The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 31, 1996
Filed:
Dec. 05, 1994
Vic Sangveraphunsiri, San Clemente, CA (US);
Felix Pinai, Fountain Valley, CA (US);
Thomas Shu, Lake Forest, CA (US);
Cameron Spears, Diamond Bar, CA (US);
Advanced Logic Research, Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
An interface allows a given CPU (Central Processing Unit) to communicate concurrently with a large number of disk drives in a high-performance, low-cost system. Plural seek operations can be performed concurrently, to serve a common processor. Also, heterogeneous physical drives--of any physical or logical configuration (storage capacity, number of heads, and so forth)--can be combined into one or more 'logical' drives as seen by a host operating system. An 'on-board' embodiment provides an 'enhanced' IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) disk drive that is an extension of the industry-standard IDE drives, allowing an arbitrary number of independently seeking IDE drives on a conventionally single-seeking, two-drive-maximum bus. In a 'paddle board' embodiment, low-cost IDE drives of arbitrary physical size, storage capacity and geometry, can be combined simply and inexpensively into a high-performance storage device. For example, a 3.5'80 MB (megabyte) drive can be transparently combined with a 2.5' 60 MB drive. The inventive concept can thus be embodied with either a 'paddle board' controller (with standard IDE drives), or with no additional controller (employing 'enhanced' IDE drives).