Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has announced that new SATA storage is now available with a maximum of 6 Gb/s transfer speeds. This specification will enable large amounts of data to be moved at even faster rates, a key advantage as end-users amass ever-increasing amounts of high-resolution photos, videos, music and other multimedia files.

 

Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is the consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of SATA technology. They claim that they do this by maintaining the specifications, promoting and marketing the benefits of the technology and creating future interface features and specifications that carry storage into the future.

 

"Fast transfer rates, low cost and efficient protocol have made SATA the mainstream storage interface of choice," said Knut Grimsrud, SATA-IO president and Intel (News - Alert) Fellow. "By doubling transfer speeds while maintaining backward compatibility, the new specification will make Serial ATA an even more attractive solution for consumers and businesses alike."

 

The physical layer (PHY) portion for the third generation storage interface, which will be defined in the upcoming SATA Revision 3.0 specification, was released to the members of the consortium and they claim that this will enable developers to design products based on SATA 6Gb/s technology as work continues on the SATA Revision 3.0 specification, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2008.

 

The group states that even though they have released the next generation storage backward compatibility with earlier SATA implementations will be maintained by keeping the existing SATA connector configuration. Users are informed by the group that they can use the same cables used for older SATA storage on the new 6 Gb/s solution and also they can sustain low cost and low power by using the new one.

 

It is stated that the new industry standard will improve the appeal of the high-performance, low-cost interface, solidifying its prevalence as a long-term storage interface.

 

According to John Rydning, IDC's (News - Alert) research director for hard disk drives, SATA has become the primary storage interface with more than 650 million SATA hard disk drives shipped since its introduction in 2001. And also more than three-quarters of new desktop and mobile PC systems shipped in 2007 were equipped with SATA hard drives. Other devices adopting the SATA interface technology include optical disk drives, solid state drives and multi-user storage applications.

 

According to officials, to accompany the new SATA Revision 3.0 specification, the industry organization has introduced a new logo that can be used to easily identify SATA 6Gb/s-enabled products.