SATA Spec 3.0 Now Official; 6 Gb/sec. Speeds
The Serial ATA International Organization has today made official the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification.
The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) today made official the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification. The new interface now offers up to six gigabits per second (Gb/sec.) via a high-speed serial data link between storage units, disk drives, optical and tape drives, and more. The new 3.0 spec also offers enhancements to support multimedia applications, enhancements for increased functionality, and is even backwards compatible with earlier SATA implementations 1.5 and 3 Gb/sec.
“As speed becomes critical to today’s storage, the SATA Revision 3.0 specification doubles the maximum transfer speed enabled by technology, paving the way for a new generation of faster SATA products,” said Knut Grimsrud, SATA-IO president and Intel Fellow and director of storage architecture. “SATA-IO members will be able to design for their customers products with the speed they crave, without compromising the quality and performance they’ve come to expect from SATA technology.”
In addition to maintaining low cost and low power consumption via improved power management capabilities, the SATA-IO also provided a few general highlights with today's announcement. A new Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming command will be available in 3.0, enabling isochronous data transfers, specifically for audio and video applications that consume large chunks of bandwidth. 3.0 also provide a new connector designed to accommodate 7mm optical disk drives suited for thinner and lighter notebooks. A small, Low Insertion Force (LIF) connector will also be available for more compact 1.8-inch storage devices.
SATA-IO said that network administrators and computer equipment manufacturers will see an immediate benefit after moving from SATA 3 Gb/sec. to SATA 6 Gb/sec., with data transfers now taking half the amount of time; hard drive caching will experience faster transfers of short bursts of data. The SATA 6 Gb/sec. connection also minimizes the throughput bottleneck suffered by today's faster solid state drives; future SSDs will require 6Gb/sec. connectivity. With the reduced latency of SATA 6 Gb/sec., RAID performance will dramatically improve, workstation applications will perform better, and storage area network drives will experience an increase in data streams, boosting storage network density and efficiency.
The SATA-IO also added that the same cables and connectors used for current SATA environments could be used to connect SATA 6 Gb/sec. devices. However, cables already maxed out using the current 3 Gb/sec. operating margins will not perform quite as well using the new SATA 6 Gb/sec. because of an increased number of resends. The SATA-IO basically recommends that end-users utilize "quality components to ensure data integrity and robust operation" at the faster rate. Put simply, buy new cables.
"The SATA interface has developed into the de facto standard HDD interface in computing applications," said John Rydning, research director for hard disk drives at analyst firm IDC. "The new SATA Revision 3.0 specification builds upon the current market success of SATA, and will help to solidify SATA as the predominant storage device interface technology for the foreseeable future."
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heh you know all these specs have been useless untill the SSD's were released and actually capable of speeds upto and beyond the port speeds
are regular hard drives even able to get that much speed?
and i dont see any point in any desktop hard drive to have this spec either - they barely even reach the ATA100 spec under sustained read/writes
w00t!
Eat it SCSI!
It's good to see the interface stay ahead of the storage. Since AMD was deeply involved with this development will they get to market before Intel?
if they manage to boot off of those way faster pcie ssd's, sata will go the way of the dinosaur in no time
but.. HDDs can't even reach ATA specs..
Now we will all have to move to SSDs to enjoy that speeds?
SCSI is indeed dead since SATA became popular.
If it wasn't for the low life expectancy of SSDs (when compared to HDDs) than I would jump into the new "format".
There really isnt even a non-PCIe SSD that's capable of current SATA2 specs. With current Sata drives, the fastest read spead I can find is 260 mb/s, which leaves quite a bit of headroom for SATA2's 384 mb/s max.
If it wasn't for the low life expectancy of SSDs (when compared to HDDs) than I would jump into the new "format".
And this is the results of being uninformed. Disk based drives in most cases will fail within 5-10 years. Most SSD's are rated to last much longer, as well as the ability to have on the fly data protection. With warranty times the often the same, there's absolutely no reason to hold off on SSD aside from costs/space requirements.
if they manage to boot off of those way faster pcie ssd's, sata will go the way of the dinosaur in no time
How big of drive can you get, how many can you fit and how much per GB/TB? For a main drive on a high end machine that might be great, for general storage there aren't enough PCIe slots since they will be competing with graphics, audio, etc...for that limited real estate. I don't see SATA going away for awhile.
Do you think they would have used PCIe if SATA 3.0 was available already?
Even those drives that don't have high sustained transfer rates but have a reasonable cache size will show small performance gains from the new interface.
Given that it's backwards compatible with previous generations, why complain and criticise - this is a good thing!
Good, now can they make hot-swapping support a requirement for the spec? It's been in since the original SATA spec and still it isn't supported by all OSes or all controller cards.
