FAQ

When was CE-ATA announced and what was the driving factor behind this initiative?
CE-ATA was publicly announced in September 2004 at the Intel Developer Forum by a group of industry-leading companies specializing in various market segments. Discussions among these companies revealed a common question regarding the necessity of addressing storage in consumer electronics. Industry leaders were presented with the burgeoning demand for cost-effective solutions to enable the adoption of higher capacity digital storage afforded by disk drives into host systems such as handheld and consumer electronic devices. As such, we realized that a collaborative effort to define a comprehensive solution for the storage interface would best serve our respective markets. CE-ATA was born from the early work delivered by a few companies that we now refer to as the Promoter Group.

What is CE-ATA?
CE-ATA is based on the MMC electrical interface, also using an optimized subset of the ATA command set to improve performance for multimedia applications in handheld and consumer electronic devices.

What are the industry benefits of the technology?
CE-ATA is geared to address a variety of market and industry needs. Handheld and consumer electronics suppliers will benefit from a standardized set of electronics and storage solutions that will provide access to multiple sources at costs more competitive than custom driven designs. Product integrators and host silicon providers will be able to take advantage of the improved integration the CE-ATA interface affords. For example, the CE-ATA interface allows for lower pin count, better power utilization, voltages tailored to battery-based applications, and more efficient command protocol. Small form factor hard disk suppliers will be able develop products optimized for the handheld and consumer electronics market around a standard interface which facilitates commonality in design and enables economies of scale.

What are the consumer benefits of the technology?
Through industry adoption of CE-ATA, consumers will have access to a greater variety of innovative products including digital music players, PDAs, personal video players, cellular handsets, GPS navigation systems, automotive devices, and various new and emerging applications. CE-ATA-based products will offer compatibility and interoperability with other CE-ATA devices to further enable the concept of mobility and "plug and play".

Who is involved in this new initiative?
The complete CE-ATA Work Group membership currently includes 40+ companies, the list of these companies is available at http://www.ce-ata.org/members-list.html.

Is the initiative open to other companies? How do I get involved?
Participation is open to any company that executes the CE-ATA Membership Agreement.

Are there different levels of membership for the CE-ATA Workgroup?
Companies interested in participating in the Workgroup today may join as an Adopter or Contributor. While the development and definition of CE-ATA is in process, a company can benefit most from participating as a Contributor. Adopter status usually applies to companies joining after the specification has been completed; contributor status is no longer applicable. The Promoter Group was established by the companies that spearheaded the start of the CE-ATA effort.

Why are so many competing HDD suppliers cooperating on this initiative?
Through collaborative work enabled by the CE-ATA initiative, small form factor HDD suppliers will be able to arrive at a unified solution that best addresses the needs of customers and integrators who require the capacities and speeds provided by hard disk drives. Working in concert with participating companies enables the timely development of storage solutions that have the widest appeal to the handheld and consumer market segments.

When will the specification be completed?
Just six months following the establishment of the CE-ATA initiative, the protocol portion of the specification was released in March 2005. The Working Group, which is comprised of the Promoter, Contributor, and Adopter companies, are investigating the next steps and follow on feature sets that compliment and fully utilize the capabilities reflected in the initial interface specification. Pre-release drafts of the cable & connectors specification will be periodically provided to members of the organization.

When are products expected that implement the CE-ATA specification?
Announcements of product support and availability is handled by the respective companies. However, we anticipate that products supporting the new technology may emerge as early as the second half of 2005.

Will the specification be submitted to one of the existing standards organizations when it's done?
The disposition of the final specification and whether it will be submitted to a standards organization has not yet been determined.

Why was this organization formed when there were pre-existing industry organizations that could have created the technology?
Discussions among the Promoter Group companies concluded that an initiative dedicated and solely focused on a specific objective led by a group of the primary stakeholders would be better able to facilitate deployment of the technologies necessary to service the rapidly changing demands of the handheld and consumer electronics markets.

