Serial ATA for Mini Hard Drives Planned

Lord_Slepnir writes "Cnet is reporting on a consortium of companies that wish to develop a Serial ATA hard drive interface for Miniature hard drives called CE-ATA. The goal of these new drives would be to cut power consumption and use smaller connectors, not to provide an increase in speed. 'The purpose is to design a new interface tailored to the consumer electronics and handheld gadget segment,' said Intel's principal engineer for CE-ATA, Knut Grimsrud. The consortium consists of Intel, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Marvell Semiconductor, Seagate Technology, and Toshiba America Information Systems."

Comments

Going Too Far?

[Paster Of Muppets]

Surely there's a limit as to how small you want everything? WIth mobile phones now being credit card sized, isn't there a limit when it's too expensive and time-consuming to make already-small things even smaller for the expected returns? Or is it just a case of "mine is smaller than yours!"?

Re:Going Too Far?

[Cylix]

You will never catch me saying, "Mine is smaller then yours."

Did I miss something?

[Ghoser777]

What, no reference to uses with the iPod?

Matt Fahrenbacher

Re:Did I miss something?

[ikea5]

Yes you missed FTA:a new drive interface for miniature hard drives. Such drives are often used to store data in handheld consumer electronics, including devices such as Apple Computer's iPod music player.

Re:What???

[Shisha]

That's what I thought when I saw iPod for the first time. And because of that I bought an MP3 CD player (well it was a lot cheaper too).

I've not heard of people complaining about the hard drive in their iPods. Battery, yes I know people have problems with batteries, but never hard drives. Makes me feel, like I've made the wrong choice... even though MP3 cd player is still fine 99% of the time.

I think a standart in small HDD interfaces is good, not only for iPod imitators (well the makers of), but also for people making mini-itx based computers.

Isn't SATA small enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just use the present SATA connector? It's already small enough for a credit card hdd. I'd guess maybe the strange SATA power connector is a bit big but that never stopped anyone. How many SATA drives used molex connectors instead? So no big deal! I don't see why we need yet another standard; it's bad enough to see SATA2 and SAS coming down the pipe already. (Let SCSI die the death it deserves! It never ceases to amaze me how such a simple protocol became such a monstrously complex one over the years.)

At the end of the day the hdd size and power usage is limited more by the drive itself than the dang connector!

Re:Isn't SATA small enough?

[PaintyThePirate]

I assume that by "use smaller connectors", they meant that SATA is smaller than the connectors currently being used in mini hard drives. While power usage may be limited more by the drive itself, size may not be. Take a look at the currect standard for 1 inch hard drives. It needs 52 pins on it. SATA in contrast, only needs 8, plus whatever is needed for power.

Re:Isn't SATA small enough?

[base_chakra]

I assume that by "use smaller connectors", they meant that SATA is smaller than the connectors currently being used in mini hard drives.

I interpreted it differently. The article is about supporting miniature hard drives in consumer electronics devices. For that purpose, even SATA's connectors, small as they are, are rather large when you're trying to fit everything into a palm-sized device.

Thats good and all...

[Viceice]

But what about designing laptop HDD's that can keep up with desktop HDDs?

Nowadays, one can buy a desktop replacment laptop that has got everything, Desktop processor, upwars of a gig of ram, DVD-RW the works. Yet, the HDD is as slow as molasses in febuary.

Typo

[Mr2cents]

that should be SE-ATA, CE-ATA refers to cerial-ATA, an effort to make harddisks out of old bread crumbs..

Linux support for Serial ATA

[jsrodrigues]

It would be a good point to note that only the more recent releases of the Linux kernel suport Serial ATA.
I recently assembled a PC with a IBM-Hitachi Deskstar SATA hard drive and Redhat 9 would not recognize it. I then downloaded SUSE Personal edition 9.1 and I had no problems installing SUSE Linux. However, I need a Linux distro with more bundled software than what the SUSE personal edition provides. As I post this note, I'm downloading Fedora Core-2. I hope that Fedora Core-2 recognizes my SATA drive.
I found very little information regarding Linux SATA support on the web. I also posted some questions to comp.os.linux.redhat and got no replies.
It would be nice to know which sites offer up information on Linux SATA support and more important which distros support SATA "out of the box".

