Product category: Communications ICs (Wired)
News Release from: Oxford Semiconductor | Subject: OXFW912
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 30 October 2003
FireWire800/IDE bridge maximises data
throughput
The OXFW912 is the first FireWire800 (IEEE1394b) to IDE (ATA7) bridge chip to maximise transfer rates for both single and dual disk drives, irrespective of data block size.
The OXFW912 is the first FireWire800 (IEEE1394b) to IDE (ATA7) bridge chip to maximise transfer rates for both single and dual disk drives, irrespective of data block size When striping data across two drives, the chip can achieve a transfer rate of more than 88Mbyte/s and maintains its high transfer efficiency even for small data block sizes in single drive applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 7 Jan 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Bridge chip maximises disk drive speed
Oxford Semiconductor's OXFW912 FireWire800 to IDE bridge chip is enabling LaCie's new Big Disk Dual FireWire drive to achieve data transfer rates up to 88Mbyte/s.
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.
Integrated solution for high-speed data streaming
Combining an 800Mbit/s 1394B link layer and PHY controller with a 480Mbit/s USB2.0 PHY, the OXUF922 programmable bridge chip provides a fully integrated solution for high-speed data streaming.
Used with an IEEE1394b PHY, the highly integrated OXFW912 provides a cost effective two-chip solution for smart-cable or tailgate interfaces used in removable media drives, CF card readers, CD, DVD and hard disk drives.
The bridge chip is backwards compatible with IEEE1394-1995 and IEEE1394a PHYs and allows IDE drives to take full advantage of FireWire's plug and play functionality.
Following on the success of Oxford's '911 and '922 bridge chips, the 100-pin TQFP packaged OXFW912 features a range of speed enhancements.
Supported by the onboard ARM7TDMI processor, an integral serial bus protocol (SBP-2) controller provides extensive hardware acceleration and support for fast start.
Further improvements assure peak performance for small data block sizes and high speed writes.
An onboard ORB coprocessor accelerates ORB to ATA command translation.
Built-in hardware disk striping and spanning functions use the bridge chip's dual IDE master-slave capability to make the best possible use of the high bandwidth offered by the 800Mbit/s FireWire bus.
Compliant with the ATA7 and UDMA6 drive standards, the OXFW912 IDE interface also provides 48bit LBA support for larger drives.
64Kbyte of onboard Flash program memory means the OXFW912 does not require an external Flash device and firmware is field upgradeable, using the chip's FireWire port.
8Kbyte RAM and 10Kbyte cache memory for 1394 data are included.
Four GPIO pins and an asynchronous UART further extend the bridge chip's capabilities and the ARM7 processor offers generous spare MIP capacity for custom software design.
Supporting the SBP-2 protocol, the OXFW912 uses generic SBP-2 drivers available in Windows 98 and later versions and Apple Mac OS8.4 operating systems and above.
Oxford Semiconductor is providing firmware updates, programming utilities and an OXFW912 FireWire/IDE bridge evaluation board.
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