The companies, which include Intel, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Marvell Semiconductor, Seagate Technology and Toshiba America Information Systems, proposed on Thursday at Intel's Developer Forum in San Francisco the development of CE-ATA, a new drive interface for miniature hard drives. Such drives are often used to store data in handheld consumer electronics, including devices such as Apple Computer's iPod music player. Samsung also built one into its SPH-V5400 cellular phone recently.
The CE-ATA interface involves creating a new way to address the major concerns of consumer electronics manufacturers -- things including the cost, size and power consumption of devices -- potentially helping gadget makers create sleeker battery-powered handheld devices for consumers.
The proposed specification will be conceptually similar to the Serial ATA interface for PC and server hard drives, which has become more widely used over the last year. That means CE-ATA will replace parallel interfaces and the familiar ribbon-like cables with a serial connection that uses much smaller, thin cables and connectors with fewer pins, which the companies say will help cut power consumption and cost. But CE-ATA will be developed separately with handhelds and CE devices in mind, meaning it won't necessarily match the bandwidth provided by Serial ATA, said Knut Grimsrud, Intel's principal engineer for CE-ATA.
Serial ATA-like performance in a music player would just be "overkill," Grimsrud said. Instead, the consortium's "purpose is to design a new drive interface tailored to the consumer electronics and handheld gadget segment."
John Monroe, analyst at researcher Gartner, called the CE-ATA effort a "good initiative." The proposed specification could reduce drives' emphasis on correcting errors, which matters much more for banking applications than for serving up video pixels, Monroe said. An industry-wide standards effort also is preferable to different companies arriving at idiosyncratic interfaces, according to Monroe. That route leads to "stupid DVD wars," he said, referring to the format battles over types of recordable DVDs.
The CE-ATA consortium expects to complete a specification for the interface during the first half of 2005. Thus, products supporting the newly minted interface could be available as little as a few months later, the consortium said in a statement.
Serial ATA growing up
Though miniature hard drives appear to be heading for an interface makeover, the body responsible for the development of Serial ATA interfaces has itself already received one. The Serial ATA International Organization, a new governing body for Serial ATA, announced Thursday, replaces the all-volunteer Serial ATA Working Group.
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