US storage vendor Western Digital Corp has unveiled its StreamWeaver technology, an interface command set developed specifically for the home entertainment market. The Irvine, California-based manufacturer already announced its first generation of drives aimed at that market segment, the WD Performer (CI No 3,745), in September. That product is still essentially a standard IDE drive […]
US storage vendor Western Digital Corp has unveiled its StreamWeaver technology, an interface command set developed specifically for the home entertainment market. The Irvine, California-based manufacturer already announced its first generation of drives aimed at that market segment, the WD Performer (CI No 3,745), in September. That product is still essentially a standard IDE drive adapted to the peculiarities of the audio/video (A/V) market.
This, explained Steve Perkins, senior field applications engineer at the company’s UK operations, means lower noise levels and heat generation, as well as a greater ruggedness for the home environment. A/V also requires adding some external buffering and control mechanism that impose limits on data recovery in order to guarantee the continuity of throughput.
For future generations of Performer, WD plans to put that functionality on the drive itself, and to that end has developed the StreamWeaver command set. It is currently proposing these commands to the Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) committee within the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which is the sector in which IDE standards are dealt with.
The idea, Perkins explained, would be for the underlying technology in the SreamWeaver command set to be included in the next full ANSI standard, which will probably be published sometime next year. In parallel, WD is developing the next generation of Performer drives, which will incorporate StreamWeaver technology, which will probably be launched in the first quarter of 2000, he went on.
