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Silicon Systems, Inc. 14351 Myford Road Tustin, California, USA
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NEW SILICON SYSTEMS TAILGATE
CHIP SET PROVIDES 1394 SERIAL INTERFACE FOR LOW COST
ATA/ATAPI STORAGE DEVICES TUSTIN, CA, March 31, 1997 -- Silicon Systems Inc. the Texas Instruments company specializing in semiconductor solutions for mass storage applications, has introduced its first 1394-to-ATA/ATAPI Tailgate chip. This advanced CMOS device is the missing link required to connect low-cost ATA/ATAPI storage devices, like hard disk or DVD drives, directly to the established high-speed 1394-1995 standard serial bus interface. Tailgate will be instrumental in supporting the proposed Device Bay spec under development by Compaq, Microsoft and Intel. Device Bay is forecast to expand the market reach of peripheral devices for both desktop and portable computers. Designated the Silicon Systems 39C1010 Link Controller IC, this new Tailgate device is based on the Texas Instruments high-performance 1394 Link core, in active use for more than three years. The 39C1010 directly interfaces to any of several industry-leading Texas Instruments 1394 physical-layer line transceivers to form a complete Tailgate chip set solution. The device completely manages a small, non-volatile configuration ROM to store the plug-and-play characteristics of the storage peripheral it is used with, and requires no firmware or external microcontroller for operation. All the 1394, SBP-2 Tailgate and ATA/ATAPI activities are managed automatically. Initially we expect our Tailgate solution to be used by most storage product manufacturers on a small circuit board attached externally to the back of their products-hence the name 'Tailgate', "said Dan Moczarny, product marketing manager for portable systems at Silicon Systems. These boards will plug into a standard ATA/ATAPI parallel port connector on one side and either a 1394 serial port connector or a Device Bay slot on the other side. In subsequent generations, this chip set and its successors will be included within the drive electronics on the controller board, eliminating the parallel port. "In the meantime, Tailgate solutions allow storage product manufacturers to bring their existing drives quickly into compliance with the IEEE-1394-1995 serial bus standard supported by many leading companies like Compaq, Intel, Microsoft and Texas Instruments for use in future generations of PCs," he said. "This bus provides a new level of high-speed interconnect capability for PCs and other consumer electronics equipment like digital cameras, camcorders, VCRs and set-top boxes, as well as other PC peripherals like scanners and printers. Since it reduces much of the cable and connector expenses on such equipment, and allows PC users true plug-and-play configuration for easily adding capabilities to their systems, IEEE-1394 is expected to become widely popular." Jeff Harth, product marketing manager for DVD at Silicon Systems added, "Tailgate provides an immediate solution for optical storage devices including CD and DVD due to its ATAPI interface capability." "We even expect that several companies will want to integrate Tailgate functionality into their future custom disk controller chips," Harth said. "We have designed the 39C1010 devices as part of our on-going Technology Block program with future integration in mind. Drive manufacturers will be able to include Tailgate functionality easily along with other ECC, formatter, buffer manager, I/F and clock blocks to speed a custom ASIC controller to market and further reduce their costs." The 39C1010 Tailgate Link transmits and receives 1394 packets asynchronously using a 4-KB data FIFO for data stream speed matching and an internal state machine controller for optimal transfer performance. It is compatible with Texas Instruments TSB11C01, TSB11LV01 or TSB21LV03 1394 Physical-Layer Line Transceivers to support serial link speeds of 100, 200 and 400 Mbit/s. The new Tailgate link serves as an ATAPI host interface supporting programmed I/O modes 0 to 4 and direct memory access modes 0 to 2. It implements the SBP-2 protocol including management and command fetch, decode and execute and contains both SBP-2 and Tailgate registers. The 39C1010 1394-ATA/ATAPI Tailgate Link Controller operates from a 5-Volt supply and costs under $10.00 in 1,000 quantities. Off-the-shelf samples are available immediately; a comprehensive design kit is scheduled for early release. As the mass storage subsidiary of Texas Instruments Incorporated, Silicon Systems, Inc. provides advanced semiconductor solutions for hard disk drives, tape drives, high density floppy disk drives, and optical disk drives. Its innovations in read channels, controllers and preamps are complemented by TI's leadership in DSP and ASIC solutions and global semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. |