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2.5" PCIe SSDs) |
| ..... |
| Nibble:- Re: SATA /
Serial ATA SATA µSSD and SATA Express |
by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com
SATA
is a storage interface specification which started life in
August 2000.
See below for the 1st news mention of "Serial ATA" - as it
was called in those early days.
In
July 2002 - SATA
entered the top 3 searches on StorageSearch.com
SATA is used to
directly attach storage devices, such as
hard disk drives,
DVDs and
SSDs , to the motherboard
and was the replacement for legacy Parallel ATA physical storage interface.
Serial ATA technology allowed for platform cost reductions and
performance improvements while supporting a seamless transition from Parallel
ATA technology. SATA began with 1.5 Gbps, and its roadmap is scalable to 2x, 4x
(called SATA 3) and beyond.
Nowadays SATA is used almost everywhere in the storage environment
from notebooks to servers.
How fast are SATA drives?
In
July 2011 - the R/W performance from 2.5" consumer SSDs is
approximately 556MB/s and 523MB/s respectively. The figures quoted relate to a
SandForce driven
model sold by OWC.
The
SATA standard - which was originally created to meet the needs of
hard drive
arrays - is now firmly in
the hands of the SSD
industry.
The next iterations of this standard - unveiled in September
2011 - are:-
- SATA Express
which - for a 2.5"
drive - defines a connector which can support SATA or up to 2 lanes of PCIe
- for the same mechanically interchangeable drive slot.
Returning to the SATA Express standard
- the reasoning behind this progression of providing PCIe compatibility instead
of simply moving up to 12Gbps SATA was discussed in a SATA-IO ORG white paper
-
Why
SATA Express? (pdf) - which says among other things...
"Many
of the backplanes and cables that worked fine at 6Gb/s won't reliably carry data
at 12Gb/s. And even with the background work already done on 12Gb/s SAS, it
would not have been possible to have a 12Gb/s SATA spec out in time. Also
PCIe has been shipping
for years and is a mature technology. PCIe 3.0 (8Gb/s or 1GB/s) provides the
needed bump up in speed with a single lane. By comparison, SATA at 6Gb/s equates
to 0.6GB/s. Next generation PCIe 4.0 will double the bandwidth to 16Gb/s (or
2GB/s) per lane, so SATA Express has a growth path."
See
also:- 2.5"
PCIe SSDs, PCIe SSDs,
SATA SSDs,
PATA SSDs | | |
| . |
14 Years
Ago - August 2000 - from
Storage
History
1st Serial ATA Hard
Drive Unveiled at IDF |
San Jose , CA - August 22,
2000 - Seagate
Technology, APT
Technologies, Inc. and Vitesse Semiconductor Corp
today unveiled the first Serial ATA disc drive, giving a glimpse into the
future of ATA disc drive technology.
The drive is natively attached to
an Intel Pentium 4 processor system through an APT Serial ATA PCI Host Bus
Adapter, featuring a 1.5 Gbps transfer rate. The prototype demonstration
combines technologies from Seagate, APT, Intel Corporation and Vitesse.
It
features a Seagate disc drive with its Serial ATA board, using APT's Serial ATA
Link and Transport layers logic and Vitesse's 1.5 Gbs CMOS transceiver, attached
via Serial ATA to APT's Serial ATA to PCI host bus adapter. Additionally, to
demonstrate the applicability of Serial ATA to ATAPI devices, APT also unveiled
a Delta Micro 12x DVD ROM running on the same Serial ATA PCI host adapter.
This new technology will allow for platform cost reductions and
performance improvements while supporting a seamless transition from Parallel
ATA technology. Serial ATA will supply storage interface headroom for many
generations to come, beginning with 1.5 Gbps, scalable to 2x, 4x and beyond.
"Seagate is proud to demonstrate at this early stage that Serial
ATA technology will soon be ready for implementation, and that the industry's
technology leaders are working together to make it happen," said Tom
Porter, Seagate executive VP and CTO. "There are many hardware and software
engineers who attend the Forum to set their blueprint plans for the coming year
and we're happy to provide them the first glimpse into the Serial ATA future."
"Vitesse is pleased to demonstrate Serial ATA Physical Layer
solutions with early adopters of this exciting new technology," said Bob
Rumer, VP of the SAN Products Group at Vitesse Semiconductor. "By combining
expertise from APT Technologies, Intel, Seagate and Vitesse we will be able to
provide the industry's first complete Serial ATA IC solutions."
"The development of this prototype is key to illustrating that
the industry is on track to deliver
Serial ATA. We have
also demonstrated widespread O/S compatibility running the setup under Windows
98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Red Hat Linux and Solaris 8 with both ATA and
ATAPI devices," said Jim Rubino, president and CEO of APT Technologies. "Our
ability to demonstrate the viability of Serial ATA technology on both ATA and
ATAPI devices is another step toward ensuring a smooth transition from parallel
ATA/100 to Serial ATA"
Seagate, APT, Intel and Vitesse are
among the members of the Serial ATA Working Group (which in September 2004
became SATA-IO)
developing the Serial ATA storage interface specification for the
next-generation computing platform.
This interface is used to connect
storage devices, such as hard discs, DVDs and CD-R/Ws, to the motherboard and is
the replacement for today's Parallel ATA physical storage interface. Serial ATA
is compatible with existing ATA software drivers and will run standard operating
systems without modification.
...Later:-
SATA - as we now
call it - became a very successful interface for hard drives. It was the
critical inflexion point in the server industry's transition away from
parallel interfaces for DAS storage to higher performance serially connected
standards.
In some ways
PCIe SSDs represent a
turning back from that model. But in the pursuit of affordable faster servers -
all rules are made to be broken. | | |
| . |
| . | |
 |
Megabyte's
Auntie Wanda used
both old and new technologyies | |
| .. |
 |
| .. |
|
|
| .. |
By 2004 - within a few
years of the earliest SATA drives shipping - it was already clear that SATA -
an interface created to satisfy a roadmap for
consumer PC
storage - also had the potential to replace (legacy parallel)
SCSI in the enterprise
storage market too in applications such as
RAID systems.
The
reasons and sentiments were clearly argued in this classic article from that
period - SATA
Raids the Datacenter. | | |
| . |
| Where does all the money
go? - inside SSD pricing |
| SSDs are among the most
expensive (and complex) computer hardware products you will ever buy and
understanding the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing
and irritating process... ...which is not made any easier when market prices
for apparently identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
|
 |
Why is that? There are
good reasons for these cost differences. But more expensive isn't always better
for you. To find out what goes into the price - and whether you need it - ...read the article | | | |
| . |
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