Debut Nears for Storage Interface for Next-Gen Handhelds

Debut Nears for Storage Interface for Next-Gen Handhelds

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, March 3, 2005 – Just six months after CE-ATA was launched, a final 1.0 specification has been published for the storage interface for next-generation handhelds and portable consumer electronics devices.

“In a word, remarkable. Delivery of the CE-ATA protocol specification is even ahead of the aggressive schedule committed to when we launched the initiative at IDF Fall 2004,” said Knut Grimsrud, chairman of the CE-ATA working group and Intel Corporation senior principal engineer. “CE-ATA development is at a feverish pace. The first end products supporting the new technology could be available by the end of this year.”

The announcement, made at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Spring 2005 in San Francisco, is not the only milestone reached this week for what promises to become the disk drive interface of choice in the handheld and CE market segment.

The first demonstration of an Intel host is being shown here. The demo, held at the Intel Pavilion (Booth #15), is of a prototype Intel handheld media player running video off a CE-ATA prototype disk drive supplied by Marvell. The CE-ATA prototype drive is an off-the-shelf 1.8-inch hard drive re-fitted with Marvell’s small-form-factor chipset and firmware, featuring the 88i6310 SOC, as well as Marvell’s stacked flash, motor controller, switching regulator and preamplifier. The host system used is an Intel development board for a PDA-style handheld that features an Intel PXA270 processor running prototype host driver software developed by Intel. A second demo highlighting key CE-ATA interface fundamentals is being featured in the CE-ATA Working Group booth (#732) by Marvell and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The demo illustrates the capabilities of CE-ATA technology on a prototype PDA platform playing video stored on a Hitachi Travelstar* 1.8-inch hard disk drive, which has been reconfigured with Marvell’s chipset and firmware solution.

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