Product category: Communications ICs (Wired)
News Release from: Oxford Semiconductor | Subject: OXFW911
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 13 December 2001
FireWire to IDE bridge chip supports
RAID
Firmware enhancements to the popular OXFW911 FireWire to IDE bridge chip enable the development of simple, low cost RAID storage products for personal and small business application.
Firmware enhancements to the popular OXFW911 FireWire to IDE bridge chip enable the development of simple, low cost RAID storage products for personal and small business application Providing a high speed interface between an IEEE1394 port and a pair of ATA/ATAPI disk drives, the ARM-backed comms IC from Oxford Semiconductor can now be used to create a RAID Level 1 disk mirroring product to suit even the smallest PC installation
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 30 Jan 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Bridge speeds access to FireWire storage
Increased data transfer performance for small block sizes and disk striping capability feature in the latest FireWire (IEEE1394a) to IDE (ATA7) bridge IC from Oxford Semiconductor.
In plugging into a dual drive combination via the OXFW911, a PC sees only one storage device attached.
Translating the commands passed between the PC FireWire port and IDE disk drives, the bridge IC automatically duplicates data read and write operations on the two separate disk drives.
Assuring a sustained data transfer rate on read of up to 45Mbyte/s, the OXFW911 device and a PHY, offers a two-chip, single firmware interface between ATA and 1394 ports.
The high-speed performance overcomes any potential bottleneck associated with ATA/1394 interfacing.
Featuring an integrated serial bus protocol (SBP-2) target controller, the FireWire to IDE interface chip is simple to design-in, being supported by generic drivers of all the common operating systems.
A full suite of design support tools and development board is also available for the chip.
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