Hitachi, Intel support mobile phone storage
Hitachi, Intel support mobile phone storage
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies inc. has joined Intel in its support for a new interface that will allow compact hard-disk drives to be attached to mobile phones, personal digital assistants and digital music players.
The new Consumer Electronics Advanced Technology Attachment (CE-ATA) interface is intended to address consumer electronic specific requirements such as low pin-count, low voltage, power efficiency, cost effectiveness and integration efficiency.
Hitachi took a step towards recognising the importance of creating hard drives designed to meet the needs of these mobile devices by announcing the recent release of Hitachi Travelstar C4K60 that uses a zero insertion force (ZIF) connector rather than a standard notebook hard drive-based connector.
With the ZIF connector, Hitachi has created the smallest 1.9-inch footprint and an easier integration process for devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.
Bill Healey, the senior vice president of Consumer & Commercial Hard Drives at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies said: "We look forward to being part of industry efforts, like this one to define the CE-ATA interface, that help to quicken and ease the adoption of hard drives in consumer devices.
"Hitachi will bring much to the development of this new interface with our long-standing expertise in hard drive miniaturisation and knowledge in working with CE customers."
"Along with ongoing efforts to improve cost, performance, battery life and shock specifications, we believe the CE-ATA interface has the potential to encourage the broadening of the number and types of applications that can be enjoyed on small consumer devices due to the affordability of high-capacity hard drives."
Marvell Semiconductor Incorporated, Seagate Technology LLC and Toshiba America Information Systems Incorporated also support the CE-ATA interface standard.
Last week, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd said it plans to start selling the world's first mobile phone with a hard-disk drive, so the race for fitting storage to these kinds of devices seems like it is hotting up already.
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