Optical storage transfer performance

Details Optical storage transfer performance Optical storage transfer performance

2002-12-31

2004-10-26

Elamin, A. (Department: 2116)

Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/

Input/output data processing

Direct memory accessing

C710S033000, C710S052000, C711S100000, C711S101000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06810443

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention pertains to the field of computer systems. More particularly, this invention pertains to the field of programming optical storage devices for data transfer.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Typical computer systems utilize disk drives for mass storage. A disk drive is usually coupled to a host controller that resides in a system logic device. The disk drive is coupled to the host controller via an interconnect. One such interconnect is an AT Attachment (ATA) interconnect. The host controller communicates with the disk drive over the ATA interconnect.
One type of mass storage device includes optical storage devices. Examples of optical storage devices include digital video disks (DVD), read-only compact disks (CD-ROM), etc. Typical computer systems communicate with these optical storage devices via an ATA packet interface (ATAPI). When a processor wishes cause a data transfer from an optical storage device, it first issues a “packet” command to the optical storage device. The packet command is a command that complies with the ATA protocol and informs the optical storage device that the processor wishes to deliver a block of data to the optical storage device that includes command programming information for a data transfer. Once the optical storage device processes the packet command, it will issue an interrupt indicating that the storage device is ready to receive the actual data transfer command information. Then, the processor delivers the data transfer command information to the optical storage device. In order to deliver the data transfer command to the optical storage device, it will perform a series of word write cycles (up to 12 bytes).
So, programming an optical storage device in order to initiate a data transfer from the optical storage device is a two step process including first issuing the packet command and then delivering the data transfer command. In prior systems, the processor is involved in both of these steps. The processor spends a significant amount of time servicing the interrupts that occur for every optical storage device data transfer, and overall system performance is degraded.


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Serial ATA Workgroup, “Serial ATA: High Speed Serialized AT Attachment”, product design specification, revision 1.0, 311 pages including cover (Aug. 29, 2001).

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