Arasan Chip Systems has released what it calls the world's first CE-ATA host hardware development kit. The CE-ATA Host HDK comes with Linux drivers, and aims to help manufacturers of CE-ATA controllers and hard drives build prototype platforms for testing their products, according to the company.

CE-ATA (consumer electronics AT-attachment) is a proposed standard for tiny hard drives and other storage devices used in mobile devices such as media players, GPSes, and mobile phones. The interface provides reduced pin count, better power utilization, voltages tailored to battery-based applications, and more efficient command protocol, according to Arasan. The CE-ATA specification jointly announced in September 2004 by Toshiba, Hitachi, Seagate, Marvell, and Intel.

Earlier in 2004, Toshiba announced the tiny 0.85-inch hard drive pictured above, with initial capacities of 2GB and 4GB.

Arasan says its CE-ATA HDK is built using the company's CE-ATA Host IP Core, which is an evolution of its SD/SDIO Host IP core and SD/SDIO/MMC4.0 IP core, both of which are in production.

Arasan's SD/SDIO/MMC4/CE-ATA host controller interfaces with an ARM processor's AHB (advanced high-speed bus) in this two-slot design

Arasan says its CE-ATA Host Controller IP conforms to CE-ATA Digital Protocol revision 1.0, with support for CE-ATA Digital Protocol commands (CMD60 / CMD61). The kit has two connectors dedicated to CE-ATA, and five slots supporting SD, SDIO, MMC 3.31, and MMC 4.1 cards.

Availability

Arasan is currently accepting orders for its CE-ATA Host HDK. The kit comes with Linux and Windows CE 5.0 binary drivers. Linux 2.6-compatible source code is also available for licensing, and source code for the Windows CE drivers is available to Microsoft Platform Builder 5.0 licensees.

---

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.