Reprinted from a Seagate press release:
NEW YORK, June 25 /PRNewswire/ — Seagate and Intel today demonstrated the
industry’s first native Serial ATA hard drive implementation, at PC Expo in
New York. The companies connected a new Barracuda ATA V hard drive — with a
native Serial ATA interface running at full speed — to an Intel reference
validation motherboard in a high-performance PC game box, provided by
HardDrive.com. The Serial ATA interface provides a throughput of 150 Mbytes
per second, and a very quick and responsive experience in extreme applications
like gaming, home video editing and home network hubs. Serial ATA is the first
new internal PC storage interface technology since Parallel ATA technology was
introduced 20 years ago, and Seagate, Intel, and others have led the efforts
to develop it for use in products. Seagate’s Serial ATA architecture is fully
native to provide the full throughput promised by the new technology. The
Serial ATA interface is expected to allow more complex, flexible and
intelligent storage systems.
“In working with Seagate to put this demo together, we are excited to show
this new technology in advancing the PC platform,” said Jason Ziller, Intel
Technology Initiatives Manager and Serial ATA Working Group Chairman.
“Seagate, Intel, and other industry leaders have been working closely for the
past couple of years to develop the Serial ATA architecture. With higher
performance, enhanced data reliability and industry wide support, we expect
Serial ATA to be adopted quickly into the computing marketplace.”
“Seagate is dedicated to technology leadership without compromise. Today’s
demonstration by Seagate and Intel is the realization of faster, simpler, more
flexible ATA disc drive technology,” said Darci Arnold, Seagate vice
president, Global Marketing. “Seagate’s first Serial ATA product, which will
be available in the fall, will give our customers a new kind of design freedom
and the ability to keep improving system performance much farther into the
future.”
Seagate’s native architecture enables full Serial ATA transfer speeds and
adds no excess components or slow overhead to reduce performance. Seagate’s
native solution interfaces directly with the Serial ATA bus and the internal
logic of the disc controller. By contrast, Serial ATA “bridge” architectures
must translate Parallel data streams into Serial data streams and back again
— and may be limited by the speed of the Parallel ATA controller on the
drive.
Serial ATA can use intelligent data handling and command queuing to bring
users the right data more quickly than ever. Because it’s hot-pluggable,
Serial ATA will simplify new-generation ATA devices like removable in-dash car
computers and music players. Thin cables and simple snap-in connectors will
make it easier to develop entirely new, smaller form factors in the PC, mobile
and Consumer Electronics world. It’s easier to install and configure because
it features hot plug capability and point-to-point connection from the drive
to the host with no need for jumper settings. It offers excellent power
management for mobile systems or low power systems, and better data
reliability with 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy Checking protection on both command
data and data on the bus. For system developers, Serial ATA will offer
100-percent software compatibility with Parallel ATA and an easy transition
for PC makers.
Seagate will offer its Serial ATA version of its newest high-performance
PC hard drive, Barracuda ATA V, in the fall as leading chip providers begin
shipping Serial ATA discrete host controllers on add-in cards and
motherboards. Together, these products will enable the PC and Consumer
Electronics industries to begin the transition to Serial ATA products.
