Oak jumps on CD-RW bandwagon with integrated device
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 5:15 p.m. EST/2:15 p.m., PST, 8/10/99
By Junko Yoshida
SUNNYVALE, Calif. ( ChipWire/EET) -- Hoping to cash in on the
growing rewritable CD drive market, Oak Technology today
introduced what the company claims as the industry's most highly
integrated CD-RW controller chip.
Called OTI-9790, Oak's new single-chip CD-RW solution is a
mixed-signal ASIC integrated with USB interface, ATAPI interface,
encoder/decoder, servo subsystem, write logic as well as DSP
functions designed for three different levels of error corrections. The
new controller chip is designed to support 8X speed write and 32 X
speed read capabilities.
Oak is sampling the new controller chip today. The OTI-9790,
priced at $14.50 for quantities of 10,000, will be in volume
production in October.
Nicos Syrimis, vice president of marketing for optical storage at
Oak, described the growth of today's CD-RW market "explosive."
Fueled by a hot application like downloading MP3 music files from
the Internet, the rewritability of a CD has suddenly become very
important for many consumers, he explained.
"We believe our solution gives the most highly integrated CD-RW
solution at a very cost effective price point," he said.
The OTI-9790 CD-RW controller chip offers the rewritable CD
system vendors two key features: faster speed and higher level of
interchangeability. By supporting 8X speed for writing, music, worth
of an entire CD, can be recorded onto a CD-RW disc within less
than 10 minutes.
The newly designed on-chip write logic provides a higher degree of
accuracy of writing data onto a disc so that a CD-RW disk
recorded on one PC CD-RW drive can be correctly read by
another CD-ROM drive.
As the system vendors increase write speed, the interchangeability
of CD-RW disks has been always one of the big problems, said
Dan Salmonsen, senior director of technical marketing at Oak.
Because the write logic to control writing pulses is such a "difficult
device to design because of the accuracy it's required to offer, it has
always been designed as a separate device," said Salmonsen. Oak's
OTI-9790 is the first to integrate it right onto the CD-RW drive
controller.
The mainstream PC market has just begun to see some 8X write
speed, moving up from 4X CD-RW drives, according to Syrimis.
Oak's new chip comes to a market at a time when many PC OEMs
begin to recognize the popularity of CD-RW, considering to turn it
into a line-fit item to be embedded into their PC. Meanwhile, the
same computer makers are also trying to decide when to
incorporate a DVD-ROM drive into their PCs. "The landscape of
the PC drive market is in flux," said Syrimis.
Pointing out that the DVD-ROM drive market for PCs has been
slowed down somewhat due to the lack of PC-specific DVD-ROM
titles, Syrimis said, "We see a better opportunity for CD-RW drives
today."
However, he added that Oak will continue to watch very closely the
progress of a combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW product such as
the one recently launched by Toshiba. "Should it unfold on the
market, we'd consider it."
Oak has played an active role as a silicon supplier for the optical
storage market since the founding of the company in 1987. As far as
CD-RW IC products are concerned, however, the company
provided only a part of the solution, not the chips required for an
entire system.
Until now, Oak offered only encoder/decoder solutions, providing
no servo control or write logic. Oak hopes to meet the drive
vendors' performance and cost requirements by building its future
solutions on the newly introduced OTI-9790 architecture. |
