Because we design from the interface layer up, unusual requirements can be accommodated.

03

Co-development & national programmes

Joint silicon and firmware development against platform requirements, including participation in national R&D programmes. Scope and terms are agreed case by case.

What a licence includes

  • Synthesisable Verilog RTL and integration wrappers
  • Cycle-accurate reference model and equivalence checker
  • Full-chain testbench (clean / correct / UE / pad vectors)
  • Datasheet, manual and integration guide (released under NDA)

Verification toolchains

Intel/Altera (Quartus)AMD/Xilinx (Vivado)ASIC — process-portable RTL

The RTL is process-portable, so the same source carries from FPGA prototype through to ASIC production.

Why a defense programme picks us

What domestic IP means for a defense programme

Domestic IP — free of export control

Controller, interface and error-correction IP are designed and owned in Korea. Your programme schedule is not hostage to a foreign vendor’s licensing policy or an export-control review.

Support across the life cycle

Defense platforms live in decades. The company that has kept shipping obsolete interfaces since the 2005 PATA SSD applies the same standard to IP support.

Twenty years of defense delivery

We are not a design house that only sells IP. Products built on this IP are fielded on the K2, Cheongung-II, Surion and K-21 — the qualification path already exists.

IP Licensing

IP licensing & co-development enquiries

Tell us the target process, the correction strength you need, the interface requirement and an outline schedule — an engineer replies directly. Detailed specifications and datasheets follow an NDA.

These design assets become products — See the defense SSD line-up →  ·  See the track record →