Serial ATA gets serious
Serial ATA gets serious
The first desktop hard disk drive featuring a native implementation of the new Serial ATA technology will hit Australia in January, with mainstream adoption expected in mid-2003.
Seagate Technology will release Barracuda ATA V disk drives in January, and launch a new line of drives called the Barracuda 7200.7, which will be the world's first drives with native Serial ATA according to Mark Walker, product marketing manager for Seagate Technology.
"Serial ATA is a cool new way to connect drives, and offer high performance Why use it on the desktop? Because you need it. Parallel ATA is a 15-year-old technology," he said. "Parallel ATA can no longer offer scalable performance. It has reached its limit."
Serial ATA differs from parallel ATA in requiring a thinner cable, with 4 pins instead of 40, and offering speeds higher than the top speed of 133MBps of parallel cables and extending past parallel cable length limits of 50cm to extend to up to one metre. Mr Walker said that while the first generation of Serial ATA cabling would enable speeds of up to 150MBps, the second generation of the technology would support 300MBps when introduced in mid-2004, and the third generation cables due in mid-2007 would reach 600MBps.
"As areal densities increase, and the performance of drives increase, the hard drive will never be the bottleneck in system," he said. "As with any new technology, there will be an adoption curve. Serial ATA does face a few extra roadblocks. When will Serial ATA be integrated with motherboards? Mid-2003."
Mr Walker said that Seagate, and other vendors involved with the Serial ATA project, would be encouraging early adopters to move to the new technology. He admitted that most of these trendsetters would be consumers, although he claimed that many small businesses would find benefits in installing the new drives in their servers.
"By mid-2005 it will be the mainstream desktop interface. In Australia, we expect that might happen little it quicker," he said. "Some businesses will want to install Serial ATA now as investment protection. With this becoming a mainstream interface, it will be less expensive down the road to upgrade."
One of the issues with vendors implementing the new technology is the architecture they are using. Some vendors are choosing the so-called "bridge" method, where a chip is installed to enable parallel ATA drives to make use of Serial ATA cabling. While the bridge method does allow users to enjoy some of the advantages of the new technology with old drives, Mr Walker claimed there would be no cost benefit in the long run.
"In a bridge implementation, the drive is still speaking in parallel language, then it is translated into serial. This limits the drive's capabilities, so that for instance there is no native command queuing. Seagate is the first and only company doing the native architecture now. We have constructed a new proprietary chip, and this will provide us with flexibility. Since we have a native implementation, we can very easily add to this. As new supersets become certified, we can easily add them," said Mr Walker.
The Barracuda ATA V is based on 60GB per platter technology, and Serial ATA will be available on the 80GB and 120GB models. The Barracuda 7200.7 will offer 80GB per platter, and Mr Walker said that this new model would be "shipping to key customers" in Australia during December, but would not be sold at volume until January 2003.
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