Specifications

The Serial ATA specifi cation is constantly
being worked over and improved upon, and
in 2005, it will receive a drug-free injection
of cool new features. Let’s take a look.
DOUBLE THE SPEED
Though the Serial ATA interface is still rela-
tively new, it’s already in line to receive
a massive bandwidth upgrade for 2005.
Its current specifi cation allows for up to
150MB/s, which will soon increase to a stag-
gering 300MB/sec. This is good news for
power users, as the extra bandwidth will en-
sure that no matter what kind of storage sys-
tem you’re running, your drives will never
be constrained by the interface. We expect
SATA 300 drives to be available by mid-2005,
though SATA 150 drives will continue to be
sold throughout 2005 as well.
A LATCH MADE IN HEAVEN
Anyone who’s built a system with SATA
drives has probably been frustrated by
the tentative, limp-wristed connection
between the cables and the port on the
mobo, so we’re tickled pink by news of
an all-new SATA cable for 2005. This new
cable includes a latching connector that
“clips” into the port for an extremely solid
connection. Both data and power cables
will receive this upgrade, which will be
available at the beginning of the year.
NATIVE COMMAND QUEUING
We spoke highly of this fl edgling technol-
ogy in last year’s tech preview, and it’s just
now becoming a reality. When supported
by both the hard drive and the host control-
ler, it allows the drive to create a queue of
up to 32 requests and execute them in the
order it deems most effi cient—based on the
proximity of requested data to the current
position of the read/write heads. This per-
formance-enhancing technology is already
present in Intel’s new 915/925 chipset and
will also be included in nVidia’s upcoming
nForce4 chipset. Several drive makers are
also currently shipping NCQ drives, nota-
bly Maxtor and Seagate.
EXTERNAL INTERFACE
The original SATA specifi cation did not in-
clude an external spec, but in early 2005
we’ll see this new technology hit the mar-
ket. The main benefi t is the possibility of
external drives that are just as fast as your
internal drive, if not faster (if you have an
older PATA drive, that is). Currently, ex-
ternal USB and FireWire drives are handi-
capped by the limitations of the bus. While
external SATA drives won’t offer the same
level of universal compatibility afforded by
USB or FireWire drives, they’ll be at least
twice as fast. That’s reason enough for us
to get excited.
PORT MULTIPLIER
This technology will allow a single SATA
port to connect to up to 15 drives, although
the most common implementation will run
four ports off of a single port. This won’t be
an add-on device or a piece of hardware,
but rather logic built into the SATA host
controller. Only newer SATA host control-
lers will support the use of port multipliers.
As of this writing, the only next-gen con-
troller with support is Intel’s new Advanced
Host Control Interface (AHCI), which is
part of its 915/925 chipset.
The most likely use of this advancement
will be external storage enclosures, where
you’ll be able to purchase a four-drive array
that can be connected to your PC with just a
single SATA cable.
HOT-SWAPPING
Though hot-swapping was not implement-
ed in the original SATA specifi cation, we
expect it to be part of the advanced SATA
features implemented in the near term.
Hot-swappability will make a SATA drive
just like a typical USB or FireWire device,
in that you can plug and unplug them to
your heart’s content with the system run-
ning. This will mostly be useful for external
devices, but people running large capacity
RAID arrays will certainly be interested in
it as well. At press time, little information
was available on this feature, so we bet it
will arrive in late 2005.
MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 200534
tECH pREVIEW
Serial ATA Spec
Faster! Stronger! Smarter! (And more connected)
Serial ATA cables are notorious
for popping out of their ports.
This connectivity problem will be
remedied soon thanks to an all-new
latching connector.
LIQUID CRYSTAL ON SILICON: In last year’s tech preview, we talked about
Intel’s new LCoS tech—it stands for liquid crystal on silicon—which
promised to cheaply make huge LCD displays by using chip fabrication
techniques to build the displays. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. In
October, Intel announced that the LCoS program was dead.
BTX: BTX is still alive, but it’s moving along at a slower pace than Intel
predicted. (Last year, we said it would be a slow roll-out.) BTX makes a
lot of practical sense, but the PC industry is taking its own sweet time.
Though it was offi cially released in November, we don’t expect to see
any real momentum behind the spec for another six months.
LONGHORN: It’s still coming. Initially slated for late 2005, Longhorn was
pushed back into 2006 early last year. In order to make that deadline
though, Microsoft has had to put off support for the WinFS database-
based fi lesystem until after Longhorn’s launch.
BLUETOOTH: Bluetooth cellphones are selling like hotcakes, but Blue-
tooth is all but dead on the PC. Its puny 2Mb/s transfer rate is simply
too anemic to be useful. The recent announcement that Bluetooth
transfer rates will triple leaves us feeling fl at, given that it’s going to
take three years to go from slow to slightly less slow.
10 GIGABIT ETHERNET: Sometimes, even Gigabit Ethernet just doesn’t cut
it. For those special times, the power user with a severely overstuffed
wallet can turn to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which is roughly 10 times faster
than normal Gigabit. Of course, this speed comes at a huge cost. 10GbE
cards still cost about $5,000 (each) and use unwieldy fi ber optics in-
stead of the twisted-pair copper cable that Gigabit uses.
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO...?
You may want to avert your eyes—in some cases, the news ain’t pretty
Image courtesy of Molex