With data transfers of up to 400Mbits/s, the INIC-1430 is designed to enable peripheral and drive enclosure manufacturers to develop 1394 products for applications such as digital video, imaging, and data storage all with plug-and-play use, according to Eric Wilson, director of business development at Initio, San Jose.

“This solves the connectivity issue [confronting consumers],” Wilson said. “End users are looking for something to easily plug into a desktop that has a high capacity disk storage.”

The INIC-1430 features an integrated 1394 core, microprocessor, and ATA interface, delivering necessary I/O components in a single ASIC. The chip enables manufacturers to either design new 1394 interface drives, such as disk, DVD, removable and CD-RW devices, or bridge existing designs to the 1394 interface via drive enclosures, according to Wilson. Other applications include scanners, printers, and video cameras.

The device's Serial Bus Protocol 2 compliant firmware is stored in an external flash ROM. The firmware extracts command sets from the SBP-2 transport layer, passes them to the ATA device, and controls the transmission and reception of data. The devices' multiple transmit and receive FIFO buffers and direct memory access channels allow it to handle asynchronous data transfers and act as a bridge between the host bus and 1394 interface.

Initio's goal is to offer bridge I/O products for various bus architectures, including 1394, SCSI, and USB-2.

“We're taking the strategy to cover each of those technologies with some kind of bridge,” Wilson said.

In PCs and smaller devices, SCSI has carved out a significant market for storage I/O, while many consumer devices, such as video cameras, have adopted 1394 technology, said Bob Merritt, an analyst at Semico Research Corp. in Redwood City, Calif. A bridge for the two technologies would allow digital video cameras, for instance, to record directly onto a SCSI drive. “That's a neat little device,” Merritt said.

The INIC-1430 is sampling and will be available next month in a 128-pin LQFP. It will be priced at $8 in volume quantities.