SATA Technology

Technical Overview

Parallel ATA is the primary internal storage interconnect for the desktop, connecting the host system to peripherals such as hard drives, optical drives, and removable magnetic media devices. Parallel ATA is an extension of the original parallel ATA interface introduced in the mid 1980’s and maintains backward compatibility with all previous versions of this technology. The latest revision of the Parallel ATA specification accepted by the ANSI supported INCITS T13 committee, the governing body for ATA specifications, is ATA/ATAPI-6, which supports up to 100Mbyte/sec data transfers. Development of the ATA/ATAPI-7 specification, an update of the parallel bus architecture that provides up to 133Mbytes/sec, was recently finalized.

SATA is the next -generation internal storage interconnect, designed to replace parallel ATA technology. SATA is the proactive evolution of the ATA interface from a parallel bus to a serial bus architecture. This architecture overcomes the electrical constraints that are increasing the difficulty of continued speed enhancements for the classic parallel ATA bus. SATA will be introduced at 150Mbytes/sec, with a roadmap already planned to 600Mbytes/sec, supporting up to 10 years of storage evolution based on historical trends. Though SATA will not be able to directly interface with legacy Ultra ATA hardware, it is fully compliant with the ATA protocol and thus is software compatible.

To further understand the SATA architecture, click here.