Exar AHCI Compliant SATA Host Controller XRS10L620

Exar Corporation expanded its EXstor storage product offering with the introduction of an AHCI compliant SATA host controller. The XRS10L620 is a two-channel SATA, one-channel IDE controller with a PCI-X compliant interface. It can seamlessly interoperate with all SATA port multipliers targeting a wide variety of data storage environments including data management systems for consumer, industrial as well as Small Medium Business (SMB) enterprise applications.

"The XRS10L620 SATA/IDE host controller with a high throughput PCI-X bus and Gen-2 compliant SATA ports offers customers maximum design flexibility for their storage applications," said Jehangir Parvereshi, product line director, storage products. "As a cost-effective AHCI compliant host controller, the XRS10L620 is ideally suited for video surveillance, DVR, external SATA/IDE RAID or CD/DVD duplication equipment, as well as Host Bus Adapters (HBAs)."

The XRS10L620 PCI-X compliant host controller can connect up to four systems at the same time: two SATA devices and two IDE/ATAPI devices. The SATA ports conform to Gen1i/Gen1m/Gen2i/Gen2m specifications. The IDE channel supports the maximum transfer rate of 133 MB/s. The controller supports simultaneous data transfer through two SATA ports and an IDE port to a PCI-X bus. Each SATA port of the XRS10L620 supports hot-plug/un-plug and can drive up to two meters of eSATA cable. The XRS10L620 achieves its peak performance when driving SATA HDDs supporting Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The PCI-X compliant 32-bit bus interface complies with multiple clocking rates of 33 MHz, 66 MHz and 100 MHz.

EXstor Storage Devices Overview
The EXstor series improves the signal integrity, increases reliability and resolves bandwidth bottlenecks. Comprised of five additional solutions:

• the XRS10L210 a 2:1 eSATA port selector;
• the XRS10L220 a 1:2 port selector/multiplier combination;
• the XRS10L140/XRS10L120 a SATA port multiplier which supports a single host to connect up to four/two SATA drives targeting next generation enterprise class disk array systems that use SATA mid-planes;
• lastly, the XRS10L240 device which combines port selector and port multiplier functionality in a single integrated device enabling two SATA or SAS hosts to address up to four SATA drives.

All the EXstor devices use PHY technology with adjustable equalization, pre-emphasis and amplitude settings for tuning high-speed long backplane implementations and eSATA cables. The devices also support the SSC schemes to reduce EMI issues.

Packages and Prices
In 1,000 piece quantities for commercial temperatures the XRS10L620 is offered in a 128-pin LQFP package, and priced at $5.80 per unit.