Serial ATA Physical Link Initialization with the GTP Transceiver of Virtex-5 LXT FPGAs
Matt DiPaolo, Simon M. Tam · 2008
Serial ATA (SATA) is a high-speed serial link replacement for the parallel ATA (PATA) physical storage interface. The serial link employs a high-speed differential link that utilizes Gigabit technology and 8B/10B encoding. The advantages of the SATA interface over the PATA interface include greater speed, simpler upgradeable storage devices, and easier configuration. SATA has several unique features uncommon in most serial protocols. For example, the SATA physical link initialization involves reset, synchronization, and speed negotiation through the use of Out-of-Band (OOB) signaling. This application note explains the techniques to support SATA initialization in the GTP transceiver of the Virtex™-5 LXT platform. A reference design is also provided to demonstrate the linkup process.