Product category:
Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: QuickLogic | Subject: PXA bridge controller
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 02 March 2006
Programmable controller bridges gap for
PXA
A bridge controller enables energy efficient connectivity between the popular Intel PXA processor family and IDE-based micro hard disc drives and PCI-based devices.
QuickLogic Europe has a bridge controller device that enables energy efficient connectivity between the popular Intel PXA processor family and IDE-based micro hard disc drives (HDDs) and PCI-based devices Intel's PXA is one of the most popular processors for handheld, battery-powered portable applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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However, the processor does not provide a native interface to common standards such as PCI and IDE.
This poses battery life challenges when integrating commonly used PCI-based peripherals such as Wi-Fi and ultrawideband wireless chipsets, MPEG decoder/encoder devices and 10/100/1G Ethernet chipsets.
QuickLogic's companion devices solve this challenge.
An embedded PCI controller in the companion device supports two external PCI agents.
Through onboard programmable logic, the device can be expanded to support up to four external PCI agents.
By using the SDRAM bus-mastering feature supported by the PXA processor, the QuickLogic companion device can significantly reduce processor bus utilisation - performance that is not feasible with CPLD based interfaces, or FPGAs without embedded RAM.
A second embedded controller for IDE can perform transfers to/from an IDE-based hard disk drive in any of the PIO modes (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4).
By integrating full sector buffers in the device, QuickLogic has been able to demonstrate performance of over 13Mbyte/s during data transfers.
The IDE timing and registers are completely handled by the QuickLogic companion device, further reducing utilisation of the processor's bus, for more energy efficient operation.
"This new programmable bridge controller is another example of QuickLogic's commitment to delivering ready-to-integrate peripheral attachment solutions for portable products such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), smartphones, personal media products (PMP), and portable industrial systems", says Owen Bateman, European Sales Director for QuickLogic.
"Our ultra-low-power FPGAs, and solution packs guarantee the best performance at the lowest power, and decrease design time, allowing our customers to reach production faster".
The new bridge controller and Linux/Windows CE software drivers are available now with pricing starting at $6 in high volume.
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