Samsung 3.5" hard disk drives, spinpoint v40 manual Buffer Control Block, Disk Control Block

DISK DRIVE OPERATION

•Support for Master/Slave configuration of two embedded disk controller drives.

•Automatic detection of Host status reads.

•Support of both LBA and CHS Task File registers formats.

•Automatic detection of both the software AT reset and hardware AT reset.

•Support for PIO modes 0 through 4.

•Support for multiword DMA modes 0 through 2.

•Support for synchronous DMA (UDMA) transfer mode 0 through 4.

5.2.2.2The Buffer Control Block

The Buffer Control block manages the flow of data into and out of the buffer. Significant automation allows buffer activity to take place automatically during read/write operations between the host and the disk. This automation works together with automation within the Host Interface Control and Disk Control blocks to provide more bandwidth for the local microprocessor to perform non-data flow functions.

The buffer control circuitry keeps track of buffer full and empty conditions and automatically works with the Disk Control block to stop transfers to or from the disk when necessary. In addition, transfers to or from the host are automatically stopped or started based on buffer full or empty status.

A prioritized five ports architecture is implemented. All ports, except the refresh port, utilize 22-bit buffer address pointers.

The data path to the buffer RAM can be configured as 16-bit path in ATA mode.

SDRAM is fixed at 16 Mbits external. 32-byte Page Mode accesses, along with RAS refresh, are implemented. The full buffer bandwidth of SID2001 is 145 Mbytes/sec.

Additional functionality is provided in the Buffer Control block through the following features:

•Increased automation to support minimal latency read operations with minimal latency.

•Capability to support the execution of multiple consecutive Auto-Write commands without loss of data due to overwriting of data.

•Auto write pointer.

•A disk sector counter that can monitor the transfers between the disk and buffer.

•One VBSC(valid buffer sector counter) register for use with any schedule VBSC value.

•Read/Write cache support.

5.2.2.3The Disk Control Block

The SID2001 Disk Control block manages the flow of data between the disk and the buffer. It is capable of performing completely automated track read and write operations at a maximum data rate of 443 Mbits/sec in byte wide NRZ mode. Many flexible features and elements of automation have been incorporated to complement the automation contributed by the Host and Buffer blocks.

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