Product category:
Intellectual Property Cores
News Release from: Mentor Graphics UK
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 21 April 2005
Mentor commits to support CE-ATA storage
Mentor Graphics has joined the Consumer Electronics-ATA (CE-ATA) Working Group, to help further develop the new CE-ATA storage interface standard.
Mentor Graphics has joined the Consumer Electronics-ATA (CE-ATA) Working Group, to help further develop the new CE-ATA storage interface standard The CE-ATA organisation is focused on a lower cost implementation for storage devices targeting the consumer electronics market, with hard disk drive (HDD) demand estimated to reach over 380 million units by 2007
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 21 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Mentor Graphics will immediately begin developing CE-ATA IP for system-on-chip (SoC) designs attuned to the requirements of the exploding 2.5in and sub-2.5in hard disk drive market.
Based on its leadership in storage connectivity with offerings for both parallel and serial ATA technologies, Mentor Graphics will take an active role in the CE-ATA organisation by defining the next level and range of features that complement and fully exploit the capabilities of the initial interface specification.
The creation of the CE-ATA technology is important because it will allow product designers and silicon providers to replace a 20-year old technology designed for personal computer applications with a vastly different technology needed for handheld consumer products that require onboard storage capacity.
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Consumer electronics, such as the Apple iPod digital music players, multifunctional cellular handsets, GPS navigation systems, personal video players and PDAs, require innovative storage drives that are small, rugged, and consume low power.
The CE-ATA initiative fills the void in an industry that has lacked a disk drive interface specifically tailored to the needs of the handheld and consumer electronics market.
Small form factor disk drive suppliers will aggressively strive to deliver end products that support the newly defined CE-ATA standard by the end of this year.
"There should be enormous support for CE-ATA as a much-needed, cost-effective interface standard in certain emerging nonPC market segments", said John Monroe, rEsearch Vice President at Gartner.
"We predict that the vast majority of miniature hard disk drives used in personal digital audio players and other handheld devices will soon be configured with CE-ATA interfaces".
"As a result of high demand for CE-ATA based products, our storage IP head technologists are now on an accelerated product development schedule and will introduce new IP products in the fourth quarter this year", stated Jim Venable, Storage IP Business Unit Director for the Mentor Graphics IP Division and member of the CE-ATA initiative.
"Our product engineering plan will address requirements inherent to small form factor disk drives, including low pin count, low voltage, power efficiency, cost effectiveness, and integration efficiency".
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