SerialATA with Virtex-II Pro

xilinx rocketio is not fully SATA compliant so the SATA sockets on ML300 and XUPV2P are just someones

"wishfull thinking.." !

on the ML300 I did someting useful with the SATA connector, namly I did take a SATA cable cut it half, soldered a buzzer onto it, then plugged into SATA connector on ML300 and programmed the rocketIO on the ML300 to make an audiable

BEEP BEEEEP BEEP

pretty expesive way of making BEEP (4600 USD !!)

you can do the same on your board, for less money :)

ok, jokes beside I have implemented a SATA OOB circuitry with NO external circuitry with V2Pro rocketio it worked with some Silicon image SATA bridge, eg i monitored the link to come up eg the in band signalling started and MGT got locked

but--- for you best advice

just forget those SATA sockets!!! (unless you want to make a BEEP)

Antti

Do you recommend the Digilent board? I want to practice my skills on high speed comms using this board and also want a flexibility to work on some algorithms like MPEG etc..

Cheers Paul

the V2VP30 board for the uni price? sure !! that price is below component self cost !!!

just done excpect find nice and easy workin SATA solution for that board (or in that matter any V2P board)

antti

The SATA connectors are useful for Board-to-Board communication using the Aurora protocol.

The "Using High Speed Serial MGTs with the Aurora IP" Quickstart at

Paul

Antti wrote:

sure they can be used for any non-SATA protocol you can imagine, be it Aurora or something else.

but having SATA connectors on board is very misleading as people will think the SATA connectos could be used for SATA !!!

Antti

I read somewhere that using another serdes-IC would do the trick with the V2Pro? Or are you saying that creating a fully SATA-compatible datalogger just isn't doable? Another thing is the ability to connect a SATA-device to the Virtex-II Pro for use with linux running on the embedded PowerPC-core.

almost everything is doable. the question is what is reasonable.

you could be lucky and get v2pro serdes working with SATA too with some limitations and with huge amount of work.

as of using external SATA PHY well that would work, but the problem is that SATA PHY is pretty much not available at all, you are welcome to try find one, but I am 99.99% sure you will not get any. OK, that was situation a year ago, maybe its little easier today.

sure using v2pro serders and ppc-linux would realy COOL, too bad it doesnt work out that way :(

Antti

None of these would work?

• formatting link

• formatting link

sure they would, but have you tried to purchase them !?

Antti

I've contacted TaraCom now, at least.

let me know if you manage to get any SATA PHY

Antti

they only list various PCI to SATA chips or SATA to PATA-(device) ... All those chips that could be used in the mass-market for desktop PCs :-(

looks like there is no way other than using PCI-whatever?

SI once had a SATA phy on their homepage but it was far from beeing available ... their local representation did not even know about it ...

BTW: some time ago there was an announcement from TI to build a DSP with some Rapid-IO interface (C6455) ... It would be really cool to connect *that* to PCI-e and SATA directly ... I asked them - they did not even think about that opportunity :-(

bye, Michael

marvell has PATASATA bridge that is available for low volume ordering - it easier to connect than PCI-SATA

Antti

The Virtex-II Pro will have no trouble doing USB 2.0, right? So doing something like this:

SATA device USB 2.0 Bridge Virtex-II Pro USB 2.0 Bridge SATA Host

I know the first bridge can be done with this chip:

I don't know if that chip would be able to do the last bridge (eg. the one between FPGA and SATA Host).

Ok, here's the thing. They have limited amount of samples, so they won't sell/give those to anyone but high volume cases. I've asked about when/if they expect to get new batch of chips/samples, and if it's possible to buy from them when/if they do.

exactly as expected. unless you are 10M pcs/year customer you dont get SATA PHY's

antti