Date: 25/05/2010

6 Gb/s SATA III repeater ICs from Parade Technologies

Parade Technologies has added two new devices to its family of SATA/eSATA/SAS bi-directional redriver/repeater integrated circuits. Parade says PS8521 devices are the world's first 6 Gb/s SATA III repeater ICs (also know as redriver ICs) to incorporate adaptive equalization technology, which compensates for signal loss due to variations in PCB design. Parade's PS8521A is also said to be the world's first SATA III device using a power-saving 1.5V supply voltage.

Parade also claims compared to alternative 3.3V SATA III devices, the PS8521A consumes 50% less power in active transmission mode.

"Parade is keenly aware of the demand for low-power devices, especially from our notebook customers," explains Jimmy Chiu, VP of Marketing at Parade Technologies. "Our first-generation SATA ICs introduced a unique power-saving sleep mode that leveraged the bursty nature of SATA transmissions. Now that we are introducing our new 6 Gb/s SATA devices, we made sure to include a low-power 1.5V supply voltage version preferred by many notebook system designers."

Designed for driving internal and external data storage and other peripherals, the PS8521 devices are ideal for notebook, PC motherboard and computer docking station redriver applications. Both devices support 1.5, 3 and 6 Gb/s data rates, and both are compatible with industry-standard SATA III, eSATA and SAS (serial attached SCSI) protocols. Out-of-band (OOB) signaling is also supported.

The PS8521A and PS8521B automatically detect traffic on the SATA bus, transitioning into sleep mode when no traffic is present. When traffic is detected, the devices become active with less than 10 ns latency.

To compensate for wide variations in system PCB trace and cable design and length, the PS8521 devices incorporate two important signal conditioning features: receiver adaptive equalization and output pre-emphasis technology. Adaptive equalization allows a redriver to automatically reconstruct incoming SATA signals despite challenging trace or cable electrical characteristics.

Programmable pre-emphasis enables the PS8521A and PS8521B to reduce signal jitter and optimizes the output 'eye' signal. These programmable features can be flexibly controlled either through an I2C port or directly through dedicated pin inputs.

Package: 4*4mm 20-pin TQFN package

Price: USD 1.50/each in volume
Availability: Now in samples