Top Of The News - Hardware:

Marvell Samples Native Serial ATA II SoC To Fujitsu

Marvell, a technology leader in the development of extreme broadband communications and storage solutions, announced that it has sampled the world's first single chip system on chip (SOC) device that supports the Serial ATA II feature set and both 3.0Gb per second and 1.5Gb per second operation to Fujitsu for use in its 2.5-inch hard disk drives. The newly introduced 88i6535 Serial ATA SOC enables lower cost and higher performance storage for a variety of applications including blade servers, consumer and mobile applications such as laptop computers, portable music players, personal video recorders, set top boxes, car navigation systems and digital still/video cameras.

Serial ATA hard disk drives were first introduced in the second half of 2002, and have begun a significant volume ramp as end users and system OEMs alike become accustomed to the significant performance and cost advantages offered by this new storage interface. The majority of Serial ATA drives in production today use Marvell's 88i8030 Serial ATA bridge chip, a device that was the result of a joint collaboration between Fujitsu and Marvell. As Serial ATA gains in popularity, HDD suppliers and their OEM customers are under increased pressure to provide Serial ATA storage at price parity with traditional parallel ATA storage.

Marvell's 88i6535 single-chip Serial ATA SOC will enable price parity by eliminating the need for bridge chips. In addition, the reduced pin count and PCB complexity of Serial ATA SOCs can further lower cost versus parallel ATA SOCs. Single chip SOCs also significantly reduce power consumption, a benefit especially critical to mobile drives used in portable, battery-operated applications. The reduction in power consumption in turn improves thermal characteristics, easing system design constraints and further reducing cost.

The large-scale adoption of Serial ATA technology will be fueled further by the introduction of Serial ATA II technology, which offers a number of feature enhancements to Serial ATA I, as well as increased data rate from 1.5Gb per second to 3.0Gb per second. Marvell's new SATA II SOC supports SATA II's new features, which include Native Command Queuing, as well as the increased data rate of 3.0Gb per second.

"IDC predicts the rapid adoption of Serial ATA technology with shipments increasing at a CAGR of over 300 percent from 3 million units in 2003 to nearly 225 million units in 2006," said Dave Reinsel, research manager at industry analyst IDC. "The introduction of cost-effective native Serial ATA SOCs such as Marvell's newly announced product will be a key contributor to this remarkable growth."

"Starting with our initial collaboration with Fujitsu on the introduction of the industry's first Serial ATA bridge device in 2001, Marvell has continued to introduce industry-leading Serial ATA products, including the recently announced 88SX6081 Serial ATA II Host Controller and today's SATA II HDD SOC," said Dr. Alan J. Armstrong, Marvell's vice president of marketing for the Storage Business Group. "We are extremely pleased to have collaborated with Fujitsu to deliver this highly advanced product for use in their next generation 2.5-inch Serial ATA hard disk drives."

"Marvell's Serial ATA technology leadership, world-class read channel technology, and unmatched system on chip design expertise, made Marvell the clear choice for Fujitsu's Serial ATA system on chip supplier," commented Chuck Nielsen, chief technologist of Advanced Products Engineering at Fujitsu Computer Products of America. "The combination of these capabilities combined with our advanced hard disk controller technology, and manufacturing knowledge positions Fujitsu for continued leadership in advanced storage applications."

The 88i6535 SOC incorporates, on a single chip, Fujitsu's hard disk controller with Marvell's 88C6591 low-power read channel core, highly advanced ECC technology, second generation Serial ATA PHY, and an ARM966E-S microprocessor core from ARM. Marvell's previously announced second generation SATA PHY technology offers superior jitter performance and supports both 3.0 and 1.5Gb per second operation. Spread Spectrum Clocking support on both transmit and receive provides reduced EMI emissions for lower system costs and easier certification.

Marvell's 88C6591 read channel core is optimized for battery-powered operations by offering a variety of power saving modes, including a deep sleep mode, which can be utilized during different phases of device activity. Further, the 88C6591 read channel core incorporates a newly developed proprietary technology that significantly increases the amount of data that can be stored on a disk. The 88C6591 read channel's wide range of data rates make Marvell's new SOC ideal for 2.5-inch HDDs, which can be deployed in both mobile applications where power consumption is paramount and blade servers where raw performance takes precedence.