CHIP FIRM Via has managed to integrate Serial ATA (S-ATA), RAID and a parallel ATA-133 interface in one semiconductor. The VT 6420 includes two S-ATA channels for four devices, while the Parallel ATA channel supports two devices.
It's a chip which is 15mm square and uses a ball grid array (BGA package). It will be available in volume in April, the firm said. An additional two S-ATA channels can be added to a system when this chip is paired with a Silicon Image Sil3012 external PHY chip.
Via estimates that Serial ATA will arrive in Q4 of this year, according to its marketing director, Richard Brown. While Seagate already has S-ATA devices on the market, other hard drive firms, including Maxtor, have been a tad slow to introduce these type of devices. The Taiwanese firm said that the VT6420 will deliver 150MB/s data transfer between the brains of a computer – the CPU – and S-ATA storage devices.
RAID support for the chip includes Level 0, Level 1, Level 0+1 and JBOD. Operating systems supported include the Windows family and Linux, the firm said.
News source: The Inquirer
