Storage speed enhanced by FireWire / IDE bridge IC

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. The OXFW911plus is the next generation version of the popular OXFW911, a defacto industry standard for external drive products.

To accelerate data throughput, the OXFW911plus includes an integral ARM7TDMI processor, an ORB coprocessor and a high performance buffer manager, that combine to implement the 1394 transaction layer and SBP-2 protocol. The 100-pin TQFP packaged chip achieves high-speed performance for small data blocks and high speed writes and also supports SBP-3 Fast Start.

The OXFW911plus IDE interface meets common drive operating modes, including PIO 0-4, DMA 0-2, UDMA 0-6 (master and slave) and 48-bit LBA for large drives. Able to handle multiple IDE devices simultaneously, the bridge chip offers designers the facility of hardware-based disk striping and spanning functions to further increase data transfer speeds.

The inclusion of a generous 64Kbytes of on-board Flash memory means the OXFW911plus firmware can be easily upgraded via the FireWire serial bus using standard programming utilities provided by Oxford Semiconductor.

This highly integrated IC simply requires an external 1394-1995 or 1394a PHY to create a highly cost effective 2-chip FireWire bridging solution for a broad range of external removable media and hard disk drives and combination drive products. Supporting the SBP-2 protocol, the OXFW911plus will function with generic operating system drivers; Windows 98 2nd Edition and above and Mac OS 9.0 and above.

For external PC and Mac storage solutions, Oxford Semiconductor provides a selection of reference designs, development code, drivers and evaluation kits. Comprehensive application notes simplify implementation and help external drive manufacturers reduce time to market.

The OXFW911plus is the latest addition to a wide range of bridging solutions from Oxford Semiconductor that cover FireWire800, FireWire400 and USB2.0 communication standards.