Oak Technology Continues Industry Leadership by Announcing 20x IDE CD-ROM Controller; The OTI-911 Delivers Increased Performance and Better CPU Utilization with Support for CAV and CLV Drive Implementations

Business Wire, Oct 14, 1996

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 1996--Oak Technology (NASDAQ: OAKT), a leading provider of high-performance multimedia semiconductors and related software, today announced its fifth-generation IDE CD-ROM controller.

Based upon its industry-leading OTI-011 and OTI-910 controllers, the OTI-911 supports disk speeds up to 20x and achieves better (lower) CPU utilization than its predecessors.

The controller supports both Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) and Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) implementations. In addition, Oak has released new firmware which takes advantage of improvements made in device drivers included in the latest versions of Microsoft Windows 95, NT and IBM OS/2 operating systems. This firmware increases performance and lowers system cost by supporting lower-speed DRAM. The OTI-911 already has several confirmed design wins with the world's leading CD-ROM drive manufacturers.

"Oak set the performance standard for IDE CD-ROM controllers with the OTI-011 and we are committed to this leadership role as evidenced by our latest product, the OTI-911," stated David Tsang, president of Oak Technology.

Increased Performance

The OTI-911 increases performance with a more efficient bandwidth management architecture, including a larger host FIFO, enabling CD-ROM drive manufacturers to create up to 20x speed drives or to create lower speed drives with better (lower) CPU utilization. Lower CPU utilization off-loads the host CPU and results in greater system performance as seen by the end user.

Drive manufacturers can use the OTI-911 in several different drives targeted at various market segments by optimizing the balance between disk speed and CPU utilization as required by a specific market. The OTI-911 is pin and firmware compatible with the OTI-011 and OTI-910, ensuring an easy migration path for OEMs.

Support for both CLV and CAV Implementations

As CD-ROM drive speeds are increasing, some manufacturers are beginning to design drives which support CAV rather than CLV. Historically, CD-ROM drives were designed to maintain a constant linear velocity (CLV), ensuring that as the head moved from the center of the disk to the outer area of the disk, the same amount of data was passing under the head at any time.

This required the motor controlling the speed at which the disk was spinning to speed up or slow down depending upon where the head was searching for data on a disk, thereby ensuring a constant data retrieval rate from the disk. As seek times in drives have decreased, this has increased the speed at which the motor speed must change and has created reliability concerns among some drive manufacturers and PC OEMs.

Since CAV drives maintain a constant disk speed, the data rate at the outer edge of the disk is faster than at the inner portion of the disk. That is, more data will pass under the head when it is on the outside of the disk compared to when it is on the inside of the disk. This higher data rate places a larger demand on the block decoder since more drive memory bandwidth is required to buffer the data stream from the disk. Oak is at the forefront of CAV support, and the OTI-911 can meet this added bandwidth demand while still providing the necessary host transfer performance.

In an additional effort to provide customers with the highest performance solution, Oak and DRAM supplier Mosel-Vitelic have worked together to allow Mosel-Vitelic to reduce unnecessary guardbanding in its memory devices used in conjunction with Oak controllers. Depending upon actual system implementation, system designers are now able to specify drive performance as much as 33% higher than with standard DRAM specifications.

Availability and Pricing

The OTI-911 is now available in production quantities. Pricing is less than $7 in high volume.

About Oak Technology

Founded in 1987, Oak Technology Inc. designs, develops and markets high-performance multimedia semiconductors and related software to original equipment manufacturers worldwide who serve the multimedia PC, digital video consumer electronics and digital office equipment markets. It has subsidiaries in Japan (Oak Technology K.K.), Taiwan (Oak Technology, Taiwan) and Andover, Massachusetts (Pixel Magic, Inc.). The Company completed its initial public offering in February 1995 and a follow-on equity offering in May 1995. Additional information about Oak Technology and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at www.oaktech.com. -0-

Note to Editors: Oak Technology and the Oak logo are registered trademarks of Oak Technology, Inc. Pixel Magic is a trademark of Pixel Magic, Inc., a subsidiary of Oak Technology. All other registered trademarks and trademarks belong to their respective holders.

CONTACT: Oak Technology, Inc.

Scott Alberts, 408/737-0888

or

Miller/Shandwick Technologies

Jeff Lettes/Staci Sheppard, 415/962-9550