How is CE-ATA different than Serial ATA and why is Serial ATA not being pursued for this?
Serial ATA is a high performance disk interface designed for mainstream computing applications. Handheld and consumer devices have a different set of technical requirements including modest transfer rates and maximum power efficiency. As a result of these unique characteristics, CE-ATA is focused on defining solutions for highly cost-effective integration and maximum power efficiency that will facilitate the incorporation of digital storage into handheld and consumer electronic products.

How will the CE-ATA organization co-exist with existing industry organizations such as MMCA who are developing similar protocols?
CE-ATA is being developed with the intent to augment the existing MMC interface with enhancements tailored to efficiently support Parallel ATA hard disk drives. These enhancements do not preclude base MMC compatibility. Conceptually, if the enhancements are not used a device can revert to MMC operation. CE-ATA is based on collaboration. Accordingly, measures to ensure that the development of CE-ATA does not directly impact or hinder other work within MMCA or other standards bodies are on-going and offer value to the industry.

Is CE-ATA also compatible with other small form factor standard interfaces, such as SD?
The CE-optimized storage interface is designed to support the MMC electrical interface. Currently, there are no provisions in the architecture to support other electrical interface standards. The disposition of whether the CE-ATA interface specification will accommodate other interfaces in subsequent revisions will be determined in the future as needed by the handheld and consumer electronics industries.

Are there different applications for CE-ATA and ATA on MMC devices?
ATA on MMC is targeted to allow ATA devices, including hard drives to attach to a broad set of existing MMC hosts. Version 1.0 of ATA on MMC Specification makes minimal changes to existing MMC commands to accomplish ATA command transfers in order to be as compatible as possible with existing host implementations. The result is that ATA on MMC Specification ver. 1.0 is suitable for the application of ATA devices in a larger base of existing hosts, but is not necessarily optimized for efficiency.

CE-ATA is designed for efficient attachment of ATA devices on the MMC bus. CE-ATA Specification ver. 1.0 introduces two new MMC commands and an interrupt mechanism to achieve high performance disk transfers. By introducing some new capabilities on top of MMC, the initial CE-ATA Spec. may not work with as broad a range of existing hosts as ATA on MMC Spec. ver. 1.0. However, the changes are minor such that new host designs can easily accommodate CE-ATA enhancements to realize improved ATA device efficiency.

Is there agreement that MMCA and the CE-ATA Workgroup should have alignment on a HDD interface?
The MMCA Board and CE-ATA Promoter Group have agreed to pursue full alignment with version 2.0 of their respective specifications with target completion by June 15, 2006.

Many of the same companies are involved in both groups (MMCA and CE-ATA Workgroup), why are there two specifications?
The primary reason for two specifications is that each was formed to serve a slightly different purpose. CE-ATA was formed to be an optimized long-term storage interface for handheld storage devices. ATA on MMC was formed to serve as a way to attach hard drives to the broadest range of existing MMC hosts. This difference in goals has led to different design decisions in each specification. The final objective is to work towards a common alignment in the specifications in June 2006.

Are there key advantages for developing CE-ATA instead of ATA on MMC and vice versa?
The key advantage for using CE-ATA is performance, including better command efficiency and a defined interrupt mechanism. The key advantage initially for using ATA on MMC is the potential to connect to a broader range of existing hosts.

Will there be products which support both ATA on MMC and CE-ATA?
At this time, there are no known conflicts which would disallow support of both interfaces within a device. It is expected though that support within the device would be based on host implementations and OEM requirements.

Will there ever be a single specification which encompasses both ATA on MMC and CE-ATA?
The MMCA Board and CE-ATA Promoter Group have agreed that alignment is important between the two specifications. At this time, the focus is ensuring there is timely technical alignment between the specifications of the two groups in order to best address the needs of the storage community. Alignment discussions between the two organizations are ongoing, however, there are not any specific plans at this time to develop a single document encompassing the content from both groups.