Design and Implementation of a SATA Host Controller on a Spartan-6 FPGA

Abstract: At Saab Dynamics AB there are a number of projects where cameras are an important part of a sensor system. Examples of such projects are monitoring for civil security and 3D mapping, where several cameras are used. The cameras can for example be located in airplanes, helicopters or cars and therefore it is important to have a robust function for recording data. One way to achieve a quick recording with sufficient storage size is to use SATA flash disks. To reduce the size and power consumption of the recording equipment and to enable project-specific adaptations it is desirable to use an FPGA as an interface to SATA devices. This thesis concerns the development of such an interface implemented on an FPGA. The theory behind the SATA interconnect standard is described along with the design work and its challenges.