Synopsys' DesignWare SATA 6Gb/s IP Solutions Receive SATA-IO Certification

To achieve certification, the DesignWare SATA solutions maintained a 6 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) data transfer rate and passed more than 200 tests that span electrical, digital and system interoperability as defined in the SATA Revision 3.0 specification. Synopsys' fully certified DesignWare SATA IP solutions support SATA Host and Device applications that require 1.5, 3 and 6 Gb/s transfer rates, enabling system-on-chip (SoC) designers to significantly lower integration risk and speed the deployment of the 6 Gb/s interface into SoCs while maintaining interoperability with existing products.

The DesignWare SATA Digital Controllers support the new features documented in the SATA Revision 3.0 specification, including streaming Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and power management states. Streaming NCQ introduces isochronous priority to help improve the quality of service for audio/video streaming. For more power-efficient systems, the DesignWare SATA Controllers implement power mode states that allow a direct transition from partial to full slumber mode, bypassing the active state. The DesignWare SATA IP solutions include an embedded DMA (direct memory access) engine in the controllers that enable designers to maximize their system performance while maintaining low latency and minimizing CPU overhead.

As a provider of solid state storage devices (SSDs), we are committed to delivering very high-performance solutions to our customers, said Mitsyuoshi Ito, director at Siglead, a Japanese developer of signal processing-based products. Using Synopsys' comprehensive DesignWare SATA Device Controller and PHY IP solution to implement the SATA 6G interface enabled us to achieve over 450 MBps data transfer rate and meet the low power consumption goal in our solid state devices. Using a certified DesignWare SATA 6G IP solution from Synopsys enabled us to reduce integration risk and speed our product development cycle.

To receive SATA-IO building block interoperability and compliance to the specification, IP must undergo and pass stringent testing, said Robert Liu, Technical Operation/Hardware Manager of Allion, a global testing and verification firm conducting standards certification, interoperability, performance and compatibility testing services. The certification of Synopsys' DesignWare SATA IP demonstrates Synopsys' thorough understanding of the SATA specification and provides designers with confidence that the IP will support the latest SATA functionality while maintaining backwards compatibility.

The SATA Revision 3.0 specification enables 6 Gb/s link speeds between storage units, disk drives, optical and tape drives and protocol host bus adaptors, said Mladen Luksic, president of the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO). Products that achieve SATA-IO certification have undergone extensive testing to ensure they meet SATA-IO's interoperability standards and are compliant to the 6Gb/s requirements of the SATA Revision 3.0 specification. Having certified IP available from companies like Synopsys helps accelerate SATA 6Gb/s adoption.

The SATA Revision 3.0 specification with support for 6 Gb/s is providing new levels of performance, power efficiency and increased reliability targeted at consumer demand for advanced storage solutions to support large video and audio files, said John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP and Systems at Synopsys. By passing SATA-IO certification, the DesignWare SATA 6 Gb/s IP enables designers to quickly take advantage of the latest storage interface capabilities while reducing integration risk and speeding time-to-market of their SoC design.

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