Re:Linux support for Serial ATA

[taylortbb]

Any distro based on the 2.6 kernel series will support SATA (Mandrake 10 (my reccomendation), SuSE 9.1, Fedora Core 2, etc.). I wonder if this will make it harder for people to port Linux to mini devices, it took a while just for normal SATA support in the kernel.

Re:Linux support for Serial ATA

[Nachtfalke]

I have a box running Fedora Core 2 and a Silicon Image 3114 based S-ATA controller, works like a charm, no extra drivers necessary.
And I found http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html to be a very interesting read, helped me decide on the Dawicontrol DC-154 controller.

Step in the right direction.

[Jacek Poplawski]

Face it - PC is huge, noisy and heavy.

Compare PC with DVD player, digital camera or palmtop. Why the hell everything can be small, silent and light, and PC just can't?

Smaller mainboard?
Fanless CPU?
Micro hard drive?
Pendrive instead box of floppies?

Let's just hope... Because currently I have just pendrive. And I would pay for small mainboard with fanless cpu, just give me system with speed like now (Athlon XP 1800) and do not set price 3x higher.

I know that I can buy VIA C3, but it is too slow for me. Can I buy Transmeta CPU for PC?

Re:Step in the right direction.

[chrispl]

I have a Shuttle XPC SN85G4V2 with an Athlon64 processor and a nice fast SATA drive. The designers dropped the floppy drive for memory card readers, which so far has worked just fine for me. Its small (comes with a handy carrying bag!), very quiet and powerful. Runs 64-bit Suse 9.1 perfectly and I can switch over and play Doom3 in high res.

The only complaint I have is that the internal (USB) wifi card is not working under linux. A good PCI adapter remedied that but took up the only PCI slot.

Re:Step in the right direction.

[Jacek Poplawski]

Pendrive is example of something better than floppies - more powerfull, faster, easier to handle. And cheaper if you calculate price/capacity factor.

And I disagree about CDRW. You can use floppy in every PC, you can't use CDRW in every PC, because most have not CD-writer installed. Pendrive requires only USB port - which is in every PC. And it is not just theory - before I bought pendrive I was using floppies - not CDRW.

Noisy computer should be used when high power is needed. Noisy computer should not be standard. Today - it is.

Fast CPU generate more heat, but current fast CPU and two-years-ago fast-CPU are using similiar fans. Acceptable level of heat output, noise, mass and size is just set too high.

Re:What???

[Southpaw018]

Er, what do you mean? I switched to sata and it cut my load times by pretty much half globally - startup, games, everything. It's one of the most amazing upgrades I've done simply because there wasn't much of a downside to it. At ALL. With CPU there's heat and more fans, with my new gamer case case there was going out and having to buy longer cables, with sata there was just computery geeky goodness. Yum!

Uh, hello? Is anybody out there?

[marcus]

Who has heard of USB 2?
Firewire?

Both are plenty fast.
Both have small connectors.
Both have power over the link.
Both are already supported just about everywhere.

Re:Uh, hello? Is anybody out there?

[Infinite93]

The interfaces that exist are already standardized, already in silicon, the required bridges already exist, and the consumer already has an installed base of compatible gear. So, any current hardware will have an advantage over any new stuff that will arguably have fewer features and less flexibility than that which is currently available and it will cost more.

The issue here is not the connection to the PC. You can still use USB/Firewire/etc.

This technology is black box to the end user. Unless you look up the design specs, all you will know is that works.

The issue is the internal connection between the device hardware and the storage medium. If I am designing a device that is supposed to be small, what do I design for? Remember that the storage interface control IC for embedded device will not vary much in price unless the standard is proprietary. It costs the same to imbed a chip with SATA control protocols as ATA. Probably cheaper since you need less I/O lines and smaller board footprint is possible...

If I have a space constraint in the device on the MB, which am I going to go with? A total of 12 or less pins (assuming power embedded--IDE 44 is just IDE 40 with embedded power lines) or 44 pins? Particularly if the 12 pin connector is faster?

Also consider that unless the header connects directly to the drive, you have to use a flat cable. Very prone to interference and complicates the internal geometry for assembly. Believe me, there is nothing worse than a small computer like device with a LOT of flat cables commecting the internal workings.

