The manufacturer says . . .

ChipCenter's Paul O'Shea says . . .

Texas Instruments (TI) announced today a high-speed USB2.0 to ATA/ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment/Packet Interface) bridge solution to serve the high performance PC storage peripheral market. Providing world-class through-put performance and a high level of interoperability with off-the-shelf ATA/ATAPI drives, the new solution separates itself from the competition with its never-before achieved low levels of power consumption. The TUSB6250 low power requirement makes the development of bus-powered USB 2.0 storage peripherals a reality TI's new TUSB6250 programmable USB 2.0-to-ATA/ATAPI bridge features a unique low-power architecture and advanced process technology, optimized for low operating and standby power consumption. This low-power consumption in turn frees USB 2.0 storage peripherals from the shackles of wall-mounted power outlets and power adapter ıbricksı by allowing USB 2.0 storage peripherals to draw the power they require from the USB bus alone. This saves peripheral developers money and provides the end customer with a superior user experience. Reference designs are available now from Texas Instruments to aid in the development of bus powered USB 2.0 storage peripherals. Chris Belanger, USB peripheral product marketing manager says, "The TUSB6250 requires less than half the power of competing devices, which leaves sufficient power for our customers to power other devices present, including the drive, exclusively from the bus. In addition, the programming flexibility of the 6250 allows developers to make use of a wider variety of off-the-shelf ATA/ATAPI devices than would be possible using alternative bridge devices. Applications for the TUSB6250 include HDDs, ZIP drives, CD-RW, DVDs, Magneto-Optical drives as well as USB2.0-based digital audio players. Portable Audio Players The same low power attributes that make the TUSB6250 an attractive solution for PC storage peripherals also make it an optimal device for USB 2.0 portable audio players. Its extremely low standby power requirements contribute to extended battery life in portable applications. The deviceıs low operating power requirements allows the audio playerıs battery to be recharged using the USB cable connection to the PC. This eliminates the need for a wall-mounted ıbrickı recharging unit, lowering the total cost of the audio player. A bridge designed for flexible design. The ATA/ATAPI bus standards have been interpreted differently by storage device manufacturers in terms of command modes, signal timing and protocols. As a result, a programmable and highly configurable bridge solution such as the TUSB6250 is necessary in order to interface effectively with the numerous possible ATA/ATAPI configurations. Development support speeds time to market. To support designers using the TUSB6250 bridge, TI offers a demo board that also serves as a reference design. Using the board, developers can evaluate the device and begin working immediately in designing USB2.0-to-ATA/ATAPI adaptors for their mass storage PC peripheral products. "TI aims to enable the bus-powered USB 2.0 mass storage market with the interoperability and low-power performance of the TUSB6250," said Chris Belanger, TI USB Product Marketing Manager. "We worked with our customers in designing the device, and we'll continue working closely with them to ensure they can bring their USB 2.0 products to market successfully." The TUSB6250 bridge has been certified for USB2.0 operability and is TI's first offering compliant with version 2.0 of the specification. TI is the market leader in USB 1.1 hub solutions and has a major presence in the overall USB market. World Wide Web: Texas Instruments

The published spec on USB 2.0 is 480Mbps and thatıs 40 times faster than the previous USB 1.1 version. That speed difference has opened up doors to new markets for USB 2.0. Two markets for this product are the storage peripherals and the hard-drive based digital audio players. Traditionally, personal audio players were flash based and limited to 10 to 20 songs. Now, digital audio players have hard drives so you can store 1,000. Around July 2002 PCs started shipping with USB 2.0. That was also when Intel began including USB 2.0 functionality in their core chipset supplied to the PC manufacturers. The resulting change enabled PC manufacturers to provide USB 2.0 at no additional cost. The timing of this bridge device is excellent to ride this cresting wave of USB 2.0 devices. The reason itıs an important introduction can be found in its use. The bridge function is used when there are two different buses involved in a transfer of information. It is attached to a variety of mass storage devices including magneto optical, CD R/W, Zip, hard disk, and DVD drives. All these drives share a bus ı the ATA/ATAPI. The drives use a different protocol than other buses on your computer, so you need a bridge function to enable them to communicate. The point of this product is to allow drive manufacturers to connect their ATA and ATAPI drives to this bridge device creating a USB 2.0 version of the drive. Most of the drives are meant to be used internally. This allows peripheral drive manufacturers to take advantage of the USB 2.0 connections on PCs by using off-the-shelf drives and attaching TIıs bridge function, voila, they have a USB 2 version of the drive. The USB 2 drives are also being seriously considered for add-on capacity for personal video recorders (PVRs). The PVR manufacturers want to keep the price of the unit very low. So they include a very small hard drive, the minimum necessary. Now, the end user can go to Best Buy, purchase an off-the-shelf drive and just plug it in to add capacity- a modular approach. Flash card readers are also getting more dense, another area where the end user will benefit from having a fast pipe like the USB 2.0. This is a low power interface and it eliminates the need for power supply bricks ı no more wall warts. This is a big advantage because it makes it easy for end users. They just plug it into the PC without an additional power supply. Low power consumption is really important to peripheral manufacturers because the USB 2.0 bus only provides 500mA. This product easily meets that cut-off because it draws less than 80 mA. Even though the cut-off before you need a brick is about 500mA, some clever designers incorporated a battery with the drive. So the battery along with the cable with the USB2.0 supplies enough current. The TUSB6250 enters into a very low power mode when itıs acting like an audio player that youıre carrying with you. When you need to recharge you just plug it into your PC and charge as well as transfer music. So you use the PC as the charging unit. Because the TUSB6250 only draws 80 mA, that leaves 420 mA to charge the battery. Similar products on the market draw 200 mA. TI is able to reduce the current because it uses a 0.15 micron process. Additionally, competitive solutions power their circuits from 3.3V. The TI core is 1.8V and they have an internal regulator that takes the 3.3 V from the customer's supply and translates it to 1.8V. Customers only need one power supply. The TI product also uses a firmware-based solution, which means it has an embedded microcontroller. The firmware allows the final manufacturer to compensate for the ATI/ATAPI spec and all its variations. There are many inconsistencies in the spec that results in ATAPI devices that vary from the spec. TI believes that the best way to deal with those variations is to have a programmable solution based on firmware. Some competitive solutions donıt use a programmable device ı they have a state machine and that doesnıt provide the same flexibility. The TUSB6250 programmable USB 2.0-to-ATA/ATAPI bridge is sampling now, with volume production scheduled for November 2002. The TUSB6250 demo board/reference design is also available now. The device is packaged in an 80 lead thin quad flatpack (TQFP). Planned pricing is $3.95 each in quantities of 10,000. Data Sheet