PLX DAS Controller for the Portable External Storage Market

PLX Technology, Inc. announced OXUF943SE, a direct attached storage (DAS) controller that is suited for the portable external storage market.

The OXUF943SE offers up to 70 percent better performance while using less than 50 percent of the power of competitive solutions. The PLX OXUF943SE represents the next generation in PLX’s DAS product line and features flexible encryption capabilities ensuring data protection against theft or loss, thus ensuring the end-user’s peace-of-mind in portable storage applications.

The new OXUF943SE offers an embedded 3GHz SATA II host interface along with integrated USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 high-speed connectivity, enabling designers to create products with a minimal number of external components and a lower overall cost. These built-in, high-performance serial connections are backward-compatible with their previous generations, and system-ready for both Windows and Mac operating systems.

Industry-leading low power of only 293mW – a key attribute of the OXUF943SE – is achieved through PLX’s superior combination of unique chip architecture and advanced firmware solutions. The OXUF943SE, optimized for bus-powered applications, supports a number of power-saving modes, including SATA Interface Power Management (IPM), which allows additional power saving when connected to hard disk drives that also support IPM. This aligns with a key trend in external storage to move towards portable hard drives which require no power supply as they draw their power from the host PC over the USB or FireWire data cable.

PLX integrated a high-throughput cipher engine into the OXUF943SE that provides real-time encryption and decryption capabilities to the Advanced Encryption Standard in the hardware with no loading on the host platform. In addition, the OXUF943SE is complemented by robust PLX security solutions, including a host application to define and manage user authentication, and the mounting/unmounting of the external drive.

“Direct attached storage devices are becoming ubiquitous for business and consumer applications,” said Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates and founder and chairman of the Storage Visions Conferences. “PLX is enabling the next generation of DAS storage with its new storage SoC, where performance and power demands need to be balanced. With the growth of green initiatives for storage and the increasing demand for storage capacity and performance, products such as the PLX OXUF943SE will be crucial in redefining this market.”

All PLX storage controllers are backed by the industry’s most powerful and flexible software development environment which supports rapid designer customization. PLX enables OEMs to deliver world-class solutions to consumers by supplying ready-to-go application firmware that has been extensively stress tested by PLX and enables an application to meet precise specifications. PLX, through its acquisition of Oxford Semiconductor, is a leading supplier of consumer storage solutions and is fully engaged with the world’s market leaders.

Pricing, Availability
The OXUF943SE is housed in a small 100-pin, 14mm x 14mm LQFP package. The device will be offered for general sampling and be in full production in September 2009. The OXUF943SE is $6.00 in 10K-unit quantities.