Storage peripheral solution for portable consumer products

The Microdrive 3K8 has a maximum capacity of 8 Gbytes, and features a dramatically reduced footprint and power consumption for integration into mobile phones and other ultra-miniature consumer electronic devices.



As consumers look for higher quality video playback in portable devices, the demands on the embedded processor and hard drive escalate. This poses a problem for portable applications developers, as some embedded processors do not have a native IDE interface, and simple interface designs may not support the hard drive's maximum data transfer rate.



As a solution, QuickLogic has created a companion device to connect Hitachi Microdrive disk drives efficiently with Intel PXA2xx processors, based on its programmable QuickIDE bus-to-bus bridging device with onchip buffer memory. With support from Hitachi, QuickLogic has spent several hundred engineering hours performing system-level tests and benchmarks to confirm the interoperability of the QuickIDE bridge controller and Microdrive solution. QuickLogic's results validate the theoretical maximum effective transfer rate of the Microdrive, which is a 5.1-10 Mbytes/second sustained data rate.



"In order to broaden our reach into the portable electronics segment, QuickLogic has developed an ecosystem of industry leaders in low power embedded processors, wireless and storage peripherals," said Kevin Yee, Director of Business Development at QuickLogic. "As a result of this focused collaboration with Hitachi, QuickLogic has enabled Microdrive hard drives to connect to embedded processors in the most energy efficient manner - without sacrificing performance."



"Low CPU utilisation, low power consumption and small footprints are all critical parameters for our customers integrating Microdrive technology into their portable electronics," said Marcia Bencala, VP Corporate Strategy & Product Planning at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Hitachi's work with QuickLogic will go a long way in helping product designers achieve these parameters and deliver compelling handheld consumer electronic devices into the marketplace."



The QuickLogic companion device integrates a full-featured IDE Bridge Controller and local bus interface for embedded processors, and is available immediately. In volume quantities, the device sells for less than $5. For more information, access www.quicklogic.com/hdd