CEVA Expands Storage Interface Offering With Comprehensive Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) IP Solution12 October 2005
CEVA, Inc.
(Nasdaq: CEVA; LSE: CVA) the leading licensor of digital signal processor
(DSP) cores, multimedia, GPS and storage platforms to the semiconductor
industry, today unveiled CEVA-SAS(TM), a comprehensive solution for
implementing Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) in SoC designs. Building on CEVA's
success and experience in the Serial ATA (SATA) market and its proven
expertise in delivering IP solutions, the company's latest offering represents
the first open-foundry commercial offering of an IP solution for this rapidly
emerging serial storage interface. The full-featured, high-quality IP package
reduces the risk and time required to implement SAS in an integrated IC
design, eliminating the need for a standalone chip to perform this function.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051010/CEVALOGO )
Serial interfaces are poised to rapidly overtake their parallel
predecessors in the storage interface market. This is true both in consumer
applications where SATA is evolving as the interface of choice, and in
enterprise storage where SAS is taking the SCSI interface to new levels of
flexibility, scalability, performance and reliability. In addition to
leveraging the enormous installed base of SCSI software, a key facet of Serial
Attached SCSI is that it is compatible with SATA, which enables an enterprise
storage system to mix and match SAS and SATA hard drives. This flexibility
gives SAS-enabled products a compelling advantage in the dynamic and ever-
changing world of enterprise storage.
"SAS will offer backward-compatibility with legacy SCSI data protocols and
forward physical backplane compatibility with SATA, combined with enhanced
dual-ported speed and scalability for emerging enterprise applications," said
John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "We have no doubt that SAS
will be the legitimate heir to parallel SCSI, which will disappear entirely
during the next five years. Semiconductor and storage system vendors should
coordinate the timely design and integration of new products with the
assumption that SAS will be the dominant hard disk drive interface in multi-
user markets, with a forecast share of 47.6 percent in 2009(1)."
CEVA-SAS is a complete hardware/software solution for integrating SAS into
a storage IC, spanning from an API interface at the customer's RAID stack
software down to the physical serial interface at the wire.
The solution is offered in a flexible integration format that allows
customers to license the entire solution or just the protocol or PHY elements.
The comprehensive list of features includes support for both Initiator and
Target modes, SCSI SBC-2 End-to-End Protection (DIF), Narrow /Wide Ports,
Scalable Context Management, Enhanced Open / Close / Retry Connection
Management. Further, employing the mature and die-efficient CEVA-TeakLite-II
DSP core for executing the associated embedded software, CEVA-SAS delivers a
highly optimized solution for integration, with significant work offloaded
from the IO Processor.
"The comprehensive package of hardware and software IP available with
CEVA-SAS has drawn very favorable reviews from a number of storage OEMs," said
John Ryan, VP and general manager of the Communications Business Unit, CEVA
Inc. "By extending our serial storage portfolio with this IP, CEVA will enable
our customers to develop feature-rich, SAS-enabled products without incurring
the time and risk associated with implementing this complex standard from
scratch."
"SAS represents a significant market opportunity for both storage OEMs and
semiconductor suppliers who can offer that functionality," said John Webster,
senior analyst and founder of Data Mobility Group. "In addition to its
performance and scalability benefits, its compatibility with other serial
interfaces, such as SATA, will only enhance its position as a very viable
replacement for parallel SCSI in enterprise solutions. Any technology that can
reduce the risk, cost and development time for product developers in this
market is worth evaluating as this will be a very competitive space in the
storage industry."
Availability
The CEVA-SAS IP package includes GDSII for the PHY element, Verilog-RTL
for the hardware elements of the protocol and C code for the associated
software. A demonstration system showing CEVA-SAS IP interoperating with a
number of industry-standard SAS Hard Disk Drives is available for customer
evaluation and demo, as is SASTool test software for PC, running on Windows
2000 or later.
It is supported with a full set of customization, integration and
deployment services. Complete feature details can be found at:
http://www.ceva-dsp.com/sas.
About CEVA, Inc.
Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., CEVA is the leading licensor of DSP,
multimedia, GPS, and storage platforms to the semiconductor industry. CEVA
licenses a family of programmable DSP cores, associated SoC system platforms
and a portfolio of application platforms including video processing, audio
processing, speech processing, GPS location, and Serial-ATA (SATA). In 2004,
CEVA's silicon IP was shipped in more than 100 million devices. CEVA was
created through the merger of the DSP licensing division of DSP Group and
Parthus Technologies. For more information visit http://www.ceva-dsp.com
(1) "Market Share and Forecast: Hard Disks Drives, Worldwide, 2000-2009,
John Monroe, April 2005."
Source: PR Newswire
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