CE-ATA was jointly announced in September 2004 by Toshiba, Hitachi, Seagate, Marvell, and Intel. The standard aims to address the interface constraints of small form-factor drives used in handheld consumer devices such as media players, GPSes, and mobile phones. The interface provides reduced pin count, better power utilization, voltages tailored to battery-based applications, and more efficient command protocol, according to Arasan.

According to Arasan, the Host Controller IP conforms to CE-ATA Digital Protocol revision 1.0, with support for CE-ATA Digital Protocol commands (CMD60 / CMD61). The kit has two connectors dedicated to CE-ATA, and five slots supporting SD, SDIO, MMC 3.31, and MMC 4.1 cards.

Arasan's SD/SDIO/MMC4/CE-ATA host controller interfaces with an ARM processor's AHB (advanced high-speed bus) in this two-slot design

Arasan says its CE-ATA HDK is built using the company's CE-ATA Host IP Core, which is an evolution of its SD/SDIO Host IP core and SD/SDIO/MMC4.0 IP core, both of which are in production.

Availability

Arasan is currently accepting orders for its CE-ATA Host HDK. The kit comes with Windows CE 5.0 and Linux binary drivers. Source code for the Windows CE drivers is available to Microsoft Platform Builder 5.0 licensees.

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