Symphony Laboratories and Phoenix Technologies Collaborate on Enhanced IDE Controller Support

Strategic Insights -

Symphony Laboratories and Phoenix Technologies Ltd. have collaborated to integrate support for Symphony's bus master integrated drive electronics (IDE) controller, the SL82C105 Sonata chip, into Phoenix's standard BIOS product line. This integration addresses the increasing system performance requirements, particularly in multimedia applications, by increasing data transfer rates and decreasing local bus bottlenecks. The enhanced functionality is currently available in PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 5.

Key Takeaways:

  • Symphony Laboratories and Phoenix Technologies have collaborated to integrate support for Symphony's bus master IDE controller, the SL82C105 Sonata chip, into Phoenix's standard BIOS product line.
  • The integration addresses increasing system performance requirements, particularly in multimedia applications, by increasing data transfer rates and decreasing local bus bottlenecks.
  • The enhanced functionality is currently available in PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 5.
  • The SL82C105 supports up to four disk drives, new faster data transfer modes (PIO mode 3,4 and 5 and DMA modes 0,1 and 2), and supports Logical Block Addressing (LBA), allowing hard drive capacity of up to 8 gigabytes.
  • The chip also supports the ATA Packet Interface for support of CD-ROM devices.
  • The SL82C105 is geared toward high-performance PCI-based systems running DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, NetWare, and OS/2.
  • Symphony Laboratories designs and markets core logic chip sets and peripheral ICs for the manufacturers of desktop and notebook personal computers, workstations, intelligent terminals, servers, and other high-volume computer architectures.
  • Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is the leading supplier of system-level software to PC manufacturers worldwide and is an emerging supplier of Phoenix-brand software to PC users.

Statistics:

  • 4 disk drives supported by the SL82C105 Sonata chip.

Sources:

  • Symphony Laboratories, "PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 5."
  • Phoenix Technologies Ltd., "PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 5."
  • Symphony Laboratories,

4000 Burton Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054.

(408) 986-1701.