.... wtf? Where is my 802.11n?! They keep fighting about the standards because each group wants to implement their concept (aka, make sure their draft products are compatible), but they should just agree on performance and what's scientifically best...
I'd rather have the city put in larger sewer pipes ahead of developers building 1000 new units. Build it and they will come.
i wonder how fast it's if we put 2 of the SATA III 6Gb/s 32Mb cache 10000Rpm 2.5" HDD on RAID 0
@robert17
"I'd rather have the city put in larger sewer pipes ahead of developers building 1000 new units."
Awesome analogy.
It's good to see the interface stay ahead of the storage. Since AMD was deeply involved with this development will they get to market before Intel?
Actually Intel is more involved than you think. Intels old 845PE chipset has SATA support before AMD did and they also had SATA 2.0 as well.
I think they will both have it though.
Do you think they would have used PCIe if SATA 3.0 was available already?
Yes, yes I do. Even with Sata3.0, the PCIe interface still blows the doors off comparitavely.
And you're right. Cache memory is very speedy, and even with platter drives can take advantage of burst speeds up to 2.5-3 gb/s.
But overall, this technology should have been reserved for later. Now it's just likely to be used as marketing hype to price up motherboards, just like sata2 was.
There really isnt even a non-PCIe SSD that's capable of current SATA2 specs. With current Sata drives, the fastest read spead I can find is 260 mb/s, which leaves quite a bit of headroom for SATA2's 384 mb/s max.
Actually Intel and others have found ways to mazimize thouroghput. I thin Intel stated they were testing their new SATA 3 SSDs and was reaching near 600MB/s sustained.
We can only hope though.
Actually Intel and others have found ways to mazimize thouroghput. I thin Intel stated they were testing their new SATA 3 SSDs and was reaching near 600MB/s sustained.We can only hope though.
Yup, deff something to look forward to.
And even if intel can release a SSD with 600mb/s I will not go into an overpriced 128gb drive..
Flash drivers may be faster, but are waaaaay overpriced, specially if you think about the price per GB of a HDD.. If the cost of a SSD were about 2x the cost of a HDD than I would jump into the new technology..
Let's wait and see.. Or hope to see it..
Hopefully they'll support power and data in one cable for 2.5" and 3.5" external HDDs.
release date?
It's good to see the interface stay ahead of the storage. Since AMD was deeply involved with this development will they get to market before Intel?
I have a feeling this is why we have not seen the 800 series AM3 motherboards yet... I hope Intel integrates this into the P55.. they probably won't unless AMD offers it with their 800 series mobos.
I have a feeling this is why we have not seen the 800 series AM3 motherboards yet... I hope Intel integrates this into the P55.. they probably won't unless AMD offers it with their 800 series mobos.
I would be very suprised if we actually saw MB's with SATA III anytime soon. Just because the spec has been finalized doesn't mean manufacturers are ready to build it. Just look at USB 3.0, the spec was finished last year in November or something, and there is still no USB 3.0 devices or MB's in sight. That makes me a very sad Panda
Wish SATA 3.0 forced produced makers into daisy chaining. Serial ATA International Organization used daisy chaining in version 1.0 to get fast adoption but without product support is impossible. With PATA we could at least use 2 device per connection.
Someone should sue to block this crap until it requires daisy chaining for a produced to say SATA 3.0 compliant.
Except that my 2-drive RAID-0 array still only hits about 160 MB/s, a far cry from the 300 MB/s supported by SATA-II. A coworker has hit the cap with three drives, but barring high end SSD ($$$) or 3+ drive RAID-0, this won't help one or two drive configurations. Heck, even 12x BluRay is only 54 MB/s, so it's not going to affect optical drives in the near future either.
Very cool, but really this is more a matter of futureproofing than anything that helps us now... unless you can somehow afford to RAID SSD's.
It's cool, but I'm not even worried about futureproofing on my next build. It may be awhile before this is necessary or practical.
I will always support a faster way for my pr0n to reach my monitor.
The speeds of a RAID 0 are only limited to the SATA standard if the said RAID is presented to the SATA controller as a single drive. If the SATA controller is in charge of the RAID, then the bandwidth available is the sum of the bandwidth for each channel the drives are on.
The only reason we are using crappy flash memory for these SSD drives is because of SATA. What is needed is a new drive interface that runs at PCI Express eight lane speeds that would allow for 3.5" bootable SSDs that contain many GB of battery backed DDR memory. This would be far more efficient than the current drives. The drive could have matching flash ram to maintain the state of the DDR memory in the event that the battery dies (though the battery should be rechargable and be charged by the computer as it's running).
A RAID of SSD can saturate SATA 3 speeds today. At the time motherboards with SATA 3 reach massive market, SSD will be far beyond that speed, so SATA will have a short and worthless life.
It will be replaced for PCI/PCI-Express cards