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SATA 3.0 Release Paves the Way To 6Gb/sec Devices

Posted by samzenpus on from the greased-lightning dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has just released the new Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification. With the new 3.0 specification, the path has been paved to enable future devices to transfer up to 6Gb/sec as well as provide enhancements to support multimedia applications. Like other SATA specifications, the 3.0 specification is backward compatible with earlier SATA products and devices. This makes it easy for motherboard manufactures to go ahead and upgrade to the new specification without having to worry about its customers' legacy SATA devices. This should make adoption of the new specification fast, like previous adoptions of SATA 2.0 (or 3Gb/sec) technology."

6 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Worth noting by earnest+murderer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The spec as we have seen with most other transfer specs have little to do with real world device designs. Hardware interfaces (much less devices) languish in the "has to cost less than x per part" hell... But you bet your ass they'll put a SATA 3.0 up to 6GB per second label even though the actual device isn't designed to transfer more than a fifth (peak) of the spec. data rate.

    --
    Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
  2. I hope they make the plug stronger by pembo13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've lost 3 drives due to plugs breaking off into the SATA ports on the 3.5" drives

    --
    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  3. Stupid by TheParadox2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think in a years time frame, we could see the 6 Gb/s passed with the way SSDs are going. To make this standard is dumb. If we're looking for speed, SATA 6Gb/s is not it and this ancient CHS scheme has to go to accommodate a better way to map, access and control data. Ultimately, we need to have these devices understand & control the file system. (Trim does this for SSDs) For example: The OCZ vertex nearly saturates the 3Gb/s mark already. They only way the drives 'fail' to accomplish this sustaining speed is with random writes, typically which occur when writing data to a spot marked as available when the NAND isn't zeroed, it either has to re-zero or move on. If the drive knows that the OS is deleting a file (not marking the site, as available) then the drive can zero automatically without you noticing. Its only in certain conditions, these drive don't Consistently perform at peak performance: Free space not consolidated, Free space not zeroed, Swap file creates random writing (slows performance), Indexing is now useless with .1 ms seek times. Using write filters, or something that converts random writes to sequential writes (through buffers, caches or drivers) greatly enhances speed, such as the MFT Software or even windows SteadyState for the devices. I like the idea of the 'RAM socket' interface as someone stated above. These devices i think work better in a parallel manner. Most work like this internally anyway.

    1. Re:Stupid by afidel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think the most likely outcome is SSD's move to something like ExpressCard, a physical spec which extends the PCIe bus out to the storage. The drives will show up as a SCSI/SATA controller AND a virtual disk attached to that controller so that the software layer doesn't have to be changed.

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  4. Re:isn't it time for by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yea, while swearing at Apple 24/7 for giving SATA1 with Quad G5 Workstation (most expensive G5), I purchased a very nice performing Western Digital Caviar 1TB drive having 32MB cache. It took a while to figure that I can't really saturate SATA1 bus, even with "fill with zeros" (format) of OS X, it went up to 140MB/sec. Of course, Apple expects me to buy a ATTO like high end card if I need more bandwidth.

    What matters is SSD, that is why they release the spec right now. If you have enough money to setup a very high end (not toy-like) SSD right now, you will see SATA2 is the bottleneck. People were already talking about a different standard or even getting rid of SATA alltogether for them.

  5. Re:isn't it time for by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And the OP is, frankly, unaware of the history of SCSI and PATA. Those big wide cables are deprecated for many reasons: one is their expense, another is their fragility, and another is the incredible variety of vaguely distinct, and often stupidly different, specifications for such broad interfaces. I had to deal with that debris, for decades, and it was extremely painful.

    The amount of time saved in consistent, small interfaces having fewer things to screw up is enough, by itself, to make up for the expense of any drives lost from the fragility of the SATA connector. I remember the amazing crap shoot it used to be to design a SCSI chain of devices, the awful incompatibility and expense of the cables even for what were nominally the same type of SCSI, and tendency of those connectors to bend pins or fail under stress.

    Give me SATA (and its low cost peer for external devices, USB), any day over the technically superior but less consistent SCSI and firewire.