Need suggestion for my project

Aug 06, 2007 7 Replies

I am now preparing the project: encryption data stored in the SATA disk. I want to realize a device placed between the pc and SATA disk as following: PC SATA controller FPGA board SATA disk



I planed to use the SATA phy chip on the FPGA board to receive and send the SATA signal. However, I found it's difficult to buy the SATA phy. Whether I can use the FPGA chip to cope with the SATA signal directly? Any suggestion is appreciated.



there is NO NEED todo such thing as Silicon Image has specialized SoCs for exactly this purpose.

the FPGA solution would cost 10x the price of the specialized ASSP

Antti

SATA phy are a nightmare to get hold of in small quantities, I found. Apparently some of the Virtex series can do SATA directlyish (IIRC theres a small circuit needed for OOB data) with their rocketIO stuff. Several companies offer IP for either ends of SATA. Your best bet may be the lattice ecp2m series (although I believe they are either not- released or damn-hard-to-locate-in-sub-10k-quantities ;)). I've only really messed with Xilinx stuff so thats all I can say. How compliant do you need it to be? Good luck, anyway..

SATA,

Has been characterized and verified on Virtex 5 GTP transceivers.

We are preparing the report for publication.

Get with your FAE for more details,

Austin

Way to go Xilinx! I also look forward to the report.

Antti,

I searched on the Silicon Image website, but I can not find the soc as your said. Can you give me an link? Thanks. Look forward to the report. And I don't know why the phy chip can't be bought.

By the way, whether the function can be easily realized as following:

PC(PCIe) FPGA board PCIe-SATA controller SATA disk

Thanks a lot.

look at "steelvine" products, they offer "drive lock" this I think is actually on the fly encryption

SATA PHY - you can not buy. just belive me. you can try of course, but very very likely you will fail finding it

the easist to get are SATA-PATA bridges they are also extremly cheap around 2 USD

Antti

The "drive lock" actually is not the same function to encrypt the data stored in the disk. It just locks the disk. The ATA command set has the "LOCK" command to do that.

I agree that the SATA phy chip is very difficult to buy.

Can I realize the function using the following idea:

PC(PCIe) FPGA board PCIe-SATA controller SATA disk

thanks a lot.

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