Future Domain spearheads industry move to new interface standard for Enhanced IDE.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 1994--Future Domain Corp., with the inputs of such industry leaders as Western Digital, NEC, Sony, Panasonic, Corel and others, has proposed a new interface standard for Enhanced IDE.

With the emergence of peripherals, such as ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface) CD-ROM and Tape drives, which are designed to work with Enhanced IDE controllers, a standard application programming interface language is needed to support both these ATAPI devices and IDE hard disk drives in the DOS and Windows environment. Future Domain has proposed ATASPI (ATA Software Programming Interface) as an industry standard solution to this problem.

``Originally, the ATA bus was used to support IDE fixed disks only. With the addition of ATAPI devices, a unified manager of all I/O requests on the ATA bus seems the only sensible approach,'' said Jack Allweiss, president of Future Domain.

``With the introduction of the ATASPI interface we are bringing a standard to the Enhanced IDE world that will eliminate much of the confusion that has surrounded SCSI for years. In fact, we based ATASPI on the widely accepted ASPI interface from the SCSI world.''

Because of some inherent differences between the ATA and SCSI busses, there are some difference in the interfaces. These differences have been kept to a minimum to ease porting existing SCSI application software to the ATA interface. This feature will also be extended to alternative bus architectures, including PCI and VL.

``We fully support the emerging IDE specifications,'' said Dr. Michael Cowpland, president and chief executive officer of Corel Corp. ``By creating an interface standard for Enhanced IDE, Future Domain is taking an innovative step toward a new era of worry-free standardization.''

``We plan to make ATASPI an open industry standard by bringing it before the appropriate ANSI (American National Standards Institute) committee for consideration as an official ANSI standard very shortly,'' noted Allweiss. ``We anticipate early action from the committee due to the groundswell of interest in Enhanced IDE among the PC systems manufacturers.''

What ATASPI Does

ATASPI, as an I/O manager, deals with such issues as: device addressing; handling packetized and non-packetized requests on the bus; overlapped I/O; 32-bit Access under Windows; and controlling multiple ATA busses.

When issuing an I/O request to a device, information that includes both the device address and the command request must be provided. The device address is used to select a specific device. It consists of two numbers: a controller number and a device ID number.

Command requests can come in two forms --- Task File requests and Packetized Requests. A Task File Request is any command request other than a Packetized Request. Typically this includes commands issued to IDE hard disk drives. A Packetized Request is any command issued to an ATAPI peripheral.

Overlapped I/O allows for the managing of data transfers across separate IDE channels without conflicts. With ATASPI, multiple Enhanced IDE controllers can coexist in the same PC. Thus, if it is required to handle two hard disk drives and two CD-ROM drives, the hard disk drives could be assigned to one controller and the CD-ROM drives to the other, with ATASPI managing I/O requests for all four drives.

32-bit Access under Windows allows for maximum performance and multitasking for all ATASPI I/O Manager controlled devices. All disk drives controlled by the ATASPI manager can support FASTDISK 32-bit and file access. All ATASPI I/O directed to CD-ROM or Tape drives are handled in 32-bit protected mode, which allows for overlapped I/O. Microsoft claims up to 100 percent performance improvement with 32-bit support.

For further marketing information, contact Laura Brandlin, marketing communications manager, at Future Domain Corp., 2801 McGaw Ave., Irvine, Calif. 92714. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone].

For further information in Europe, contact John Banks, European sales manager, at Future Domain Corp., Royal Albert House, Sheet St., Windsor, Berkshire SL4 1BE, United Kingdom. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone].

Please direct all editorial inquiries to David or Bea Kaye at KPR Inc., 17057 Chatsworth St., Granada Hills, Calif. 91344. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. E-Mail: dkayekpr(at-sign)aol.com.

CONTACT: Future Domain Corp., Irvine

              Laura Brandlin, 714/253-0400 (ext. 520)
                       or
              KPR Inc., Granada Hills
              David Kaye, 818/368-8212