Virtex 4 SATA redux

Hi Sam,

unfortunatly V-5 is the only Xilinx device that is claimed to be SATA compliant.

V-4 has several issues, some have workarounds some not. the OOB signalling has workaround, the CDR lock range limitation has not.

But why are you so sceptic about the V-5 use? I have ML505 on my desk and it has SATA connectors on it.

besides V-5 Lattice has promised to verify if the SC/ECP2M is fully SATA compliant it maybe but it is not officially confirmed by Lattice.

Antti PS please feel to contact me in private, i have and SATA project underway.

Hi,

We released an Embedded SATA Storage appnote (XAPP716) and reference system last year. I recommend you to take a look at it. Basically it is an embedded Linux system with SATA and Gigabit Ethernet connection targetting ML405 demoboard. It is true there were some SATA support issues with V4 MGT in particular the OOB detector. However it has been addressed in the design. The release provides a time-limited evaluation bitfile for anyone with a ML405 to try out. This release does not support SATA Gen2 (3Gbps) mainly because we did not have time to implement. V5 GTP has improved and functional OOB support. It works fine in SATA Gen1/2 in my testcase. Feel free to ask if you need more info.

Regards,

Simon