Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
and finally in July 2004 it became the Serial ATA International Organization. These
groups have released the following SATA specifications:
• The first SATA 1.0 draft specification was released in November 2000 and was offi-
cially published as a final specification in August 2001.
• The first SATA II Working Group extensions to this specification, which made SATA
suitable for network storage, were released in October 2002.
•SATARevision2wasreleasedinApril2004.Itaddedthe3Gbps(300MBps)signaling
speed.
• SATA Revision 2.5 was released in August 2005. In addition to 3Gbps signaling, it
added Native Command Queuing (NCQ), staggered spin-up, hot plug, port multiplier,
and eSATA support.
• SATA Revision 2.6 was released in March 2007. It added new internal Slimline and
Micro cables and connectors as well as modifications to NCQ.
• SATA Revision 3.0 was released in 2009. It added the 6Gbps (600MBps) signaling
speed.
YoucandownloadthespecificationsfromtheSerialATAInternationalOrganizationweb-
site at
www.serialata.org
.
Since forming, the group has grown to include more than 200
contributor and adopter companies from all areas of industry.
Systems using SATA were released in late 2002 using discrete PCI interface boards and
chips. SATA was integrated directly into motherboard chipsets in April 2003 with the in-
troductionoftheIntelICH5chipsetcomponent.Sincethen,virtuallyallnewmotherboard
chipsets have included SATA.
The performance of SATA is impressive, although current hard drive designs can't fully
take advantage of its bandwidth. This may change somewhat as hybrid drives incorpor-
ating larger flash memory caches as well as high-performance SSDs (solid-state drives)
arrive on the scene. Three variations of the standard have been proposed that use the
samecablesandconnectors;theydifferonlyintransferrateperformance.
Table7.9
shows
the specifications; the second-generation 300MBps (3.0Gbps) version became available
in 2005, whereas the third-generation 600MBps (6.0Gbps) versions became available in
2009.
Table 7.9 SATA Transfer Modes