Power at the connector!!!

[fmaxwell]

The biggest problem with SATA is that they don't run power through the same connector. Thus, every drive gets two connections -- one to the motherboard and one to the power supply. That increases assembly time, the number of connections, the number of cables, and cost. The SATA group botched that big-time. Had they brought power through the connector, the power supply could have had just one connector which went to the motherboard and all SATA peripherals would get power through the motherboard. This has the additional advantage of allowing motherboard manufacturers to turn power on and off for each device while the system is running. Not only could the drives stop spinning, the motherboard could have powered them off.

Re:Power at the connector!!!

[Junta]

SATA *does* specify a standard for a power connector and location (most still have the standard ATX power connector). You could feed it through the same cable through the motherboard in theory, though that would increase the power draw of the drive controller significantly. This is mainly for the possibility sane backplanes (including longer ground pins than other pins for hot-swap capability.)

Re:Power at the connector!!!

[fmaxwell]

Before answering, I'll point out that 2.5" ATA laptop hard drives have run power through the same cable with data for years with no serious problems.

At this point in time, it would be a BAD idea to supply power to the drives through the motherboard. For one thing, the motherboards would have to be able to handle the extra amount of current flowing through them.

That's a non-issue. All motherboards have a power layer and ground layer. Each layer is solid except for circles around the pins to which they don't connect. Huge amounts of current can pass through there. You can pass 3 amps at 12 volts through a distance of 10 inches using about a 0.2" wide trace. A SATA hard drive takes about 1.1 amps when operating and seeking and about 3 amps of startup current (though that could be mitigated by sequenced start-ups to prevent all drives from maxing out at once).

I think they might have problems as is supplying current to the Graphics card and CPU.

The CPU current isn't the issue. It's the heat that causes problems. On the graphic cards, it's the bus spec and connector that's the limiting factor. If you make an AGP card that exceeds the bus spec, then there will have to be an external power connector, but that doesn't mean that providing power through the motherboard is technically infeasible from a design standpoint.

Also, if you did do that, you run into two other issues with power as well. Heat dissapation in the cable and intereference with the data lines.

Do SATA power cables get hot now? Of course not. They won't get hot if fed from the motherboard either. Noticeable heat in a power cable is a sign that the wire is WAY too small. As to interference, AC and pulsed DC can cause interference, not straight DC. Even then, twisted pair cabling would resolve it. It's also a non-issue. Seen interference problems on USB? It runs power through the cable.

Also, if the power cable through the motherboard goes bad, you have to get an all new motherboard.

As someone who has designed PC boards, I can tell you that it's not going to happen. That's like worrying that your soup spoons will "go bad."

Keep the power supply supplying power to everything directly, it cuts down on complications that can crop up.

More cables, more connectors, more routing problems, more expense. It adds complication.

Re:Power at the connector!!!

[Junta]

Right that it isn't the same connector as the data, it is adjacent and a bit larger, and yes, the connection cycles are reduced in comparison with the typical SCSI hot swap connector. For the sake of short term compatibility, I still have to lean toward having the power connector optional between ATX and the adjacent connector for a transitional time.

As far as controller draw, I was mostly referring to controller cards more, which have to pull power from the PCI slots and as such have to be mindful of the power limitations motherboard manufacturers have in mind. For example, have you ever seen a SCSI controller card that, itself, pushes power through its connectors? In every case I've ever seen, hot swap scsi backplanes in systems pull their power from somewhere else (either direct from the power supply, or from a port on the motherboard that could also be used with a different cable to power IDE devices). The SCSI drives with SCAs are typically hard to use with non-backplane systems, and vice-versa. SATA drives can easily be used with or without a backplane, and that is a strength in the desktop market.

Re:What???

[Cyberax]

The problem is hard drives in miniature devices. Hard drives will never be as reliable as solid-state drives, mechanical drives also consume lots of energy (and that's crucial for small devices).

Ditch the Bridge Board

[Detritus]

Many SCSI drives used to be ST-506 or ESDI drives with an attached SCSI bridge board. As SCSI matured, drives were designed with native SCSI interfaces.

The same thing could happen with USB or FireWire. The drive manufacturer just needs to design some new silicon.