1394-To-ATA Bridge Chip Doubles PC-To-Disk Data Rates

A new IEEE-1394 bridge device is said to increase by a factor of two the achievable data transfer rate between PC/Macs and peripheral mass storage devices utilizing the ATA/ATAPI interface.
The TSB42AA9 1394 link layer controller is expected to make PCs and Macintosh's more responsive to users by transferring data to and from storage peripherals, such as hard disk drives, CD-RW drives and DVD-RAM drives, in half the time required using currently available solutions. Employing an advanced architecture with a high-buffering system, the TSB- 42AA9 supports Ultra DMA mode 4 (ATA-66) and has achieved sustained data transfer rates of 27 MB/s. Pricing for the 1394-to-ATA bridge chip is $8 each in quantities of 1,000.