The CE-ATA Working Group announced publication of the spec at last week’s Intel Developer Forum, where they also demo’ed a couple of implementations of the protocol. In one, a prototype Intel handheld media player ran video from a CE-ATA-compliant disk drive, also in prototype, from Marvell Corp.
The drive in question was in fact a standard 1.8-inch drive to which Marvell had fitted a small-form-factor chipset (the 88i6310 system-on-a-chip) with some firmware, including a stacked flash, motor controller, switching regulator and pre-amp. The handheld featured an Intel development board for a PDA-like handheld device, running the PXA270 processor with the prototype of some host driver software.
In another demo, a prototype PDA showed video stored on a Hitachi Travelstar1.8-inch drive, again with the Marvell chipset and firmware added.
In announcing the demos, Intel said CE-ATA fills the void in an industry that had been lacking a disk drive interface tailored to the needs of the handheld and CE market segments. The new CE-ATA interface standard for small form factor disk drives addresses requirements inherent to such small devices, including low pin count, low voltage, power efficiency, cost effectiveness and integration efficiency.
Enumerating the benefits by sector, it went on that small form factor disk drive suppliers can take advantage of a storage interface tailored to the needs of such devices, resulting in highly optimized disk drive designs.
Meanwhile host silicon providers and product integrators will also benefit from the improved integration that the tailored interface affords due to its low pin count, favourable voltages and efficient protocol, and for consumers, a disk drive interface tailored to the needs of the handheld and portable consumer market segments could spur storage use in innovative new products and lead to products with a more efficient storage solution.
Not all participants in the mobile device sector are so sure about HDDs going into their products, however. Chris Shimizu, corporate comms manager for NEC in Europe, said the company has no plans for mass storage in its handsets, though there may be a need in 4G or 5G, when you’ll have very fast transmission speeds. Today, the infrastructure’s not ready, he went on.
Above and beyond that, Shimizu asked how many people want to see a movie on a handset? He argued that HDD’s day in handsets may come, provided they gain durability, but flash capabilities are also expanding, and with compression technologies, maybe you won’t need large amounts of storage on the device.
Hitachi GST, the HDD division that makes the microdrives, is nonetheless very positive about the potential for its products in handsets. Its VP of strategy and planning Ian Vogelesang argued that last year the total HDD market was about 300 million units, whereas the mobile phone industry shipped 700 million handsets and is expected to grow to a billion over the next few years. If we can capture just 10% of that market, 100 million microdrives, that will be twice as many as the 2.5-inch drives the industry’s shipping in notebooks, and half of the current volume for 3.5-inch ones desktops.
