Oxford Semiconductor Universal Interface Brings Added Flexibility to External Storage Design.MILPITAS, Calif. -- Oxford Semiconductor Inc, a leading provider of high performance storage and connectivity solutions, today announced two new ARM7 based storage controller ICs. Able to bridge between SATA (Serial ATA) A serial version of the ATA (IDE) interface, which has been the de facto standard hard disk interface for desktop PCs for more than two decades. The original Parallel ATA (PATA) interface was launched in 1986. hard disk drives and eSATA, FireWire800, FireWire400 and USB USB in full Universal Serial Bus Type of serial bus that allows peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, digitizers, data gloves, etc.) to be easily connected to a computer. 2.0 interfaces, these latest storage controllers are the first with a universal interface to offer full software control of the eSATA data path. This added connectivity option gives designers the means to introduce custom eSATA functionality, such as button-push back up, and to launch external storage products assuring portability of data between current and future computer platforms. The OXUF934DSb provides the complete universal interface. For applications not requiring the services of FireWire800, there is the lower cost OXUF934DSa. Windows[R] and Mac[R] OS compatible host drivers are included for button notification and GPIO GPIO General Purpose Input/Output GPIO General Purpose Input Output control applications. To simplify manufacturing and in-field upgrades, firmware can be programmed via the FireWire or USB ports. Integrating dual SATA cores and PHYs, the controllers are designed to deliver maximum performance with minimum latency, with interface speeds of 3Gbps for SATA II external storage and 1.5Gbps for backwards compatibility with SATA I external storage. With one of the SATA cores configurable as either a host or device port it can be used to create either an eSATA interface or a host interface to a second hard disk. In dual SATA host mode the controllers will provide disk striping (RAID 0) and disk spanning functionality, alternatively in eSATA mode a 2-disk RAID 0 configuration is readily achieved using an external port multiplier. The controller's embedded USB2.0 PHY See physical layer and physical. supports both full and high speed operating modes, uses bulk-only transport Mass Storage Class device protocol, and is backwards compatible with USB1.1. Its fast read and write transfers ensure that the maximum possible host performance is maintained. The use of hardware acceleration for small data block sizes ensures the chip's IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, www.ieee.org) A membership organization that includes engineers, scientists and students in electronics and allied fields. 1394 PHY and link layer provides industry leading FireWire connectivity performance. About Oxford Semiconductor Oxford Semiconductor is a global leader in storage and connectivity technology and provides a broad portfolio of semiconductor "System on Chip" products enabling electronic devices to exchange or back-up data and share resources. The company's high performance connectivity solutions are an essential ingredient in a diverse range of highly differentiated end products, from external data storage and mobile phones to printers and point-of-sale equipment. Oxford's market leading product portfolio includes: * Direct-attached (FireWire / USB / RAID) and network-attached storage (NAS (1) See network access server. (2) (Network Attached Storage) A specialized file server that connects to the network. A NAS device contains a slimmed-down operating system and a file system and processes only I/O requests by supporting the popular ) controllers. * Serial communication bridges for PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). , miniPCI, Compact Flash and PC Cards. * USB host, peripheral and On-The-Go controllers. * Network connectivity controllers. Founded in 1992, Oxford Semiconductor is a privately held fabless company Fabless Company The Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) defines fabless as follows: Fabless (without fab) refers to the business methodology of outsourcing the manufacturing of silicon wafers, which hundreds of semiconductor companies have adopted. headquartered in San Jose, California San Jose (IPA: /ˌsænhoʊˈzeɪ/) is the third-largest city in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States. It is the county seat of Santa Clara County. with its key design center in Abingdon, UK and sales support offices worldwide. For more information visit http://www.oxsemi.com. |
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