Hello guys,
can anyone explain why in the SATA documents note1 is attached to LINK transmit states LT1, LT3 and Lt4 (ie when transmitting data), which explicitly say ignore 8b10b decoding errors or invalid primitives, whereas the same note is not on states LT5/6/7/89 etc. The effect is apparently to ignore 8b10b decoding errors when sending data, but not when sending holds. A device which ignored them on both would apparently be more robust. I wondered if there is a good reason for the difference in the cases. It seems to me that in the case of an optical drive the hold state is the majority condition, with relatively long bursts of holds and short bursts of data (consider 16X DVD in either direction average rate- but the commands from applications are often quite large data payloads).
Paschal Egan
Systems Application Specialist
Philips Semiconductors
